Reviews
Raymond Tuttle Review: MOODS
Originally published by: Raymond Tuttle, Fanfare
“The most striking thing about this program is how the music is not limited to any one style or school. After the first two sections of Atmospheres (marked Apprehensive and Frustrated, respectively) you think you have Wishart’s number. “Aha,” you say, “an atonalist.” But then you hear the third section (Self-Confident), and it is tonal and uncomplicated. The fourth (Tranquil) is actually melodic.”
Betty R. Wishart’s first original composition, Illusions, was composed in a flash while she was still in college. She had just learned that her piano professor, Richard Bunger, who had introduced her to modern classical music, would not be returning the following year. Unable to sleep, she composed the six-movement suite exactly as it came to her, “without hesitation or erasures.” I’d call that a good night’s work. She performed it during her junior recital, and then submitted it to an international conference. It was accepted, and she was invited to play a mini-recital. Realizing that she needed to grow her catalog of works, she quickly composed a few more, and thus a composer was born.
The most striking thing about this program is how the music is not limited to any one style or school. After the first two sections of Atmospheres (marked Apprehensive and Frustrated, respectively) you think you have Wishart’s number. “Aha,” you say, “an atonalist.” But then you hear the third section (Self-Confident), and it is tonal and uncomplicated. The fourth (Tranquil) is actually melodic. Where are the aggressive tone clusters that dominated Frustrated? I forget who it was who said that atonality and dissonance were godsends to composers who composed scores for horror films. I thought, at the time, that it was a cheap shot, so I am interested to find a bona fide classical composer who seems to associate atonality with negative affects and tonality with positive ones.
-Raymond Tuttle, Fanfare