Album review: Klezmer-Berlioz mashup crowns a fine new-music release

Mathew Rosenblum, “Lament/Witches’ Sabbath” Photo: New Focus Recordings


This astonishingly fine new release  includes four recent works by Pittsburgh composer Mathew Rosenblum, all different in scope and tone. Any one of them would have been enough to anchor a record; having four together, in all their eloquence and beauty, feels like thrilling bounty. The recognizable stylistic thumbprints in Rosenblum’s music are rhythmic urgency and the use of alternate tuning systems, which he deploys in ways that can be stirringly expressive.

Yet within that consistent framework, the music covers a lot of ground, from the extravagantly inventive percussion solo “Northern Flicker,” in a dazzling performance by Lisa Pegher, to the string-quartet-and-percussion combo of “Last Round.” The powerful title work, written for clarinetist David Krakauer and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, mashes up Berlioz and klezmer to evoke the world of the composer’s grandmother, a refugee from Ukrainian pogroms.

Most engrossing is “Falling,” a meditation on James Dickey’s poem of that name, which channels and transmutes the source’s dark majesty in musical terms. This is a release to reward deep and repeated listening.

  • Joshua Kosman