Music Review: ‘Then and Now: Chamber Music of Richard Festinger’

Then and Now collects five chamber works by Richard Festinger dating from the past two decades. Amid the shatterings of classical convention that have characterized the 20th and 21st centuries, Festinger’s work has remained stubbornly tonal and chromatic. He composes melodies, builds harmonies, and writes in phrases – all in a distinctive and, based on these selections, a very likable voice.

Active Voices, Hidden Springs

“Invocation” (2019) for woodwind quintet features masterful counterpoint and smooth if not always standard harmonic shifts. The five voices of the Calefax Reed Ensemble – oboe, clarinet, alto saxophone, bass clarinet, and bassoon – converse and coalesce, expressively singing and gently sparring. One feels that there’s not a single wasted or inessential note in this compelling piece’s 10-and-a-half minutes. Though fully abstract, it feels like a narrative, almost is if it were a film score.

Remarkably, the five timbres meld so smoothly that I’m reminded of a string quartet (or quintet) where all instruments hail from the same family. The next piece combines voices from very unrelated families. Festinger composed “To a Pilgrim” some 18 years earlier, but it’s easily recognizable as from the same pen, this time writing for the unusual combination of bass clarinet and cello.

The two instruments sometimes wind phrases around each other; at other times, one sustains background tones while the other spins swirls of melody. Often they move from their lower to their upper registers together, creating interesting timbral commentary. The writing is so active and engaging that during some passages I could almost have sworn there were at least three instruments playing. At a climax in the sixth minute their exchange becomes so heated that they have to stop and breathe, before returning in a more subdued mode and finally trailing off in uncertain harmony.

Festinger’s experience as a jazz guitarist no doubt informs the longer piece “Hidden Spring,” composed for six players on nine instruments including two guitars and a mandolin. At times the music has an improvisatory flavor suggesting jazz lurking in the background. But its sustained intensity evidences a keenly intentional drive. Woodwinds and strings create smooth textures as the guitars deftly intertwine.

Movements Then and Now

The fascinating three-movement Il était une fois… harks back to tradition, both in its instrumentation (piano trio) and its first movement’s partial adherence to sonata form. The slow but active second movement builds on a cello theme from the first that’s worked into interesting interplay between cello and violin, while the piano supports with clouds of related chords. A creepy crescendo subsides to a spacious restatement of some of the earlier angular leaps, as jazzy piano chords slowly propelling haunting melodies from the violin and cello.

A choppy start to the third movement leads to gritty string duets over coruscating arpeggios and scale fragments from the piano. A feeling of nervous unsteadiness prevails. In all these works Festinger can leave your ears happy while your nervous system remains unsettled.

The earliest composition comes last. Windsongs (1996) shows in three compressed movements how Festinger’s essential methods and sensibility haven’t changed over the intervening years. The woodwind quintet City Winds motors through the tiny first movement, passing sixteenth-note figures hurriedly from one to another. Awkward dissonances convey a series of quizzical statements in the slow movement, the flute finally rising from the harmonic foundation to pull the whole ensemble into a final chord with all instruments widely separated in pitch, an uneasy resolution. The closing “Allegro” seems to gather all of the composer’s signatures and inclinations into a playful not-quite-two-minutes.

David Hoose in his liner notes sums it up better than I could: “Remarkable — and admirable — is the consistency of [Festinger’s] musical language, even as none of the five compositions sounds like any of the others.” A lot of contemporary music comes my way, and rarely do I hear a collection as appealing as this one, full of interesting ideas and curiously beautiful sounds.

The five works on this album also demonstrate the tremendous skills of the musicians and ensembles the composer has worked with over the years. Without their superb realizations this music wouldn’t sound half as good.

Then and Now is out now on New Focus Recordings.