![]() ![]() Both trios are fine examples of Boykan’s mature mode of expression. 2 (1997) for violin, cello and piano, and Echoes of Petrarch (1992) for flute, clarinet/bass clarinet, and piano. This CD presents four chamber works covering a period of twenty years, from the slight and blithely lyrical City of Gold (1996) for solo flute, to the large, intensely expressed, even thorny Second String Quartet (1973). Indeed, the music of the distant and not so distant past is truly alive for him offering boundless sustenance. In this day and age where it can no longer be assumed that professional composers have even a cursory acquaintance with the past, it’s become a commonplace to speak of a least some recent music as being informed by “the tradition.” In Boykan’s case, the music of his forebears, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and particularly Beethoven, not to mention that of the Second Viennese school, has been most thoroughly absorbed and its compositional lessons applied in a unique and quintessentially American language belonging to the second half of the twentieth century. ![]() Gratefully written for the instruments, it’s elegant, subtle and delicate, yet viscerally powerful when it needs to be. While he eschews overstatement and pyrotechnics, his work is emotionally available. Martin Boykan, more than any other living composer, is able to craft large-scale works with tremendous economy of means - works in which every note and gesture are essential both in the large and in the small. ![]() Fenwick Smith, flute Donald Berman, piano Michael Curry, cello Cyrus Stevens, violin Auros Group for New Music: Susan Hampton Gall, flute David Horne, piano William Kirkley, clarinet Pro Arte Quartet: Norman Paulu, violin Martha Francis, violin Richard Blum, viola Parry Karp, cello ![]()
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