Review of James Lentini's "Through Time and Place" by Huntley Dent

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Review by Huntley Dent, Interview by Robert Schulslaper

LENTINI Sinfonia di Festa 1 . Through Time and

Place (Symphony No. 1) 2 . Three Sacred Meditations 3 . The Angel’s Journey 4 . Dreamscape 5 • 2 Ricardo Averbach, 4 Douglas Bianchi, 3 Norah Duncan IV, 1 Anthony Iannaccone, 5 Jerzy Swoboda, cond; 3 Dana Lentini (sop); 4 Wayne St Universtity Wind S; 1 Bohuslav Martinů PO; 5 Krakow PO; 2 Sofia PO; 3 Wayne St University Symphonic Ch & O • NAVONA 6273 (61:26 ) When you read that Berlioz’s main musical instrument was the guitar, it seems impossible to connect its strummed strings and sound box to his towering musical imagination. I had a similar reaction to the orchestral music of James Lentini, who is an accomplished classical guitarist of award-winning caliber Through Time & Place and who has written works for the Audio CD, Download instrument. But nothing could be NAVONA Buy Now from Amazon.com further from the guitar than the dense, large-scale, ambitious works on this release. The second piece, Through Time and Place, was commissioned by the Miami University Symphony in Ohio to celebrate the bicentennial of the school.

Instead of the expected fanfares and jubilant mood, he wrote “a work in three movements to express depth, complexity, development, and change.” The words are abstract, but in my mind’s ear I associate them with the “continuous variation” in Bartók, the freeing of the dissonance in Schoenberg, and the density of Schoenberg’s two Chamber Symphonies, in which each instrumental line functions as a solo. These are surprising references, but Lentini’s remarkable ear allows him, like Berg and Schoenberg, to state a theme and immediately submit it to complex development and change, asking each player quite often to represent one thread in a fabric of dynamic sound.

I don’t mean for this description to put anyone off. Although Lentini freely uses dissonance, one can also hear the familiar wide chord spacing of classic American music going back to Copland, Harris, and Hanson, along with occasional rhythmic passages reminiscent of Bernstein (I was struck by this in “Renew a Right Spirit,” the second section of Lentini’s choral work, Three Sacred Meditations) and the

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combination of optimism and drive I associate with David Diamond and William Schuman. Nothing feels alien, yet nothing is imitative either.

The performances come from two general sources, either an Eastern European orchestra or college forces in the U.S., but all are expected to meet the sophisticated demands that Lentini places on them. Most of the time he interweaves strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion with equal weight to each section, connected by a melodic line punctuated with sharp attacking accents or, perhaps more often, a rhythmic drive that gives the music momentum even as the composer piles up continuous variations on a number of themes. This style of construction unifies Sinfonia di Festa, Through Time and Place, and Dreamscape.

Two works are different. Three Sacred Meditations, which sets Biblical quotations from Psalms, Proverbs, and the Gospel of John, is simpler in harmony and development, as befits its uplifting mood and the devotional shape of the melodies. The composer’s wife, Dana Lentini, has a warm soprano voice that she uses movingly, with admirably clear diction and intonation. The idiom stands somewhere between the choral music of Randall Thompson and Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, but without sounding derivative. Because of its emotional impact, this work would probably serve as the easiest entry point for many listeners.

The Angel’s Journey has a similar title but is not a conventionally religious work. It is composed for wind symphony, and its design and texture are as complex and its colors as kaleidoscopic as in Lentini’s music for orchestra.

When the Wayne State University Wind Symphony Fanfare Archive Subscriber- commissioned the work, I imagine it received the most Only Features sophisticated modern score it had ever played; the work is performed by the players very well on this recording under Watch Reviewed Videos the skilled leadership of conductor Douglas Bianchi. In the tradition of using notes that correspond to a musical James Kreger: CHOPIN, signature, Lentini based the work’s main themes on the BRAHMS, BEETHOVEN initials of his grandparents, although he doesn’t specifically Pedro H. da Silva / Lucía Caruso: reveal what those are.

Jeanne d’Arc, Le Voyage dans la Lune Varda Kotler: YouTube Channel

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The general performance level from the various musical ensembles here is good, but I wish that the seriousness of Lentini’s music could be conveyed by a top-tier orchestra with sufficient rehearsal time. Every piece deserves it.