Disclaimer: Unable to attend the concert because of an out-of-state conflict, I attended the Thursday rehearsal/recording session in order to hear Pasatieri’s Symphony. The other piece performed on the concert, Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, is accordingly absent from my review.
The University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra premiered Thomas Pasatieri’s first symphony Friday night. While this may be the composer’s first contribution to this specific genre, Pasatieri is by no means new to the field: a student of Nadia Boulanger who has to his credit almost 50 years of composition, including almost two dozen operas and many more chamber works, and numerous orchestrations for film. His compositional style lies comfortably in the Neo-Romantic Hollywood pastiche. His symphony, while not perfect, presents Pasatieri as himself.
The one-movement work opens with a fierce dissonance without function or resolution that recurs throughout the piece, interrupting a variety of passages. The primary theme is introduced by the strings, which quickly establish themselves as the section of the orchestra with which Pasatieri is most comfortable. Closer to a tone poem in the thematically transformative vein of Liszt, the theme soars through two different presentations by the strings, before conceding its place to a horn solo, unaccompanied. Pasatieri utilizes soloists throughout his composition to provide textural variety, but from the moment the horn begins, one can tell that Pasatieri is slightly out of his element in the brass section. The solo is cumbersome to the soloist, who valiantly performed a seemingly impossible request on the part of the composer. The primary theme returns, but cedes again to other soloists—oboe, trumpet—that provide welcome textural changes and reprieve for the already overly exercised theme. Pasatieri moves to other means of variety with a woodwind feature, backed by percussion that was a bit overpowering for the Singletary Center stage. The emotional peak of the work follows a violin/cello duet performed with heart-wrenching passion by the collegiate ensemble’s talented cast. After being joined by the full ensemble of strings, the emotional moment is almost lost due to an awkwardly constructed brass fanfare featuring equally unwieldy interjections from the woodwinds. After two reminders of the works opening discord, the primary theme appears utilizing the full ensemble to its maximum potential for the first time. Building into Mahlerian tension, the discord returns once more, only to finally reveal its function, purpose, and resolution, bringing Pasatieri’s work to a stirring and emotional conclusion.
Despite writing outside of his operatic/film comfort zones, Symphony is wholeheartedly Pasatieri’s. The neo-Romantic thematic material, coupled with beautifully composed string moments provides a stirring introduction to what Pasatieri is capable of as a composer of symphonic music. However, there remains work to do. His use of brass and percussion tends to feel awkward and forced, the work feeling as though he utilizes them because he feel obligated, evidenced not only in the fanfares, but also the horn and trumpet solos. Even these shortcomings do not prevent Symphony from being a valuable piece of music, and its triumphs make obvious Pasatieri’s valuable possibilities as a composer of symphonic literature.
John McCluskey
John, I really enjoyed your review. I had to miss the performance but your concise yet unerring adjectives and clear judgments about Pasatieri's strengths and weaknesses give me a sense of the piece as a whole - no small feat in just three paragraphs.
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