2. Sonate für Orchester by Werner EgkReview by: Dika NewlinNotes, Second Series, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Mar., 1971), p. 560Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/896596 .

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Theodore Presser Co., Bryn Mawr, Pa., 1970. [Study score, 40 p., $5:00; per- formance material on rental]

These brief works are appearing 10 years after their composition. Such delay is re- grettable, for the composer's style may in the meantime have developed in a more personal direction. In texture and choice of interval succession, these pieces dearly show the influence of Webern.

Calendar, 10' long, consists of three short movements, fast-slow-fast, played without break. Scoring is for solo instruments: flute (piccolo), clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, tenor trombone, piano, glockenspiel, xylophone, timpani, violin, viola and cello. Journal, 21/2 minutes longer, and in five move- ments, is for a larger, more varied or- chestra; color is added by maracas, gong, triangle, celesta, and harp.

The scores, reduced reproductions of the composer's manuscript, are not very inviting to the eye, though the transparent texture of the music aids legibility. Trans- posing instruments are written in C, fol- lowing the good example of Schoenberg.

Those identifying contemporary English music with Britten should look into these scores for a corrective. I would like to see more recent and more extensive work by Bennett.

-each work a universe in itself with its own structural laws-by choosing a more modest title.

Other works of Egk which I have heard have given me the impression of a facle, eclectic composer. The Sonate confirms that impression. A grave drawback is the pervasive rhythmic monotony-pages on pages of the same rhythmic pattem (cf. pp. 2740, almost uninterrupted eighth- notes). While such passages may come off with a certain mechanical, motoric drive in performance, they testify to a poverty of invention which is disappointing in a composer as highly promoted as Egk-in Germany, at any rate-appears to be.

Libraries wanting ultra-complete twen- tieth-century collections might indude this work. Others could spend the $26 better.

Werner Egk: 2. Sonate fur Orchester. [3333; 4331; timp.; perc.; hrp.; str.] Mainz: B. Schott's S6hne; U. S. A.: Belwin-Mills, New York, 1970. [Full score, 135 p., paper, $26.00]

This work was commissioned by the society "Freunde des Philharmonischen Orchesters der Pfalz" in honor of that orchestra's 50th anniversary. It was pre- miered in September 1969, and has now been brought out by Schott in a large score format, beautifully engraved.

The twenty-one-minute composition is for conventional large orchestra, with a good-sized percussion section, induding glockenspiel and xylophone. The sequence of movements is fast-slow-fast. Though Egk has chosen to call his work a "Sonata for Orchestra" rather than a "Symphony," it is like a short symphony in scope. Per- haps he wanted to get away from the grandiose Mahlerian concept of symphony

Gardner Read: Symphony No. 3, op. 75. New York: Belwin-Mills, 1969. [Study score, 84 p., $5.00; performance material on rental from Franco Co- lombo]

This 25-minute work is scored for large, fairly traditional orchestra: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English hom, 3 darinets (including bass clarinet), 3 bassoons (in- cluding contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trum- pets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, suspended cymbal, gong, piano, and strings. As Read points out in his analytical note, the work uses "contra- puntal forms not usually associated with the traditional symphonic design." Did Brahms' use of a passacaglia (or chaconne) as the Finale of his Fourth Symphony suggest to Read the incorporation of a passacaglia into the first movement of his symphony? The second movement is a scherzo, with fragmentary thematic ideas, fluctuating 5/8-6/8 meter, and bitonal harmony. Here, Read calls for an unusual orchestral effect; the violins tap the string with the ivory tip of the bow stick. The third movement begins with a chorale which uses the bitonal progressions of the scherzo. Next comes a fugue based on the passacaglia theme. The movement ends triumphantly with a combination of the passacaglia theme, its fugal transforma- tion, and the chorale theme.

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