Lawrence K. Moss: Unseen Paths
Navona Records

In featuring chamber and vocal works, this posthumous collection honours the memory of American composer Lawrence Kenneth Moss in splendid manner. Born in Los Angeles in 1927, Moss's earthly tenure ended at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland in June 2022, but the music of this adventurous creator lives on. On this double-disc set, he's represented by works for solo piano, chamber duos, and settings for vocal duo and trio. Neatly grouped into two halves, the all-instrumental first forms a pleasing counterpoint to the vocal-based second. Moss's oeuvre was, if anything, diverse.

After earning degrees in music from UCLA, the Eastman School of Music, and the University of Southern California, Moss taught music composition at Mills College, Yale, and the University of Maryland. Along the way, he produced a rich collection of music that ranged from operas to chamber and electronic music and saw his work issued on a number of labels, including Albany, Orion, and Navona. His interests ventured outside music, as shown by his involvement in tai chi and fluency in Mandarin, German, French, and Italian. He taught Master classes at conservatories in Taiwan and provinces in China and was made an honorary professor at the Tianjin Conservatory in China. He was even composing until the week before he died. All but one of the seven works on Unseen Paths were recorded shortly after Moss's death, the exception being A Life, laid down by pianist Kadisha Onalbayeva in July 2021.

The music featured on the release includes its share of surprises, starting with the set-opening String Quartet No. 5, which at a mere minute-and-a-half might be the shortest string quartet work ever; the single-movement miniature does leave an impression, however, when its spectral gestures evokes a scarred twentieth-century landscape. Following that arresting intro, Rane Moore and Nicholas Brown fluidly execute the two movements of the Clarinet Duo, the parts again short in duration and making good on their “fast but delicate” and “Song and Silence” billings. The slightly longer For Flute and Piano sees flutist Jessica Lizak and pianist Yoko Hagino venturing through a thorny opening movement, “Dramatic,” before musing contemplatively and exuberantly in “Lullaby” and “Running,” respectively.

Each work successively expands in form and duration, such that the three parts essayed by Lizak and Hagino become the five untitled movements tackled by violinist James Stern and pianist Audrey Andrist in Rising Falling. Even so, the pieces composing the adventurous set remain miniature in form, though make no less an impact for being so. The first disc culminates with the twelve-part A Life, which Onalbayeva delivers with immense attention to detail. Hushed and haunting moments alternate with rhythmic episodes sprinkled with percussive gestures in a work that at fifty minutes long towers over the four preceding it. Time-suspending meditations (“Buddha,” “Gamelan”) and ethereal expressions (“From Earth To Stars”) emerge alongside playful treatments (“Araby,” “Blugar Boogie”) as the work plays out.

If there's anything wanting about the release, it's the absence of programme notes to provide background, dates, and details about the works. That's perhaps less an issue for the instrumental pieces, but the absence of information (and librettos) for the one-act comic opera The Brute and fourteen-part La Serva Padrona makes the release feel incomplete and does a disservice to Moss. Online searches provide little by way of compensation, except to reveal that he composed The Brute to a libretto by Eric Bentley based on Anton Chekhov's 1888 play The Bear. Regardless, The Brute, written in 1960 and given its European premiere ten years later, is performed with gusto by soprano Aliana de la Guardia, tenor Omar Najmi, and baritone Brian Church, with Hagino making a return appearance as the pianist. The score's lively, theatrical, and mercurial, and the single-movement work entertains for the full measure of its twenty-five minutes, especially when the performers elevate it with inspired performances.

Church, Hagino, and de la Guardia return for La Serva Padrona, the release's other vocal work scored for two vocalists, not three, and piano. While it's as theatrical as The Brute, La Serva Padrona exudes a neoclassical formality reminiscent of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. That connection's suggested all the more by the fluctuation in Moss's work between recitatives, duets, and arias. As with The Brute, La Serva Padrona is distinguished by the participants' wholly engaged execution, and there are undeniably pretty moments, too, as illustrated by de la Guardia's solo turn in “Aria No. 5 Serpina.” That programme notes-related caveat aside, the release honours Moss's memory by providing a thorough account of his music and the broad range of his interests. It's material that shouldn't be forgotten, and for those unfamiliar with his work the release offers a wonderful opportunity to become acquainted with this original artist.

August 2024