Greg Stepanich

'Fives for Five' challenging, engaging

Arthur Weisberg has had a long and distinguished career as a bassoonist, teacher, conductor and composer. I heard the premiere performance a couple years back of his Fives for Five, a piece for woodwind quintet, and now that piece has made it to disc as part of an all-Weisberg record, one of four new classical recordings released by Florida Atlantic University’s Hoot/Wisdom label.

The disc, also named Fives for Five, features the Florida Woodwind Quintet, as well as Weisberg’s wife Diane, a violist, and son John, an oboist, and pianist Heather Coltman. Overall, Weisberg’s music is well-written and expertly judged for its instruments; it is contrapuntally minded and generally neoclassical in spirit.

Weisberg writes melodically oriented material, even if his melodies themselves are not especially memorable. Yet his invention is rich and interesting, and reminds me most of Hindemith, not so much for its specific tonal language but more for its precision, clean craftsmanship and seriousness of intent.

Of the six pieces on the record, perhaps the two-movement Sextet for Piano and Woodwind Quintet, written in 2004, is the most substantial. Weisberg’s compositional approach is consistent with the other pieces in its use of motivic imitation, but here he has more colors and textures to draw on than he does in some of those other works.

He makes good use of one particular tone color in the second movement -— that of a slowly unfolding theme in the winds over rapid figures in the piano that race up and down the keyboard. It has something of a Sibelian loneliness about it that I found attractive.

The two opening works on the disc — a Duo for Viola and Bassoon from 1991, and a Trio for Oboe, Viola and Bassoon composed in 2006 — give us a decent overview of Weisberg’s compositional approach. He makes very little use of the viola’s ability to play chords, preferring instead to unite the instruments with counterpoint; he constructs his movements around clearly delineated motifs and rhythmic patterns, some of which build into climaxes.

The two-movement Interplay for Oboe and Bassoon that follows, also from 2006, has a more agitated second movement in which the two instruments sound as though they are challenging each other, playing their lines almost on top of one another. Weisberg wrote these pieces to play with his family, and I assume (the notes aren’t explicit) John Weisberg is the oboist playing here, as well as in the next piece for solo oboe, Buttercup Variations.

Also written in 2006, this work is based on the aria I’m Called Little Buttercup, from Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore. The tune is presented, varied immediately, then interspersed with quotes from various famous oboe passages — among them I heard the slow movement of the Bizet Symphony in C, Tchaikovsky’s Fourth, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, Richard Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel, Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre, Johann Strauss' Blue Danube, and, oddly enough, Tenderly, the Walter Gross-Jack Lawrence pop song from 1946. It’s a tour de force of solo oboe work, and probably works very well in concert (though it might be just as fun with a piano part).

The disc ends with Fives for Five itself, a work I enjoyed in its first performance and which I found engaging again on record. The clarity of Weisberg’s aesthetic makes it relatively easy to hear the five-note themes in the first movement climb around the various registers, and he has a good ear for woodwind color that keeps the listener interested.

That said, this is music — except for the Buttercup Variations — probably best appreciated by the connoisseur. It’s not likely to have a particularly wide appeal for the average listener, but it’s well-made music of thoroughgoing integrity, and the playing on this disc by the Weisbergs and the members of the Florida Woodwind Quintet is pretty much unimpeachable.

Fives for Five is available for download here, and devotees of woodwind music and contemporary chamber music in general might do well to give it a listen.