Review

Geoffrey Gordon
Trombone Concerto:

,
Publisher: LCM Artists Management
Date of Publication: 2010

Score and parts available in North America from LCM Artists Management, lcmartistsmgmt@att.net, and in Europe from Xenia Evangelista Communications, Munich, x.e@xeniaevangelista.com.

Primary Genre: Solo Tenor Trombone - with orchestra

Normally a review of a substantial concerto premiered by a major orchestra might include background information about the composer, the soloist, details about the commission, the premiere performance, etc. In the case of the Gordon Concerto, all this information is covered excellently by Mark Hoelscher in the July 2011 (Vol. 39, No. 3) issue of the ITA JOURNAL. This review will concentrate largely on the music.

The scoring is for conventional symphony orchestra with large percussion array. The orchestra does not accompany in the traditional sense but is a shared and equal musical partner to the trombone. Both the solo part and the orchestral music are demanding and highly interesting. The Hoelscher article goes into detail about the virtuosity of the solo part, which is expertly navigated by Megumi Kanda. Although possessing an individual style, Geoffrey Gordon’s language has discernible influences from Alban Berg, Edgard Varese, Toru Takemitsu, Olivier Messiaen and Bela Bartok.

In a review of another of Geoffrey Gordon’s work, Lawrence A. Johnson, in the Chicago Classical Review, stated:  
In an era of reflexive Neo-Romanticism and vacuous pop-influences, there are not many young composers today who dare to write uncompromising 12-tone music. Not only does Geoffrey Gordon adhere to a fairly tough and astringent serial style in his Tiger Psalms, but the composer also makes the music sing magnificently. Like Alban Berg, Gordon’s modified serialism brings an individual and communicative style to his tone rows.

An informative review of the premiere by Tom Strini gives a good account of Gordon’s trombone concerto: The charms of this 25-minute piece are abundant but not obvious. It hasn’t a single hummable tune, its harmonies are unconventional, it’s atonal, and you can’t dance to it.
…The first movement jingles, squawks, cries, shimmers, and groans. (Megumi) Kanda (the soloist) responds to this enchanted, scary forest of exotic orchestral sounds with virtuoso declamations couched in speech rhythm. 
…Gordon drops you in a fantastical place and you stand there agape, as it were.
…In the first movement, those declamations, which at first seem arbitrary, come to sound like a grand argument built up across time. 
The second movement pits jaw-dropping lyrical trombone themes against ringing cluster chords, mostly in high register and often laced with harp and metal percussion
...Good music rewards attention with the pleasure of discovery. In Gordon’s concerto, there’s always more to it than meets the ear, and he gives you a chance to hear what that “more” is.
…Fierce rhythmic drive, absent to this point, charges in with the finale. Not content to gallop straight to the finish line, Gordon peppers the third movement with metric shifts and gnarly rhythmic snags. Bumps and hairpin turns make the ride wild as well as speedy. A central interlude takes us briefly back to the feeling of the first movement with entirely different material, and an epic coda blows the doors off the place.

This is a major work for the instrument, well crafted, interesting and musical. It is technically difficult for both the soloist and the orchestra but at the same time idiomatic.   This concerto rightfully takes its place alongside other recent music for solo trombone and orchestra by major composers including works by Christopher Rouse, Luciano Berio, Jennifer Higdon, Carlos Chavez, Jan Sandstrom, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and Toru Takemitsu.

-Karl Hinterbichler
University of New Mexico