Joseph Schwantner: "Recoil"
Today's post will focus on another Schwantner piece: Recoil.
Joseph Schwantner, Recoil
University of North Texas Wind Symphony, Eugene Corporon, conductor
Recoil was commissioned through the Raymond and Beverly Sackler New Music Foundation by the University of Connecticut. It was given its premiere on November 3rd, 2004, at the Isaac Stern Auditorium of Carnegie Hall, in New York, by the University of Connecticut Wind Ensemble, Jeffrey Renshaw, conductor. It is the first of Schwantner's works for winds to include both saxophone and euphonium parts, and was not inspired by poetry. With Recoil, Schwantner utilizes a very limited palate and foregoes certain elements which characterized his first three works for winds (there is no use of micro-notation, “visual time signatures,” or other unconventional musical notations).
Schwantner writes:
“Recoil is my fourth work for wind ensemble in a series of pieces that span twenty-nine years. The other works are: ...and the mountains rising nowhere (1977), From a Dark Millennium (1980), and In evening's stillness. (1996). While Recoil employs a larger instrumentation than the earlier works, they all share similar characteristics in that each is framed in a single continuous movement and each exploit the rich timbral resources of an expanded percussion section that includes amplified piano”
-- Program Note by Nikk Pilato