El compositor norteamericano Bruce Wolosoff (1955) veló sus primeras armas en los dominios del jazz y del rock. A su trabajo creativo le ocurre exactamente lo mismo que les suele ocurrir a los productos de casi todos los compositores—y los intérpretes también—que, proviniendo de las músicas ligeras, se aventuran en la llamada música seria, clásica, artística o como quiera que se llame; aunque su caso no sea exactamente el del un jazzman o un rockero, digamos, puro: que acaban perdiendo la espontaneidad inicial—en el fondo, el sentido último de esas músicas—, para no lograr a cambio esa dimensión más rica en significados que se le exige a la otra. Vamos, como el perro aquél de la fábula de La Fontaine que soltó de sus fauces la presa cazada para lanzarse sobre otra mayor que resultó ser un simple reflejo en el agua. ¿Qué queda, entonces? Poco, la verdad. Porque su música, o por lo menos estas dieciocho piezas breves de genuino sabor americano que demarcan una suerte de vastísimo cuarteto, queda reducida a un discurso sonoro de escasa envergadura conceptual, todo lo simpático o amable que se quiera, pero nada más. Claro, que tampoco sabemos hasta qué punto él ha pretendido lo contrario…

…effective character pieces that blur the boundaries between classical and popular music and show fluency in both realms. If you are interested in crossovers between classical and American popular musical styles, this should interest you.

To read the complete review, please visit American Record Guide online.

This is allegedly the first foray of American classical composer Bruce Wolosoff into the realm of popular music. This raid was really successful—so I wonder whether more will follow. The idea behind the project was not really revolutionary: Charles Wetherbee, the first violin of the Carpe Diem Quartet, approached Wolosoff and asked him to write for them some rock and jazz-based music. He also wanted Wolosoff to do it while still speaking in his own voice as composer. The solution Wolosoff found is definitely ingenious. As the composer tells us in the liner-notes, he based his pieces on the riffs and improvisations that he recorded while listening to the favorite songs of the Carpe Diem members. The “founding” songs themselves are unrecognizable in the result but you can make out the spirit and the style.

This spirit and style is, for the most part, very American, apparently reflecting the sources of Wolosoff’s inspiration. There are many flavors—from Gershwin, to rowdy Texan hoopla, to bluegrass, to pop rock. There are slowly swaying Celtic pastorals, round dances with the fiddle, energetic blues with a hard rhythmic bounce, wild hoedowns, nervous pizzicati and liquid ballads. Late Beethoven and Stephane Grappelli come to shake hands in Gershwin’s salon. There is plenty of variation and development and although the character of each piece is relatively constant, the mood changes between the pieces.

So, full marks for the idea! The realization is not so perfect—but maybe I should blame my high expectations. From Divertimenti I would expect, first and foremost, diversity. It is present here, but insufficient to sustain 18 pieces. Listening to 10 of them was great; listening to 14 made me wondering when the disc would end; and 18 was definitely too much. The last track is one of the best—fragile and loaded with feeling, it reaches the heart-aching depths of Piazzolla’s Milongas. I would not recommend listening to the entire disc in one pass: as with Brahms’ Hungarian Dances, you should know when to have a break.

The playing of the Carpe Diem is resonant and assured. They perform with intensity and obvious enthusiasm. The sonic effects are executed perfectly, the pizzicato is sonorous, and the ensemble very harmonious. At times there is a certain “sameness of pressure” over long stretches of music, although I don’t know whether this is the composer’s or performers’ fault. The music is accessible and melodic, but subtlety is not one of its main features. Each part is more or less defined in its opening, and there are little surprises along the way.

This disc is really great fun on first listening. I am not sure it wears well over repetitive listening—maybe yes if you tend to listen “in the background”, or love such “fusion” projects. I expect, though, that a small selection could have a big success in the concert-hall. The recording quality is excellent; the acoustics are clemore....

Wolosoff’s perfectly formed miniatures demonstrate myriad influences

It was perhaps inevitable that Bruce Wolosoff would compose Songs Without Words, which is subtitled “18 Divertimenti for String Quartet”. The New York-born composer grew up playing in an assortment of bands whose stylistic bents would become essential components in his creative voice.

In Songs Without Words, performed on this joyous Naxos disc by the Carpe Diem Quartet, Wolosoff takes those styles and runs blissfully with them, charging through jazz, rock, blues and many other musical genres with what one might easily call unbridled glee.

Bruce Wolosoff (b. 1955) is another unfamiliar name to me. He has written some 18 short string quartet pieces, called Songs without Words, that are in the chamber music spirit of Daugherty’s orchestral works. In other words, they are fun. He asked, “Is music with a happy aesthetic any less valid than dark, depressing, gnarly, and complicated ‘serious’ music?” His answer: “Imagine my new-found joy at the possibility of writing music that my friends might want to listen to for pleasure.” His friends, in this case, were the members of the Carpe Diem Quartet, who gave Wolosoff a list of their favorite songs—mostly from the world of pop—which he then wrote riffs on. I don’t recognize the original materials, as I only listen to classical music, but the results of Wolosoff’s variations are immensely enjoyable, unpretentious, and finely crafted, with a wonderfully broad range of expression. You can definitely dance to the funky hoedown in the fifth movement, Dancing on my Grave, and to much else here. Young Love is surely a slow dance. The Carpe Diem Quartet plays with zest on this New American Classics Naxos CD.

It is apparent from the beginning of Composer Bruce Wolosoff’s new NAXOS recording with the Carpe Diem Quartet—Songs without Words—that Mr Wolosoff’s music fits into the fringe of a larger trend in contemporary American music: the fusion of popular and traditional idioms. Whereas one player in this movement, Bang-On-A-Can, attempts to distill the visceral dynamism of punk rock with instrumental amplification and driving rhythms, Mr Wolosoff  is more transparent, and explicitly references jazz, blues and pop styles. What is also clear within the first couple tracks of this album is the genre of Songs without Words: divertimento. Mr Wolosoff’s sentimental melodies, circular harmonic progressions and repetitive structures update a brand of crowd-pleasing music dating back to Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Along these lines, the liner notes describe Songs without Words as “amiably crossing musical borders”, and there are two principal musical regions Mr Wolosoff explores through the prism of the Carpe Diem Quartet: blues and classic pop rock.

The first of these allusions is communicated through pentatonic and blues-based melodies and the typifying inflections one would expect from a blues guitarist or bluegrass fiddle player. The movement “Dancing on my Grave” is probably the best example of this in the whole set, and is a traditional blues jam with a rocking bass line with improvisatory melodies above it, culminating with a classic blues bass progression. In contrast, “The Letter” is the purest rock ‘n’ roll movement, and uses the I—vi—IV—V harmonic progression common to 1950s bubblegum pop ballads to exemplify the other category of Mr Wolosoff’s musical references.

The remaining 16 movements in Songs without Words are somewhere in between these stylistic extremes. For example, “Cat Scratch Fever” references 1970s hard rock with its title and its use of parallel fifth ‘power chords’ in the cello’s ostinato bass line. Similarly, “Creepalicious” has much more abstract musical material than the other movements of the set but employs the same simple phrase structures, maintaining a strong connection to Mr Wolosoff’s popular influences while distinguishing the movement’s content from its neighbors.

Songs without Words not only connects to music outside the art music tradition, it echoes trends found in a variety of other American composers’ outputs, as well. For example, the pizzicato and blues lines of  the movement “Circle Dances” are reminiscent to the bluegrass reference in Aaron Jay Kernis’ Mozart en Route (1990) and the more general concept of repeated melodic ‘hooks’—these are present throughout Songs without Words—is also prevalent in the music of Michael Daugherty. Mr Wolosoff’s work also falls under the wide umbrella of the movememore....

The Songs without Words by Bruce Wolosoff (born 1955) follow, of course, in the tradition of Mendelssohn, but they are subtitled “18 Divertimenti for String Quartet” and in fact constitute an hour-long series of string miniatures. Each has a title, but listeners will have to decide for themselves how well “Blues for Stravinsky,” “The Letter,” “Skunk,” “Creepalicious,” “Cat Scratch Fever,” “Getting Down” and the rest of the names fit the music (the relationship is clearer in some cases than others). The works are very well played by the Carpe Diem String Quartet, and offer an interesting mixture of pop and classical compositional techniques.

Now here is contemporary music which just wants to have fun. Composer Bruce Wolosoff has wandered into an ideological battleground with these Songs without Words, eighteen short and enjoyable works in jazz and rock styles but composed for string quartet, and he knows it. I therefore beg the reader’s forgiveness for my hubris and, before reviewing the music and performance, choose to review the idea itself.