Jessica Pavone - 27 Epigrams
(Peacock)
27 Epigrams is a highly conceptual, pre-structured work. It's not simply the idea that Jessica Pavone, composer, musician, and native of New York City, wrote twenty-seven short instrumental themes that loosely can be defined as musical epigrams in their concise and focused forms. The deeper framework within the music is that Pavone composed these pieces for three different combinations of musicians, and in three different seasons of the year 2002. None of this background and explanation, however, is truly needed to enjoy 27 Epigrams, as Pavone's skill as a composer (and musician) is substantial enough to survive outside of the artificial constructs which determined the forms of her work on this disc.
The winter epigrams, twelve in all, are deep and sonorous compositions for Pavone on viola, Susanne Chen on bassoon, Michale Herbst on English horn, and Gil Selinger on cello. The pieces usually find the musicians pairing off into duos of sympathetic tonality with each set of partners playing parallel to each other. The music has a pronounced pulse, sometimes imbued with the stately insistence of much of Michael Nyman's scoring work. This is Pavone's most expertly composed work on the disc.
The nine epigrams of spring comprise of Pavone, again, on viola, this time with Dave Brandt on marimba, and the Bb clarinet of Jackson Moore. These pieces are lighter than their winter counterparts, both in the senses of timbre and compositional style. They contain an almost playful air, and the instruments strike out on their own more often than in the works' winter counterparts, especially Brandt's marimba, which tends to wander alone above the playing of Moore and Pavone.
Summer's six selections are performed by Pavone solo. They're the most elegant and striking of the three groupings, with Pavone's viola sounding stark and forceful when heard alone. Also the most repetitive of the epigrams, these solo pieces are the easiest to translate literally into epigrams, as their theme is the most distinct, and their communication the most direct. Pavone shines on her own, and summer's solos carry a pathos that's unrealized in the disc's other work.
When interspersed among one another, the three groups of epigrams offer a welcome diversity, and even the pieces that aren't as strong as the others are far more easily received when surrounded by their musical siblings. It's easy to imagine what it might be like to experience a live performance of this disc, with the musicians seated in a row, falling in and out of the music as the season requires, with Pavone the only constant. Such a concert might be the perfect presentation of 27 Epigrams' thematic achievement and Pavone's compositional talent.
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