Shop Now

Fanfare

Gregory Fritze (b. 1954) received a rave review from James Altena (in 34:3) and has been receiving the same from me for some years. Heretofore, however, mine have been only of the private sort, where I’ve been singing his praises as a gifted composer mentally to myself and out loud to a handful of other people individually. I’m very happy to now be able to do so in print to a much wider audience. Interestingly, I knew Greg when we were both graduate composition majors at Indiana University back in the 1970s. I admired his music even back then, but we lost touch until about a year ago, when we became reacquainted during his visit to Bloomington. That’s when my collection of his CDs began, and I’ve been hooked by his extremely well-crafted and -imagined music ever since. Indeed, he is one of the two or three best currently active wind ensemble composers (and leave it to Canfield to know the band field) as far as I’m concerned, and it is in this area and the brass one in which he is especially renowned, a natural consequence of his also having been a professional tubist for a good part of his career. (I’ll bet, though, that he doesn’t know that “tuba” in Estonian means “room”—and don’t ask me how or why I know that). As a composer, he was head of the composition department at Berklee College of Music (with around 45 professors of composition alone, it is perhaps the world’s largest music school). He is now retired, and I trust this means that he’s writing all the more music.

Being relatively well acquainted with his music for band and brass ensembles of various make-ups. I was particularly happy to receive the present CD that features his works for violin and piano. The present set of 17 short works was written and arranged for the superb violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved. Its Spanish theme reflects composer’s numerous (about 60 in the past 30 years) trips to Spain, whether to hear performances of his music or to do research on Spanish music. This work was written in 2020-21, during the height of the COVID pandemic with its concomitant confinements how much extra music must have been written during this period!) When the restrictions were lifted. Skærved knew (from having studied the score) that he wanted very much to play—and eventually record—this work.

From the onset of the opening Valencia, one realizes that this work presents Fritze in his most tuneful mode (his music, as far as I’ve heard, is generally quite tonal, a string quartet excepted). This is the sort of music that really would lose something if I were to try to analyze it, so I shall not attempt to do that. Rather, these are pieces that one simply sits back and luxuriates in, as I’m doing as I type these words. The titles are drawn from various cities and regions of Spain, presumably places that Fritze has visited over the years (there are no notes provided for the individual pieces in this suite). I rather doubt that he attempted to recreate the character of each city in these pieces (although [perhaps a passing dissonance in the Tenerife movement could refer to the air disaster that occurred there some years ago), but that matters not in the least. In each of these pieces, Fritze pays obeisance in some measure to the Iberian peninsula. His skill in writing idiomatic violin lines and gestures is such that it might lead the listener to believe that this was actually his instrument rather than the tuba.

Hearing the fifth piece (Madrid) in the set causes me to wonder if Fritze might have attended my master’s composition recital. I had a woodwind quintet on the program, and at the very end of The piece I had scored an unexpected fortissimo stroke from an off-stage tam-tam (since excised from thepiece). Lo and behold, a loud tam-tam appears ex nihilo in this piece as well. Another interesting effect comes in the seventh piece, Rioja, where the violinist is instructed to tap quickly on his instrument. This is not as loud, but every bit as unexpected, as the heart-stopping earlier tam-tam stroke. Yet another surprise comes in Bilbao—at the Guggenheim, where the modernity of the piece is ratcheted up several degrees to marvelous effect. The style shifts mid-point in the piece to a sultry and bluesy atmosphere, and then again to another one, suggesting that Fritze is creating sort of a miniature Pictures at an Exhibition in this work. Most of these pieces don’t seem too technically demanding—that is, until one reaches No. 11, Liria Dance, which gives the violinist (especially) a real work-out. I bet that other violinists will discover this piece and play it as an encore.

Peter Sheppard Skærved and pianist Roderick Chadwick make an exceptional team in bringing these works to light. Skærved’s tone, intonation, and phrasing are most admirable, and I even like the way he shifts (a violinist’s left hand not only plays notes with four different fingers, but according to The requirements of the music constantly has to change position up and down the fingerboard, and this “shifting” produces pleasing audible results if done skillfully). Chadwick, for his part, seems completely immersed in the rewarding piano part, bringing sensitivity and imagination to its execution. Between the superb music and the equally superb music-making, this CD is catapulted to the “must own” category of recordings. I cannot imagine this not making my 2023 Want List.