Reviews
David DeBoor Canfield Review: MOODS
Originally published by: David DeBoor Canfield, Fanfare
“Betty Wishart has a lot to offer the listener in her wide range of stylistic expression, and the works are all superbly presented by Jeri-Mae G. Astolfi, who plays with sensitivity and accuracy.”
Betty Wishart was introduced to Fanfare’s readers in 40:1 by Jacqueline Kharouf in a feature interview and review of an earlier disc of the composer’s piano music, so I will refer the interested reader there for biographical information on her. I have known Wishart for a number of years, due to our common membership in the Christian Fellowship of Art Music Composers, I’ve invariably admired any number of her works at the national conferences of this organization. Interestingly, two of the works on the present disc I’ve heard recently in live performance, because of both of us being involved in a Living Composers concert at Campbell University where Wishart teaches piano. As on the disc in hand, these were expertly performed by Jeri-Mae Astolfi, who has a long association with Wishart as an advocate and exponent of her music.
The opening Phantasmagoria heard here is one of the two works I heard live about two weeks prior to reviewing this disc. The piece opens with quick ascending scalar figures seemingly in parallel major 7ths interspersed with tone clusters in the bass register of the piano. Most of the piece, which includes some strumming inside the piano, is somber and dark, and its composer states that it was inspired by rain and thunder, something that always excites her imagination. Towards the end of the work, a bit more tonality sneaks in—perhaps representing the rainbow at the end of Wishart’s thunderstorm. Atmospheres rather much takes up where Phantasmagoria leaves off with dissonances looking back to those heard in the beginning of that work. There are four brief movements entitled “Apprehensive,” (tonally insecure) “Frustrated,” (replete with clusters in the bass register) “Self-Confident,” (metrically more regular), and “Tranquil” (figuration that flits back into tonality). Wishart writes that she is more comfortable expressing her emotions in music than in words, and in this work, she seems to run the gamut.
-David DeBoor Canfield, Fanfare