by Caiti Beth McKinney
Hi everyone,
This month I want to highlight Liana Alexandra (1947-2011), an incredibly accomplished and prolific composer, musician, and educator from Romania. She was a huge advocate for the performance of contemporary music and for understanding composers as individuals and not lumping them together in one category. She resisted labels like “traditionalist” or “avant-garde,” preferring to compose as her piece demanded. Alexandra composed in nearly every genre, including a substantial collection of pieces for large forces like orchestra and wind ensemble, as well as a wide variety of chamber music.
Luckily for us horn players, this includes several works that feature our instrument, including her sonata for horn and piano, Intersections. Available publicly on IMSLP (as are all the pieces I will discuss here), Intersections is a workout in timbral complexities and interpretation for both players. The piece incorporates elements of both Modernism and Minimalism, using repeated rhythmic motifs interspersed with moments of calm melody or dramatic glissandi and flutter tongue to create, to my ear, a sense of conversation between three parties—two sides of the horn player and the piano. Intersections is a piece that bears repeat listening to gain full understanding as there is quite a bit of depth to Alexandra’s writing in this work.
Alexandra also composed both a wind quintet, Images Interrupted, and a brass quintet, Collages. Collages plays with timbre and texture throughout the work, using extended techniques like stopped horn, glissandi, pitch bending, and mutes to create vivid imagery that alternates between ethereal calm and frenzied activity. Images Interrupted is another exercise in extended techniques and modern sounds. The first movement opens with an unmeasured, out-of-time feel, slowly stacking and unstacking the members of the quintet and incorporating dramatic dynamic shifts. The entire work calls for a true collaboration between players as well as a holistic understanding of the score. This under-recorded work would be an excellent project for a wind quintet with “new music” experience.
