Today I received a great e-mail from Mary Fukushima: NYCR (New York Concert Review) will soon publish a review of their performance in Carnegie Hall. She sent me a “preview” of what will be published. The publication is released only in NY as a hardcopy, so I don’t see the harm in posting it here.
~ (excerpt) ~
For the second half of the program, Ms. Fukushima programmed an assortment of American and French composers. Messiaen’s Le Merle Noir from 1951 and André Jolivet’s 1944 Chant de linos framed three distinctive works by American composers. The first of the American composers was Brian Bondari, a graduate student at the University of Kansas currently working on a production of incidental music for a Eurpidies play in Greece and his first symphony. Commissioned by the Fukushima-Kirkendoll duo, Bondari’s Kaykhosrow’s Ascension is a programmatic work of epic sound and color, provocative in its musical telling of the story of a king who prays for forgiveness from his evil ways, and in turn gives up his throne and disappears in the middle of the night. Mr. Bondari has a natural affinity for capturing the essence of the tale in musical terms. Like Frank, Bondari’s music incorporates modernist techniques to heighten the tension and explore the dramatic, its melismatic oriental theme is subjected to compositional permutations that culminate with the use of the octatonic scale ascends to depict his subject’s rise to the heavens. His compositional structure is sound, and his melodic voice secure and original. This is no doctoral student, but a composer waiting for greater things to come his way. This reviewer wishes him well.
Read the full review (pdf).
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