Henri Lazarof

* Choral Symphony (Symphony No. 3)
* "Encounters" with Dylan Thomas

Sheila Nadler (alto, Symphony), Terry Cook (baritone, Symphony), Phyllis
Bryn-Julson (soprano, Encounters), Seattle Symphony Orchestra and
Chorale/Gerard Schwarz
Centaur CRC 2519 {DDD} TT: 76:30

Composer Henri Lazarof, Bulgarian-born, studied mainly at Brandeis with
Harold Shapero and Arthur Berger.  From both, he learned a solid craft.
Lazarof experiments, in the best sense of the word.  That is, he tries
to push himself in every piece to achieve something new.  Normally, such
composers have a very small output, but Lazarof has a large catalogue.  He
has enjoyed a prestigious career, even though the public at large hardly
knows him, with a continuing string of commissions from high-profile
organizations and artists.

However, I don't really like anything of his I've heard.  I can respect
its craft, particularly its gorgeous orchestration, but that's about it.
On this CD, hardly any moment in either work grabbed me or made me forget
the considerable technique.  However, technique isn't everything.  For me,
really great art has a clarity of intent and a definite shape - exactly
what I don't get from Lazarof.  The music seems to me to be marking time.
That is, I mark time waiting for lightning to strike.  I like a lot of
different kinds of music, and I never discriminate against music on the
basis of its vocabulary.  Parts of Lazarof's symphony sound
dodecaphonically serial, for example.  There's a bit of Stravinsky here,
some Bartok there.  But it mostly sounds fuzzy, as if the composer were
simply note-spinning.  Mostly, it's like looking at a pastel done in shades
of muddy brown.  The great exception, however, is the symphony's third
movement, a beautiful lament, featuring the alto soloist and chorus.

The text of the symphony is Lazarof's own - a polyglot concoction that
comes across as a kind of Esperanto.  I must admit that I dislike poems
that begin something like "O, Infinitude!  My soul and the cosmos are one!"
and prefer poems that begin with, say, a buzzing fly.  I tend to think of
poetry as reaching the large through the small and precisely observed.
By that criterion, Lazarof's text, mainly abstractions like "sonority,"
"death," and "darkness," doesn't really count as poetry.  But that's
ultimately a quibble.  Lazarof fails to bring the text to life through the
music.  It becomes simply a peg to hang the music on.  Thus, the chorus and
soloists add little in the way of expressiveness and little more than a
different sonority.

The settings of Dylan Thomas are a different matter.  Academia has rarely
liked Thomas's poetry, and it certainly lies beyond Fashion's Pale now.
I fail to see how anyone interested in verbal music can dismiss Thomas's
poems.  Lazarof chooses well - poems from all periods of Thomas's career,
and poems not very well known.  However, Lazarof seems absolutely
uninterested in the music of the poetry, or even the meaning of the poems.
He ignores these things to such an extent that you wonder why Lazarof
wanted to set these poems at all.  Basically, the soprano soloist scoops
and swoops like a slide whistle.  There's no feeling of necessity -- that
the music is necessary to the poem or the poem to the music.

Both works get thoroughly professional performances from the Seattle
forces.  The sound is acceptable.

Steve Schwartz