Search - Roger Reynolds, Harvey Sollberger, San Diego Symphony Orchestra :: Roger Reynolds: Whispers Out of Time; Transfigured Wind 2

Absolutely among the best of contemporary composition!

R. Hutchinson | a world ruled by fossil fuels and fossil minds | 06/16/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Roger Reynolds deserves to be much more widely recognized. "Whispers Out of Time," the first of the two pieces on this recording, won the Pulitzer Prize, and yet how many have heard of either it or Reynolds? "Whispers" "is scored for a string orchestra of eight violins, six violas, five cellos, and four contrabasses, including a soloist on each instrument," according to the excellent liner notes by Kyle Gann. The contrabass soloist is the renowned Bertram Turetzky, who, like Reynolds, is a professor of music at the University of California at San Diego. The second piece is an electro-acoustic composition, "Transfigured Wind II," that features John Fonville's flute. This is the style that Reynolds is known for (among the fortunate few!), utilizing computer transformations of flute solos to structure the piece, which also features the San Diego Symphony Ensemble. Whether or not you are impressed by his physics background, or the fact that Reynolds has spent time at Pierre Boulez' IRCAM in Paris developing electro-acoustic compositional technique, or that he has based works on the writings of Beckett, Stevens, Borges, Kundera, and in the case of "Whispers," John Ashbery, you are truly missing out on some of the most beautiful music of our time if you pass this by."

Fonville is wonderful, Reynolds is mediocre

Sebastian Winston | San Diego, CA | 07/20/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"John Fonville, the flute soloist on Transfigured Wind II is quite good. Sollberger and the San Diego Symphony Ensemble do a nice job on the performance, too. The computer generated tape was masterfully created by Reynold's graduate student TA's although they received no credit for the thousands of hours that they put into the project. "Whispers Out of Time" won a Pulitzer Prize and is quite an ugly work - formless, void, ponderous, uninteresting. Roger Reynolds is a legend in his own mind, without the ears or imagination of a decent journeyman musician. Nonetheless, the disc is worth getting just for Fonville and Transfigured Wind II which is an excellent work. I guess that even a broken clock is right twice a day!"