Arnold Rosner - Chamber Music (Various Artists)

Information

Composer: Arnold Rosner

• Violin Sonata No. 1, Op. 18 (2004 Revised Version)
• Danses à la mode, Op. 101
• Bassoon Sonata, Op. 121
• Cello Sonata No. 2, Op. 89 "La divina commedia"

Curtis Macomber, violin

Maxine Neuman, cello

David Richmond, bassoon

Margaret Kampmeier, piano

Carson Cooman, piano

Date: 2017

Label: Toccata

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Review

Walter Simmons provides a great deal more than a 'taster' to Rosner's life and music in his liner essay for this disc. He has for many years been an ardent yet measured advocate of a befogged generation of American composers as his books proclaim.

Rosner's devotion and indebtedness to pre-baroque modal polyphony informs all his music. The pathways struck and pursued by this New York City composer never lead to a single popular or critical success. There is every appearance of his being indifferent to such matters. His music has great power to persuade and endear for those who will lend their ears and time. Rosner has a distinctive sound - one that combines plangency, a doughty regal quality and indomitable melancholia. Comparison with other composers - well, that's more difficult. He can sound a little like Ireland, Rubbra or even Shostakovich so that may help 'place' him.

The Violin Sonata No. 1 was written when Rosner was only 18 yet it already sounds characteristic. It was revised forty years after its completion and was premiered in 2014 at a memorial concert in New York City. Its three movements have that singing defiant solemnity that is such a hallmark of Rosner's writing. The last movement combines graceful deference and strenuous whirling rhetoric.

The Danses à la Mode is a fully mature work for solo cello. It's in four movements, variously affected by Greek folk song and Indian music (the Raga). The Sarabande finds Rosner in home territory: centred and Bach-like. He comes across as mercurially rustic in the final and strangely titled Musique du Nord.

The Bassoon Sonata is amongst the last of Rosner's works. It muses in sombre and subdued light. Its beauty - and it certainly has beauty - is painted in a matte gouache. Even the central Allegro energico ma serioso gravitates towards the serious. The mask hardly ever slips.

The Cello Sonata No. 2 La Divina Commedia starts with a toiling Adagio - 'severe', as Walter Simmons observes, although not as unrelenting as in the Bassoon Sonata. The ensuing introspective Moderato con rubato has a vaguely Middle Eastern sound. The Allegro finale is a full-on optimistic construct. The composer saw this and when commissioned to write a Millennium piece in 1999 orchestrated the movement as the Millennium Overture.

All the musicians here, including ubiquitous composer Carson Cooman, find empathy and sympathy for this music. They pour their hearts and technique into this often dourly beautiful music.

A strongly forward recorded image and a well informed and readable essay complete the picture.

The disc ploughs a furrow parallel to Toccata's collection of Rosner's orchestral works.

— Rob Barnett

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Arnold Rosner (November 8, 1945 – November 8, 2013) was an American composer. He studied music at State University of New York at Buffalo, New York. A staunch traditionalist, Rosner rejected all the compositional styles that seized the limelight during the course of his career. He instead developed an individual style that fused elements of Renaissance music with the heightened drama and rich sonorities of late romanticism. Rosner's output includes three operas, eight symphonies, six string quartets, three a cappella Mass settings and the large Requiem, three piano sonatas, and a host of other orchestral, choral, and chamber works.

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