Review

Christopher Rouse
Artemis:
2 trumpets, horn, trombone, tuba

Valley Forge, PA, United States
Publisher: Helicon Music Corporation
Date of Publication: 1989

Score and parts

Primary Genre: Brass Ensemble - 5 brass

Christopher Rouse is one of the most prominent and important American composers on the scene today. Trombonists will be forever in his debt for his Trombone Concerto, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 and has been recorded by Christian Lindberg and Joe Alessi.  Aside from the Pulitzer, he has won numerous other awards including a Grammy and has been elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters. Every major orchestra in the United States and numerous ensembles overseas have played his orchestral works. The composer states the following about his brass quintet:

     "Artemis was the Greek goddess of the hunt. This work draws upon the tradition of music written to evoke the chase, replete with both fanfare-like figures and fast galloping rhythms. The work was commissioned by Chamber Music America with funds provided by the Pew Charitable Trust. It is dedicated to the members of the Brass Ring who gave the premiere performance at the 1989 Chamber Music America conference in NYC."

Before the official premiere, the first performance actually took place in October of 1988 at Yale University. Score and parts are not computer generated but are in a legible manuscript.  At the tempo indicated (Molto Allegro, Quarter Note = 176) this is quite a difficult work in terms of technique. The ensemble that premiered it, Brass Ring, was one of the best quintets on the scene at the time, a group dedicated to performing original works and used to performing difficult contemporary pieces. As one of the members of that ensemble remarked to me: That piece is a BITCH! It’s the only piece in my life that I actually lost sleep over. It’s marked at 176 and the fastest we ever got it was 152. So it is no great surprise that the piece does not appear once in a list of archived performances from 2001-2006 on the composer’s website. The tonal language is dissonant. It is an unrelenting four minutes of frenetic energy and kaleidoscopic colors requiring great players and virtuoso ensemble work. However, a brass quintet written by a Pulitzer Prize winner should be on the menu of serious, advanced quintets.

-Karl Hinterbichler
University of New Mexico