Review

David Manson
Labrynth:

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Publisher: Wehr's Music House
Date of Publication: 2005
URL: http://www.wehrs-music-house.com

Score and parts

Primary Genre: Trombone Ensembles - 4 trombones

When tasked with reviewing a trombone quartet, I often like to get together with my students and play through the piece. Our responses usually range from mildly positive to lukewarm, or worse. Not so with Labrynth, a three-movement piece by Florida-based trombonist and composer, David Manson. This is an exciting, challenging piece that can really shine in the hands of a good quartet. The three movements subtitled purgation, illumination and union, follow a fast-slow-fast structure. The outer fast movements derive much of their excitement from rhythmic ostinato figures handed off imitatively between parts. These ostinati sometimes incorporate awkward intervals, especially nearing the end of the piece. The third movement, containing syncopated ties in a fast 5/8 meter and some quarter-note triplets set against eighth notes, is the hardest to put together. The second movement begins and ends with peaceful pyramids and features the first trombone in a rubato solo cadenza ranging up to c-sharp2 and requiring good command of awkward leaps. The second and third parts range up to b-flat1 and a1 respectively while the 4th part reaches down to AA albeit with a tessitura that stays mostly in the staff.  This energetic, often dissonant piece deserves to become a standard of the quartet repertoire. Four confident players who are willing to work through the piece’s rhythmic and intervallic challenges will be rewarded with a satisfying musical experience.

-Brad Edwards
University of South Carolina