Daniel Pinkham: Music for Brass and Brass & Organ

Colorful and heartfelt explorations of music that joins brass and organ.

Daniel Pinkham’s journey with brass instruments and organ on this disk reveals both his sacred and secular proclivities. The programme has enormous dignity, but also touches of humor and humanity that keep the listener deeply attached to the diverse narratives. What’s more, Pinkham is an equal-opportunity composer of brass music: along with quintets he explores each instrument in a solo capacity with organ, the instrument to which he long has brought distinction as a performer.

The jaunty side of Pinkham the composer is evident in the Inaugural Marches he wrote in tribute to several colleagues. These are smart, economical; pieces for brass quintet stamped with plenty of rhythmic verve and sonic splendor. His Morning Music pays homage to Hindemith’s eponymously titled Morgenmusik in five movements of vibrant stateliness and revelry, and the Brass Quintet (1983) is a keen study of textures colors and sonic gestures that any such ensemble would be happy to embrace.

For his solo brass pieces with organ, the composer drew inspiration from biblical quotes. Each work places the king of instruments in mystical and often flamboyant conversation with trumpet, horn, trombone or tuba. In Dragons and Deeps, the lowest brass instruments slithers in a subterranean voice that sounds like Fafner awakening from his slumber.

Energy, introspection, harmonic richness and spatial inventiveness mark all of the music on this beautifully engineered disk, which was recorded in the majestic Trinity Lutheran Church in Worcester, Mass. The members of the Huntington Brass Quintet and Abbey Hallberg Siegfried (what an apt surname for the encounter with Fafner1) play Pinkham’s multi-hued and heartfelt music with bountiful refinement, virtuosity and collegial gusto.

Daniel Rosenberg
The Gramophone, May 2005