EQUINOX

PETER DICKINSON listens to the music of Elliott Schwartz

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'Rows Garden (New Views of Old Sets)' is a neat punning title for five movements for wind quintet based on the note-rows of five famous works by those icons of the Second Viennese School, Schoenberg, Webern and Berg. The naughtiness here is that the material of five twelve-tone classics is Schwartzed and that means the infiltration of wicked (in Schoenberg's terms) triads and deliberate inconsequentialities. Can we really believe that this near gipsy music is based on the note-row of the famous Violin Concerto by Berg? [Listen - example 4, track 4, 'Rows Garden', 8:34-9:02]. What a send-up! Such classics, like Gershwin's melodies, are indestructible but 'Rows Garden' is a reminder of Schwartz' rare and especially personal sense of comedy, which is never far away.

The final piece on the CD is a 20-minute orchestral piece called 'Equinox' which is actually consistently serious, richly brooding and introspective. It quotes from Schwartz's own early works and is concerned with landscape and the seasons and, from this point of view, almost casts Schwartz in a new identity as the Sibelius of Maine. 'Equinox' is consistently melodic and richly scored. Here's part of the wintry opening [listen - example 5 - 'Equinox', track 5, 0:57-1:31].

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