Reviews of "Through Time and Place"

"Through Time and Place" Named a Best Classical Recording fo 2020 by Howard Reich of the Chicago Tribune 

American composer Lentini has gathered several of his major orchestral works in this alluring album, which attests to his ex-pressive range and composi-tional virtuosity. More important, works such as his imposing Symphony No. 1 (“Through Time and Place”), the joyous Sinfonia di Festa and the pro-foundly lyrical “Three Sacred Meditations” convey a palpable optimism and hope sorely needed in this difficult year. It’s easy to get lost in the embrace of these sounds.

Howard Reich, December 13, 2020

LENTINI: Through Time and Place 
Navona 6273—60 minutes
 

James Lentini, 62, was born in Detroit, Michigan, and completed undergraduate studies in guitar and composition at Wayne State University before attaining a Masters degree from Michigan State. The Sofia Philharmonic does a marvelous job with Symphony 1, Through Time and Place, a work of epic proportions whose harmonies are both beautiful and frightening. The Angel’s Journey, excellently presented here by the Wayne State University Wind Symphony, draws clear pictures in the mind of the audience. Wind symphony conductors should consider this piece for programming. 

American Record Guide – Nov/Dec 2020 – p. 171

Selected Reviews

 

 

Expressive and atmospheric music with a hint of populism

James Lentini is a typical American classical music success story. He is both dean and professor of music at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio (the 10th oldest public university in the United States), and the music department boasts an outstanding faculty and library.

James Lentini’s contribution as a composer, as heard on this recording of music written for friends and performed by colleagues, is music that expresses deep human feelings. Like the opening bars of his four-movement Orchestra Hall Suite in which bassoonist Paul Ganson evokes the romantic moonlit world of Weber overtures, the sober mood prevails, although there is always ample energy to keep the audience awake, as a hint of Midwestern populism surges into the third movement and beyond.

There is an ample variety of excellent sounds on the remainder of the programme. El signo del angel enlarges the repertoire of high-stratosphere effects a viola and a harp together can create. The pièce de résistance of the disc may be Scenes from Sedona, perhaps the best piece for viola and cello since Beethoven’s “Eyeglasses” Duet. It is a set of unconventional riffs on five of the valley’s spiritual landmarks, about the disconnectedness of human life which the famous red rocks are known to cure. It is performed by the dedicatees, Celliola, with a sort of casual, film noir intensity.

The sound is uniformly clear and strong, able to reproduce everything from a tuba player’s fantasy to a bassoon in heat. The composer’s booklet-notes are serious indeed.

Laurence Vittes

Gramophone, October, 2010



James Lentini’s music is new to me, but I’m exceedingly grateful to be introduced to his absorbing works through a fine new recording of his chamber music on Naxos. In short, there isn’t a single weak movement on the disc, and the six works are performed with precision and dedication by a superb group of instrumentalists, many of whom are members of the Detroit Symphony or colleagues of Lentini at Miami University in Ohio.

Concert halls are not often inspirations for compositions, but if any fit the bill, surely a prime candidate would be Detroit’s sumptuous Orchestra Hall. Lentini’s Orchestra Hall Suite as well as Scenes from Sedona were recorded in that hall, and what a fine impression the venerable space makes on this recording! The sound is just a bit warm, but very clear, precise, and finely balanced. The suite for four players is balanced toward the lower registers, and the influences seem varied but usually not obvious, except for a second movement in swing rhythms that honors the presence of jazz legends who performed in the hall in the 1940s. Elsewhere there are hints of the elegant craftsmanship of Bartók in movements that are succinct and tightly honed. Scenes from Sedona for viola and cello consists of a group of miniatures drawn from five monuments from that Arizona town. The full range of the two strings is artfully exploited, from artificial harmonics down to double-stops in the low register.

His fondness for short movements also appears in the Five Pieces for Cello and Piano, but the keyboard here seems to inspire more rhapsodic and lyric flights of fancy than in the other pieces. At times brief movements can lend music a disjointed character, but the composer avoids that here by tying earlier melodic ideas together in the finale. Lentini probably had no direct models for his harp and viola duo, El Signo del Angel , but he handles the medium well and makes the combination sound natural. At times the dusky sound of the viola meshes perfectly with thick chords in the medium and low register of the harp, while at other times he seems to be highlighting the natural timbral contrasts. As in all his works for strings, he finds creative and idiomatic ways of weaving thick textures from the bowed instruments.

East Coast Groove for tuba and piano again finds the composer incorporating jazz elements. Velvet Brown conjures a vivid virtuosity from her instrument that will no doubt surprise listeners unaware of its considerable potential. Lentini shows that he’s more than capable of writing for standard instrumental ensembles with his Montage for piano trio. The three players easily vanquish all of the considerable technical challenges. This is a first-rate disc, with performances of the highest rank. 

Michael Cameron ~ Fanfare Magazine

 

This composition [‘Westward Voyage’] was the winner of the XV “Andrés Segovia” Composition Competition in La Herradura [Spain] in 2002.  [The composition] belies its sweet-sounding title with a sound-world of quite dissonant nature: the composer clearly knows the fingerboard very well indeed and is expert at finding scintillating resonant mixtures of open and stopped strings, never true clusters but certainly many different very close simultaneous or overlapping combinations of notes…A very useful new piece recommended to serious performers. 
 
Stephen Kenyon
Classical Guitar Magazine
 
 
…Fantasy for Flute and Guitar is a one-movement piece in which the musical dialogue is interchanged between both instruments.  The piece is of lyrical nature with quite strong rhythms in the outer sections flanking a calmer, expressive brief mid-part.  This is good writing for both instruments from someone who has knowledge of the capabilities and sonorities of the guitar and it was a pleasure to play through.  This is a composition, which definitely warrants more exposure on the concert platform and I sincerely hope it gets the attention it deserves…
 
Steve Marsh
Classical Guitar Magazine
 

The personnel required in Music for Brass, by James Lentini, has to impress, if for no other reason, because there are so many of them -- them being The Michigan State University Brass Ensemble, conducted by Stanley E. DeRusha. Maybe it's the resounding echoic acoustics of the Wharton Center for the Performing Arts, East Lansing Michigan. No, it's more than that; Music for Brass is a well-constructed piece (with big wobbling, arching tones) that features plenty of strikingly original brass writing in an intelligent package. 
 
Bryce Rankin
21st-Century Music
 
 
‘Dreamscape,’ by James Lentini, is a brief fantasy for orchestra that achieves its considerable effect from an interplay of chamber-like textures and explosive full orchestra passages. This is the best disc in the series.
 
Stephen D. Hicken
American Record Guide
 
...'Dreamscape' is a seven-minute fantasy for orchestra and 'Music for Brass' a five-minute miniature for 11 pieces.  The former displays Lentini's skill as a colorist, with gauzy wind passages balanced by technicolor outbursts of brass, icy strings, booming percussion and warbling chimes.  Both works sound tonal but dissonant, with tension and release juggled deftly in compact structures.  Lentini knows where he's going, and it's worth the trip. -
 
Mark Stryker
The Detroit Free Press
 
 
...Lentini really know(s) the orchestra...Mr. Lentini's work ['Dreamscape'] is no less assured in technique and content.  Like so many composers, he was inspired by poetry -- in this case a text by Roger Zelazny.  The flow of ideas subtly suggests a program, perhaps markers in a landscape, as represented by several climactic moments.  The work, though, brief at under seven minutes, compels us to want to hear more of Lentini's music, much of it recorded by MMC.  Until we get that opportunity, we will keep listening to this piece to elicit the apparent subtleties that slip by on first acquaintance.
 
Barry L. Cohen
Publisher, Editor -in Chief
The New Music Connoisseur
 
 
...James Lentini, in 'Dreamscape', also deftly shapes the instrumental forces of the orchestra.  As one might expect, given the work's title, an impressionistic tendency informs this music.  A solo flute melody begins the piece and sets its tone.  While there occur few chordal resting points, development and harmonic progression are otherwise constant.  A sudden quietus three-quarters of the way through leads to an ending crescendo that resolves the restless harmonies of the rest of the piece...
 
Robert Kirzinger
Fanfare Magazine
 
 
...James Lentini...composes some of the most alluring contemporary music you're apt to find as our century moves toward its end.  Lentini's 1983 "Music for Brass" proves that he's interested in reaching out to his listeners, something some of his contemporaries pride themselves in not doing...the piece is, in the composer's own words, "intended to be a showcase for brass ensemble."  That it is, brilliantly.  Any music composed for such an ensemble is bound to include fanfares, and Lentini's are disarmingly bold and brilliant, as if they are meant to usher larger-than-life figures who have only tenuous connections with the traditional concept of royalty.  But the overall effect of the piece is more than a series of freshly-wrought fanfares.  It proves that brass writing is poised to move successfully into the upcoming millennium, providing it has composers of Lentini's merit to lead the way.
 
John Guinn
Grosse Pointe News
  
 
...James Lentini's 'Music for Brass' is a virtual catalog of the timbral and technical resources of modern brass instruments and players...
 
Stephen Hicken
American Record Guide
 
 
...Equally challenging for the performers is the 1992 'Montage' by James Lentini, a work which quickly alternates between various textures and moods and is given a sensitive and technically brilliant performance by the St. Clair Trio.
 
Andrew T. Kosciesza
Contemporary Record Society News