Harold Meltzer, composer

Harold Meltzer, composer

Beautiful Ohio for Tenor and Piano (2010)

"Harold Meltzer's elegant Beautiful Ohio, settings of five poems by James Arlington Wright, received its premiere...."

"Meltzer's cycle was performed compellingly by the fine young tenor Paul Appleby and Mr. Blier. Wright, who died in 1980, was a native of Martins Ferry, Ohio, a steel town. He had an advanced education and moved in cultured circles but felt like an outsider all his life. The poems Mr. Meltzer selected include two taken from Wright's sojourns in Italy and three aching ruminations on Ohio.

"In Beautiful Ohio, titled after the third song in the cycle, Mr. Meltzer proves an acute reader of Wright's poems. In the first song, Small Frogs Killed on the Highway, the poet is disturbed yet impressed, in a way, by the sight of determined frogs leaping across a country road at night, some dying under the tires of passing cars. Mr. Meltzer captures the ambiguity of Wright's attitude in his fitful music. The vocal lines are direct and austere; the piano teems with rustling figurations and sputtering chords.

"In Caprice Wright explains that when he tires of people in Italy, he focuses on trees. Mr. Meltzer counters the dark sarcasm of the isolated poet by having the piano almost, but never quite, echo the vocal line in spiraling unison octaves.

"The most bitterly beautiful song is the last, Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio, which depicts the mood in a small Ohio town after a Friday night high school football game. There is riveting tension between the somberly elegaic vocal writing and the heaving piano part, thick with grating precisely textured chords. Mr. Appleby's warm, strong yet subtle singing made every word a living presence, supported by Mr. Blier's nuanced playing."


--- Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, May 5, 2010


Brion, a sextet for piccolo (doubling alto flute), oboe, mandolin, guitar, violin, and cello (2008)

"[A] sonic portrait of a cemetery in northern Italy painted with the touch of a watercolorist and marked by an episodic structure and vivid playfulness that offer a graceful, sensual and contemplative experience."

--- Pulitzer Prize jury, April 20, 2009


"Harold Meltzer's new sextet Brion, played by the Cygnus Ensemble here at Sacramento State last night, opened with a quiet piccolo solo playing the same motive over and over. It was a high note followed by several staccato repetitions of a low note. Pianissimo string chords played underneath. At first the relation between them was tonal, but it branched out into bitonality and mild dissonance. Lasting maybe a virtual minute in experienced musical time, it was lovely. But what was better was that, almost halfway through the piece, the whole section came back. By writing that passage, Harold created beauty; by repeating it, he gave it to the audience. We could now take it home. It was a generous gesture, generous toward the audience."

--- Kyle Gann, Postclassic, November 8, 2008

"The last work on the program was also the most substantial: Harold Meltzer's three-movement "Brion," a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize last year, evoked an Italian cemetery with a strong, memorable opening theme and deft allusions to shimmering pools and shifting light."

--- Steve Smith, The New York Times, April 6, 2010

Privacy, a Piano Concerto for Winds, Brass, and Percussion (2008)

" ... an important contribution to the Carter year ... was preceded by two compelling works by emerging American composers several generations removed from the soon-to-be-centenarian.... Pianist Ursula Oppens ... was also the soloist in Harold Meltzer's "Privacy, a Piano Concerto With Winds, Brass and Percussion," which the Philharmonic commissioned for the occasion. Meltzer was born in 1966 and is, like Carter, a New Yorker. And, despite his fondness for up-to-date rhythmic grooves, he can be something of a contrarian Carterian himself. Meltzer's headstrong concerto, though, is not particularly argumentative. The piano sets off, and once started, doesn't stop for a dozen minutes. The orchestra tries to slow the soloist down, steps on her feet, throws her off balance, but she speeds along with a purpose and nothing can halt her. Oppens' virtuosity, and Carneiro's enthusiasm, sold the score."

--- Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, March 27, 2008

Piano Sonata (2008)

"His Sonata was inspired by Cezanne's use of light and shade and effectively mines three-part sonata form with a graceful merging of tradition and contemporary style. There's a motoric, Prokofiev-like driving energy but also a distinctly American feel. Meltzer's sonata suggests early Copland in its spiky, acerbic writing, yet there's a compelling individuality in its quickly shifting meters, jazz-flavored syncopations and hushed coda."

--- Lawrence A. Johnson, Miami Herald, February 22, 2008

Toccatas for Harpsichord (2005)

"...faszinierte dafur aber mit einer ganz anderen Klangkonstellation." ("Fascinating in its unusual, unique sound world.")

--- Giselle Reimann, Basler Zeitung, January 18, 2006

"Toccatas by Harold Meltzer (who was present to enjoy his applause) proved to be interesting music: baroque sort of turned sideways with bits of atonal Gershwin."
--- Leslie Gerber, Woodstock Times, July 2006

Sindbad for Actor and Piano Trio (2004-05)

"...a startling and deeply interesting modern work....

"Meltzer's 'Sindbad' was, in every possible sense, a knockout. Apart from anything else, it's years since I heard a modern work which kept one laughing all the way through. This was a melodrama in the Victorian sense, with a virtuoso narrator (the actor Walter Van Dyk), declaiming ten short prose-poems by Donald Barthelme, in which he contrasts the traditional narrative of Sinbad the Sailor with a second character, a hopeless, ineffective American night-school teacher, the whole punctuated with telling (often powerful) interjections by the piano trio.

"Unlikely? But in Barthelme's hands, this is the world of magic realism par excellence. And, in Meltzer's, added musical magic (the penultimate Waltzes section was truly lovely). Tremendous stuff."


--- Hugh Vickers, Oxford Times, June 3, 2005


"Next came the Midwest premiere of Harold Meltzer's 'Sindbad' for piano trio and narrator. The composition, based on a short story by Donald Barthelme, features vignettes about the seafaring hero interspersed with those of a new character, a jaded night-school teacher who has been asked suddenly to teach a class during the day.... Barthelme's fantastic story found a great match in Meltzer, who created a vivid, undulating backdrop of atonal music capturing the adventure, peril, irony, resignation and exasperation of the characters."

--- Ben Alloway, The Des Moines Register, April 11, 2005

"The literary theme continued with Harold Meltzer's 'Sindbad'. Meltzer, a Rome Prize winner, narrated the 10-movement work, which is based on a short story by Donald Barthelme in which an introverted night school teacher is forced to teach during the day. 'It is true, the students asked me to leave,' he utters in one line.

Meltzer is as gifted an actor/narrator as he is a composer. Dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, he looked very much the part, spewing out the poignancy and humor of his profession (he lives in a room with a radio and a refrigerator on a table), his eccentricities and his fantasies. The trio accompaniment ranges from effervescent to reflective, illuminating the narrative without intruding or interrupting."


--- Michael Huebner, The Birmingham News (Alabama), January 11, 2009

Full Faith and Credit for Two Bassoons and String Orchestra (2004-5)

"Meltzer's Full Faith and Credit ... is song and dance, and the music for our irresistible nuptial pair -- deftly realized by bassoonists Julia Lockhart and Sophie Dansereau -- is by turns euphoric and lyrical (loath to be separated and loath to finish), terse and conversational, bumptious, hymn-like or romantic."

--- Elissa Poole, The Globe and Mail (Canada), January 21, 2008


"Paul Hostetter, Colonial Symphony's music director and conductor... was joined in the pre-concert lecture by Harold Meltzer to discuss the composer's 'Full Faith and Credit,' an intriguing 7-part work for two bassoonists and string orchestra that very much explained its own rationale just in the listening.

"Even so, Hostetter related some images the music provoked in his imagination which, though they might have differed from Meltzer's, didn't prevent his leading the orchestra through a vigorous, full-rigged performance. In this, they were aided by the exuberant performing of bassoonists Peter Kolkay and Jeremy Friedland.

"And afterward, it didn't prevent an appreciative audience from demonstrating its enthusiasm for the music, the composer, the conductor, the soloists and the orchestra."


--- Bernie Abrams, The Daily Record (New Jersey), February 21, 2008

Snow White for Solo Piano (2003)
from Brothers Grimm, in progress

"...utterly marvelous... the premiere of Harold Meltzer's 'Snow White' from his seven part Brothers Grimm cycle....

"Meltzer's 'Snow White' proved an equally rewarding experience. Contrary to what one might expect from such a title, this turned out to be a serious work. Again short, it made much of the harp-like resonance of the piano, largely through fanciful pedal effects. One ended up hearing the lyrical music in a kind of halo of echoes.

"Well organized in architecture, 'Snow White' seems concerned with the mystical tragedy within the tale -- music about Snow White's situation, not the Seven Dwarfs. Most of the Grimm fairy tales are more than a little grim and not infrequently grotesque. Meltzer certainly made one think along those lines. I cannot say that I've previously heard anything like this effective piece."


--- Heuwell Tircuit, San Francisco Classical Voice, August 19, 2003

Virginal for Harpsichord and Chamber Orchestra (2002)

"This alluring, imaginatively scored short work with its fresh harmonic language (that could be called wrong-note consonance) abounds in spiraling flourishes of filigree, a nod to the ornate style of early-17th-century British keyboard music found in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book."

--- Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, May 24, 2002


"Meltzer wields a wide range of influences, from highly ornamented 17th century keyboard music to quasi-minimalist ostinatos, with such style and grace that it's hard to decide whether his music or his ensemble deserves greater commendation."

--- Ken Smith, Gramophone, January 2004


"We begin with Meltzer's own Virginal, a well-made nine-minute composition in two continuous movements with Laimon as harpsichord soloist. Meltzer's materials are all light and airy bits of diatonic music, but he juxtaposes and synthesizes them in a great many different ways, achieving something like a Stravinskian neoclassicism for the age of Bang On A Can. Meltzer's approach to form -- fragmentary but organic -- is very much in line with his European contemporaries, but his nostalgic materials calls to mind both David Lang and very recent Ligeti."

--- Ian Quinn, American Record Guide, January/February 2004


"A winsome miniature with a brief but dazzling ostinato passage, Meltzer's piece finishes far too soon."

--- Steve Smith, Time Out New York, November 20-27, 2003


"Speaking of integrative skill, Harold Meltzer's Virginal performed the same feat with Renaissance stylings in a similarly modernist, quasi-tonal context. The contrapuntal music felt deliberate and rigorous in the same way that a 17th century fugue or an early 20th century serialist piece does."

--- Galen Brown, sequenza21.com, March 27, 2007

Exiles for Voice and Four Instruments (2001)

"To these ears Harold Meltzer scored something of a triumph with Conrad Aiken's long and intense poem 'Exile' -- you had the sense that his setting of it was patiently growing into completeness at the same tempo as the poem was as you read it, heard it, and thought about it. High marks to Meltzer not only for shrewd psychological pacing but for an almost homeopathic use of restricted tone colors. Whether it was oracular declamation or drained- dry neutrality that was demanded, veteran tenor Paul Sperry came through with total understanding. 'Exile' goes immediately onto this year's must-hear-again list."

--- Richard Buell, The Boston Globe, February 7, 2001


"Entertaining? How can you do that with contemporary music? By trying your damnest to communicate. That's exactly what's missing from academic and in-your-face music -- the commitment to speak to the audience, with music, in words, in intention. That's exactly what was present Monday night... Communication in music doesn't necessarily mean easy accessibility and the West Coast premiere of Harold Meltzer's Exiles was a good case in point.... Exiles uses the text of two poems by the same name, by Conrad Aiken (abut a desolate landscape) and Hart Crane (about the "voiceless" endurance of denied love), material -- according to the composer himself -- that's "pretty sad," and yet the music is rather robust and energy-filled. It has a stunning opening, the voice appearing as a string instrument and the strings playing individual "voices" until they meet in a rather operatic ensemble."

--- Janos Gereben, San Francisco Classical Voice, April 1, 2002


"Call Harold Meltzer's 'Exiles' a dramatic monologue. The composer, a co-founder of Sequitur, took two poems by Conrad Aiken and Hart Crane and bridged their very different verbal styles with wistful, darkish music that broke in repeating waves and evoked the emotional barrenness of the poems."

--- Anne Midgette, The New York Times, April 2, 2005

Two Songs from Silas Marner (2000-01)

"Elizabeth Farnum sang... deftly, but she was heard to better effect at the end of the program, in Harold Meltzer's attractive, Neo-Classical setting of excerpts from George Eliot's 'Silas Marner.' Here the cello writing is more picturesque: a rocking figure is meant to suggest the rhythms of weaving on a loom; chordal passages evoke a fog, from which the soprano line rises with an inexorable emotional power."

--- Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, March 5, 2008

Island, a collaboration with choreographer Molissa Fenley (2000)

"In Island, though, watching Patti Monson playing the alto flute on stage right was as intriguing as the dance. Monson clicked and fluttered her tongue into the flute while tapping the keys, special effects that made Harold Meltzer's music seem like an ingenious drum solo."

--- Sharon McDaniel, The Palm Beach Post, January 7, 2001

Rumors for solo flutes (1999-2000)

"Harold Meltzer, in an amusing collection called 'Rumors,' provided a dictionary of colorful effects, the most notable being the percussive and breathy sounds that animated 'Trapset' (1999), for alto flute, and the illusion of an almost whispered duet in 'Bel Canto' (2000), for bass flute."

--- Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, October 28, 2000


"Flutist Cheryl Gobbetti Hoffman also appeared. She played 'Trapset," a 1999 work by Harold Meltzer. Totally out of left field, the piece called for the flutist to treat the flute as an amplified percussion instrument -- tapping it, striking it, blowing tunelessly into it. By the end, it had built into something menacing, as the always adventurous Gobbetti Hoffman hissed, trilled and all but spat into her flute. One listener whispered: 'It is as if someone's breathing down your neck.'"

--- Mary Kunz Goldman, The Buffalo News, September 8, 2005


"Harold Meltzer's Trapset for amplified solo flute immediately got the program's point across. Paolo Bortolussi's performances of Meltzer's shaggy essay in extended techniques made the big shiny flute sound like a duet between shakuhachi and tabla."

--- David Gordon Duke, The Vancouver Sun, September 17, 2007

Richard III, collaboration with Shakespeare & Co., Tina Packer, director (1999)

"Ms. Packer has more ideas than she knows what to do with... But many are worth the wait, as in a wickedly dissonant coronation scene in which an exhausted Richard and the conquered Anne hobble to the seat of power to the anguished chords of an organ that itself sounds like the music of lamentation."

--- Peter Marks, The New York Times, July 14, 1999

Chamber Music for solo piano (1994-95)

"The recent 'Chamber Music' by Harold Meltzer followed, challenging yet enriching almost anyone's notions of melody or, in the molto preciso passage, even of music."

--- Kathleen M. Bennett, Richmond Times-Dispatch, October 21, 1995