Ticheli, Warnaar & Ranjbaran - Wind Concertos

Contemporary American Wind Concertos

Frank TICHELI (b. 1958)

Clarinet Concerto (2010)

Brad WARNAAR (b. 1950)

Horn Concerto (2015)

Behzad RANJBARAN (b. 1955)

Flute Concerto (2013)

Érik Gratton (Flute) 

Leslie Norton (Horn) 

James Zimmermann (Clarinet)

Nashville Symphony Orchestra

Giancarlo Guerrero

Recorded 2016 and 2017 at Laura Turner Concert Hall, Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Nasville, Tennesse, USA

Frank Ticheli (b. 1958): Clarinet Concerto (2010)

“It’s a process in which the head and the heart are constantly keeping each other in check,” Frank Ticheli says about the art of composing. “The tension between those two forces is what creates a piece of music. And it’s a real mystery, a hall of mirrors: the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know.”

Ticheli is also a highly respected teacher and mentor who has taught at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California since the early 1990s. He studied composition with William Bolcom and others at the University of Michigan. Among his numerous accolades are three from the American Academy of Arts and Letters: the Charles Ives Scholarship, the 2012 Arts and Letters Award, and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship. His catalogue of orchestral, choral, and chamber works includes pieces commissioned by Chamber Music America, the American Music Center, and the Orange County, California-based Pacific Symphony, where he served as composer-in-residence for seven years. Ticheli has also built a reputation as a composer for concert band and as a guest conductor.

Ticheli’s Clarinet Concerto is one of five concertos he’s composed, the others being for trumpet, trombone, alto saxophone, and flute. Wishing for years to compose a concerto specifically for the clarinet, he found his opportunity when he received a commission from the Swedish-American clarinetist Hakan Rosengren. “His fiery virtuosity, combined with his poignantly beautiful sound, had a direct influence on my creative decisions throughout the work,” notes Ticheli. Cast in the familiar three-movement format, the Clarinet Concerto also pays homage to a trio of American musical icons: George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein.

“The first movement, titled Rhapsody for George after a wink to the famous clarinet solo—with thanks to the Gershwin Estate—is built largely from chromatic, jazzy, relentless flurries of 16th notes, volleyed back and forth between the soloist and ensemble,” the composer explains. “This high-speed game is intensified by a walking bass line, jazzy syncopations, and heavy backbeats that come and go at will.

“The second movement, Song for Aaron, evokes the gentle, open-aired quality sometimes heard in Copland’s slow movements. If the listener notices a song-like quality here, it may be because the music was in fact originally composed for voice. Thus, this movement is an adaptation of my earlier work (An American Dream, for soprano and orchestra), but altered significantly to suit the unique lyrical traits of the clarinet.

“While composing the final movement, Riffs for Lenny, I imagined Bernstein perched on a pulpit (a podium?), passionately preaching about music as a powerful and necessary force for humanity. In a sense, I pay tribute to his lifelong enthusiasm, unleashed through his conducting, composing, performing, and teaching, and in countless other ways. Like the opening movement, Riffs for Lenny is somewhat jazzy, but now in a more, sultry, gospel-like manner. It swoons, sighs, seduces, and then suddenly takes off in double-time, dancing all the way.”

Brad Warnaar (b. 1950): Horn Concerto (2015)

Brad Warnaar began his career following a more or less traditional path for a classical musician: training as a horn player at respected institutions (Interlochen Arts Academy, Eastman School of Music) and performing as a member of such ensembles as the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony. He also played for other Canadian ensembles and Rob McConnell’s acclaimed big band, The Boss Brass.

But in 1980 Warnaar relocated to Los Angeles to focus his efforts on the entertainment industry. He has worked in the studio with some of the biggest names in popular music and jazz, and he has played on more than a thousand film scores, while continuing his connections to the classical world by playing frequently with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

Warnaar’s prolific film and commercial work includes orchestrating music for some of the Fast and Furious movies and “ghost-writing” for other composers. Writing a concerto for his own instrument inspired Warnaar to draw on the wide range of musical styles he has encountered throughout his career. His Horn Concerto, he explains, betrays the influences of “Minimalism, jazz, rock, pandiatonicism, polytonality, and atonality.”

At the same time, the language Warnaar developed for the piece resulted from a striking limitation he imposed upon himself: to use nothing but the seven notes of the pure diatonic scale—also known as the “white scale,” because the piano’s white keys produce a diatonic scale in C major. This scale has no sharps or flats, which removes “the possibilities of some of the harsh dissonances of the full chromatic scale.” Without the use of such chromatic notes, Warnaar aimed at “avoiding tonality per se … The goal was to avoid the full gravitational pull associated with traditional tonality and to have the harmonic element constantly evolving and redefining itself.”

What is traditional is the format of three movements, with a slow movement enveloped by two faster ones. The opening movement is titled Tintinnabulations – an allusion to Edgar Allan Poe’s invented term, which describes the reverberation “that so musically swells from the bells.” In the concerto, the composer notes that “repeated bell notes signal the beginning and the end of the first movement” and “recur as a signature motif in the first and third movements.” Still another layer to the bell imagery comes in the form of wordplay, “referring to the ringing of the ‘bell’ of the French horn.”

The second movement, Elegies; Lamentations, lays out a harmonic framework in the strings, over which the solo horn “sings its elegies in a free-spoken, almost declamatory style,” followed in each case by a descending motif whose downward slope alludes to a long-standing musical image that has been used over the centuries to signify grief and lamentation. This motif typically occurs as the bass line and is hence known as the basso lamento; its ubiquity endures even in pop music today. The process is repeated twice, “after which there is a sort of fantasia based on the ‘lamentations’ motif, which could be seen as transfigurative in nature,” Warnaar explains. The movement closes with a return to the initial statement in the strings, above which the horn “soars off beyond view” to the top of its range.

The impulse for the finale originated many years ago. An Italian horn player friend of Warnaar’s had passed away, and the composer imagined celebrating his life by writing a Tarantella: a fast dance, in a whirling 6/8 meter, that stems from the folk music of southern Italy. He held onto the idea, finally finding the occasion he was looking for in this movement.

Warnaar introduces a jocular element in the Tarantella by referencing music history. “Midway through,” he explains, “the orchestra begins to poke fun at the soloist by quoting the last movements of the Brahms Horn Trio and all but one of the four Mozart Horn Concertos (the third has a chromatic element which precluded my using it). It’s as if they are saying, ‘Can’t a horn piece end without being in 6/8?!’ The soloist, exasperated with all of this joking, finally interrupts by quoting another composer: Richard Strauss.” At first, the soloist appears to cite the opening of Strauss’s First Horn Concerto, but the music veers into an actual quote of the horn call that opens Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks (again, in 6/8!). “It’s all in good fun,” adds Warnaar, “and the movement then carries on to its happy conclusion.”

Behzad Ranjbaran (b. 1955): Flute Concerto (2013)

“It is the international character of classical music that allows composers and performers to work in different countries,” Behzad Ranjbaran observed in a lengthy interview in 2009 with Persian journalist Shahrokh Ahkami. Ranjbaran was expressing his optimistic outlook on music as “a powerful means of human expression that transcends borders and nationalities”—an outlook that is particularly valuable in today’s political climate.

Born and raised in Iran, Ranjbaran began studying violin at the conservatory of his native Tehran at age 9; from an early age, he also knew he wanted to compose. His training was in Western classical music. In fact, the composer recalls that interest in classical Iranian music was not encouraged at the Tehran Music Conservatory, so he had to take classes at another institution and study on his own to satisfy his curiosity about classical and folk music traditions in Iran. In 1974, at 19, Ranjbaran moved to the United States, continuing his training in Western classical music at Indiana University and then at The Juilliard School in New York, where he remains on the faculty.

As a composer, Ranjbaran says he incorporates “elements of Iranian rhythm, melody, and instrumental color.” The storied traditions of Persian music, literature, and history inspire his work, which has been championed by such conductors as Charles Dutoit, JoAnn Falletta, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Marin Alsop, Robert Spano, and David Robertson.

Persian poetry, for example, figures in one of Ranjbaran’s most important compositions: the Persian Trilogy, an orchestral cycle that draws on three legends recounted in Shahnameh (“The Book of Kings”), the vast national epic of Iran dating from the 11th century. In 1994 the Nashville Symphony participated in the Nashville Ballet’s commission of the second part of the trilogy, The Blood of Seyavash, which involves the tragic downfall of its principled hero. Another great work of Persian literature, Omar Khayyam’s Ruba’iyat provided the source for Songs of Eternity for soprano and orchestra, which the composer wrote for Renée Fleming.

Ranjbaran’s enduring fascination with Persian classical music can be seen in a number of concertos as well, including a Violin Concerto for Joshua Bell that alludes to the kamancheh (a Persian bowed instrument) and a Piano Concerto for Jean-Yves Thibaudet.

The seed for the Flute Concerto was planted when Jeffrey Khaner, principal flute of The Philadelphia Orchestra, encountered Ranjbaran’s Piano Concerto during a performance by his orchestra. Khaner was so taken by the music that he suggested writing a concerto for his own instrument. “This is a real concerto with the flavor [of Persian musical culture] in it,” he says. “There are only a few really fine flute concertos. This, I think, will add to that list.”

Ranjbaran has provided the following note on his Flute Concerto:

“The melancholic tone of the ney (the Persian bamboo flute) is known for its alluring sound, emulating the human voice. In Persian literature, the ney is considered a mystic instrument capable of expressing deep human emotions. In writing my Flute Concerto, I aimed not only to highlight the modern flautist’s ability to play agile and brilliant passages, but also to emulate the delicate sound of the ney, particularly in extended solo flute passages.

“Two prominent characters permeate the first movement of my concerto. They are marked in the score as lamentoso and con spirito, expressing grief and loss, and joy of living, respectively. The lament is mostly expressed in several extended cadenzas for solo flute, while the con spirito consists of robust and energetic fast sections played by all forces of the orchestra. Apart from these two characters, there are moments of mystery, comedy, and the grotesque, among others.

“In the second movement, the lyrical and poetic character of the flute is prominently presented in dreamlike passages surrounded by shimmering and tender orchestral colors. The solo flute is left out in an agitated middle section that references the first movement. In the third section of the movement, the solo flute returns in meditative fashion culminating in a duet with the harp.

“The third movement is written as one continuous quasi-scherzo, challenging the limits of agility and brilliance of the flute. Some of the materials from the earlier movements are presented again with joyous character. The coda elevates the concerto into its brightest and most festive character, driving to the end with relentless energy.”

Thomas May