Search - Dahl, Harle, Thomas :: Defining Dahl

A GOODLY DOSE OF DAHL

Melvyn M. Sobel | Freeport (Long Island), New York | 03/19/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Dahl's music offers a curiously eclectic blend of dissonance, jazz and romanticism, not unlike Copland, Stravinsky and Milhaud. His striking Concerto for Alto Saxophone [1949/rev. 1954], with its formidable, yet lyrical work for the soloist, offers the widest range of expressive drive, emotional breadth and inescapable wit throughout its three movements. The Music for Brass Instruments [1944] invokes a distinctly "American feel" and is beautifully crafted; likewise, Dahl's Hymn, originally a piano work from 1947, later orchestrated after the composer's death, is an intoxicatingly moody, nostalgic pseudo-tone poem that pays homage to Bernstein and Copland alike. The Tower of Saint Barbara, conceived in 1954 as a ballet, but never choreographed, was revised in 1960 with the appended subscript, "Symphonic Legend in Four Parts." Reminiscent of Finzi's Love's Labors Lost Suite, with a hint of Stravinsky's Petrouchka, Dahl's Saint Barbara evokes a medieval world of saints and heathens, faith and death, in music that is both memorable and attractive. Like many of his contemporaries, Dahl [1912-1970] was both a teacher [University of Southern California] and composer; Tilson Thomas, the eager conductor here, numbers amongst his most prescient apostles. Who better than he to reverently conduct the New World Symphony, and the New World Brass, in a collection of Dahl's most immediately appealing works, and to make this an imminently satisfying introduction to the composer?



[Running time: 71:56]"