Dancing on the Brink of the World
Berkeley A. Price, clarinet; Deon Nielsen Price, piano; John McLaughlin Williams, conductor; National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. Cambria CD-1170 (2009), distributed by NAXOS.
Published scores and parts for all six works are available at www.culvercrest.com
SUSAN LACKMAN
Deon Nielsen Price’s CD, Dancing on the Brink of the World, displays the work of an inventive and sure-footed composer whose compositions show a vivid imagination and depth of feeling that is readily transmitted to the listener. The opening piece, Yellow Jade Banquet, based on a Chinese folksong, is a tour de force for clarinetist Berkeley Price, playing B-flat and E-flat instruments and the rare basset horn. This delicious work was premiered during the pre-Olympics, IAWM-sponsored International Congress in Beijing in 2008, at the China National Center for the Performing Arts by the China National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Apo Hsu. The various sections in the work were inspired by the menu of a ten-course Chinese banquet: Oyster Sauce Beef Soup, Exotic Pork and Japanese Cucumbers, Cantonese Duck and Barbecue Ribs, Slippery Shrimp and Broccoli, Braised Chicken in Chestnut Sauce, Scrambled Eggs with Garlic Chives, Lemon Fried Fish, Beijing Lamb with Colorful Peppers, Cloud-eared Honeydew with Jellies, and Strawberry Cheesecake. “Yellow Jade” is the English translation of Huang Qiong, Chinese name of the banquet hostess, Joan Huang.
Epitaphs for Fallen Heroes: Concertpiece for Piano and Orchestra, which uses the Dies Irae motive, America Themes for Orchestra, a quodlibet or potpourri of traditional American tunes such as “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” and the title work, Dancing on the Brink of the World, should be noted not only for Price’s meticulous writing for upper voices, but also for the extraordinary power she is able to get from the lower brass. Price’s ear for cinematic writing paints such complete pictures that States of Mind for string orchestra is memorable as much for its serene Meditation as it is for the harrowing Troubled Thoughts.
Gateways, for winds and percussion, is conducted on this recording, as is America Themes, by Dr. Berkeley A. Price, Concert Band Director at Antelope Valley College in California, who had earlier conducted the premier performances of both works.
Dancing on the Brink of the World: the Saga of Crissy Field, is a tone poem for orchestra, and Price wields her pen with the vibrancy of a painter’s palette. In seven vignettes and beginning with authentic Coastal Miwok and Pomo Indian tunes, the composer musically traces the development of a San Francisco Bay area from an ancient marshland before it was home to native people, the coming of the Conquistadores, the industrial development after the 1906 earthquake and fire, and the poignant farewell of the Japanese families to their internment during World War II. The work ends with an homage, Reverence for the Land, that brings together the spirits from centuries past as the land is restored to its natural state. Ancient percussion instruments and bird sounds, quotations of swing tunes popular with Japanese teens, the rhythm of the waters of the Bay—all meld and flow through the music of this tone poem. Knowing the impetus behind the sections makes the color more meaningful, but, as with all the music on this CD, the music stands on its own as a fine composition.
Dr. Susan Cohn Lackman is Professor of Music Composition at Rollins College, Winter Park, FL. She has served as Treasurer of the IAWM, and as Director of the Sigma Alpha Iota Composers Bureau. (Journal of the International Alliance for Women in Music)