Flights of Imagination

Roads, paths, and traveling of them have provided artists in all media a likely subject for symbolizing life’s trek through time and space. Unlike the poet Robert Frost, who describes at a crossroads his choice of “The Road Not Taken,” Burwasser chooses instead the “well-traveled” one, suggesting the musical language and syntax of this piece is such that it promises the listener a pleasant excursion through friendly musical territory. The listener is embarked with an ascending three-note gesture initiated by the basses, which gathers in excitement as it ascends to the heights of the orchestral spectrum. Chords played fortissimo separate this from a somewhat pungent three-note motive, the expressive potential of which will be amply demonstrated. The section comes to a close on a low sustained note in the strings, introducing two directionally balanced melodic gestures and the intervening chords – three ideas that pervade and unify the entire piece, particularly the descending motive. A passage follows, calm by contrast, in which the various instruments are given a turn at one or another of the melodic gestures introduced earlier. But the calm gives way to an increasingly agitated texture with interjections by harp chords and glissandos met with rapidly swelling chords in the lower brass, especially the timpani, which assertively assume the center of the aural stage, repeating the motive of the opening. They dominate for a while, surrounded by playful commentary from the ensemble. Although somewhat overshadowed by the repeated chords in the brass and strings, A march-like section —although in triple meter— presents mutations of both the opening gesture in the lower strings and the main motive in the tuba and timpani. Before long, a giggling conversation among the higher winds over an ostinato string accompaniment leads to a waltz – a curious reminiscence of old Vienna! But one is not lulled for long! A tumultuous section develops in which all tonal, rhythmic, and instrumental forces are called into climactic play. Included with permutations of the familiar motive are frequent percussive thumps, moaning trombones —descending glissandos— and conspicuously pervasive descending lines. Now and again, the thinning of the texture turns out to be but an unfulfilled promise of subsiding. Not until one more outburst is there a dissolution of forces leading to the final gentle pronouncement of the motive by the flutes, punctuated by the string section with a single chord.

— Robert Shankovich