Reviews

  Synthesis of traditions

  A joint concert of RIAS and DAAD

  ... The most interesting composers of this evening of chamber music at RIAS-studio 10 were the famous English virginalist John Bull and the about 400 years younger American composer Maurice Weddington.

  Bull's cembalo virtuosity, his attractive modal harmony on the verge of major/minor tonality were brilliantly mastered by the Russian composer André Volkonsky. Maurice Weddington's 'SEUL', a bass clarinet solo composed in 1976, proved again his great talent for minimal compositional changes and also his enormous certainty in structuring tendentiously infinite time processes. As all of Weddington's compositions 'SEUL' begins with pianissimo rotations, the intervals of major and minor seconds slowly widen to thirds and fourths. Then the low register is abruptly left, but lingers on occasionally as pedal-tones.

  In the higher register Weddington then begins an extremely expressive spectacle that reminds one of outbursts of free jazz performers. He adds vibraphone and gongs (also simultaneously played by the soloist) and ends the 15 minutes process in a huge ecstatic crescendo. The applause was exceptionally strong for the soloist Harry Sparnaay as well.

Wolfgang Burde
Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin
June 22 , 1977

  "Fourever Present"

  A celebration at the Nationalgalerie

  ... a stage at each side of the almost square room (with the audience in the middle). First performance of a composition by Maurice Weddington, also a former guest of the DAAD, commissioned by Edith Rickey for her husband's birthday. Four flutes, four oboes, four clarinets, four bassoons and two conductors in the middle of the audience (Rainer Koelble, Phillip Moll).

  Although my ear is untrained for modern music I can recognize a context with Rickey's kinetic sculptures, sounds from all wind directions created by a tender kinetic effect. ...a breeze as inhalation that varies from a deep roar to a very high and piercing tone like wind playing in telegraph wires, that no longer exist. Wind and motion as continuous musical and physical elements are here expressed by e.g. flute gusts and bassoon lightening, and correspond excellently with George Rickey's sculptures.

  The composition is a wonderful musical simulation of kinetic movement with polyphonic tenderness and occasional surges. After 20 minutes there is an ending that could provoke a new beginning.

H.O.
Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin
October 5, 1977

  Between Japan and Europe

  Inselmusik-concert at the Staatsbibliothek

  At the well attended first Inselmusik-concert in the auditorium of the Staatsbibliothek pieces of Japanese and German composers were introduced as well as a work by the American composer Maurice Weddington.

  Weddington, a former guest of the DAAD(1975), is living in Berlin now. His piece 'ISOLA' is a study for four clarinets of 11 minutes duration. Weddington tends to breathing lines that are elaborately woven, turning in themselves and are activated and accentuated with figurative ideas. The voices in this clarinet study are very individualized, then put in groups of duos or trios or arranged according to their registers.

  The piece, which was masterly interpreted by the gentlemen Bach, Hartmann, Rueckel and Reiff, ended with a long solo. The extensive applause reflected, that the audience was spontaneously affected by the characteristic concentrated charm and intransigent intensity of the piece.

Wolfgang Burde
Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin
May 14, 1980

  Discoveries of all sorts

  National Prussian Cultural Heritage Library, Berlin

  In Maurice Weddington´s work "Mehr Licht" for solo bass flute the title becomes obvious as the music winds slowly upwards to extreme pitches. The violin piece "Legatissimo to be … "is plain and "hoarse", played without vibrato and lingeringly narrow in sound and expression.

  Both works can be played simultaneously, which is what happened here for the first time. This resulted in a pleasant, unpretentious, refined bicinium that offers the opportunity to follow the two continuously played instruments in a relaxed way.

Gottfried Eberle
Tagesspiegel
Thursday, November 13, 1980

  Prolific and noted American composer Maurice Weddington narrated the world premiere of his composition "Midnight" with text by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dissonant, difficult and disturbing, the work perfectly weds text to music.

  A low buzzing hum of music opens the score, which is later punctuated by loud knocks of percussion. The dissonant sound never ceases, building in volume and intensity to correspond with the text.

  Like the world at midnight, the music is eerie with sometimes little discernible shape except for the loud knocks, knocks which the text say go unanswered in our land. And yet this work ends on a note of hope and faith that dawn will come, a faith musically represented by a clear, strong but dissonant trumpet call.

Dianne Runion
The Stockton Record
Thursday, February 10, 1983

Concerto for Symphony Orchestra

  "Maurice Weddington`s 'Fire in the Lake', which is the last part of a gigantic music trilogy, that was performed with an immense orchestra, is a serious important composition full of pressing sounds and dangerous calmness.

  It smoulders to the final intensification and develops in a forty-minute-duration numerous overlapping subjects. The fire, which erupts on the ice, burns with a pure shining flame predicting revolution that aims to set the calendar in order. This is the wisdom of the Chinese I Ching on which Weddington`s rich composition is based."

Klaus Geitel
Berliner Morgenpost
Sunday, Jan. 12 1992

  "... his composition, 'Fire in the Lake', which is dedicated to Nelson Mandela, is a music to depict revolution. The composer himself states in the program notes the relentless conflict of contradicting forces that are developed in his composition.

  First of all, it is to the benefit of the work that this relentlessness has not been illustrated in a big fortissimo din -- the big bang Weddington saves for the end. Prior to that he develops the permanent conflict potential for about half an hour through splintered fragments of musical emotions, but primarily through an intended painfully 'rubbing against each other' of intertwining musical lines, an arrangement that allows Weddington to move extensively through different homogeneous and mixed groups of the orchestra...

  The audience of the well-attended concert reacted very positively to the extravagant premiere...the multi-colored but not color-intense composition was received with almost rapturous applause..."

Martin Wilkening
Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin
Sunday, Jan. 12, 1992

  ".... The fire in the lake stands for revolution as ancient China's I Ching explains in the 49th hexagram...

  It starts with a warning blast, which is followed by a long ground-laying passage. The strings are divided in two orchestras, the woodwinds and brass are mixed together. A multi-layered musical process can be heard, and out of that single groups can be distinguished (as the contrabasses with abrupt accents).

  Continuity in this composition means continuous unrest, which is primarily noticeable in the percussion: by short drum rolls on the bass drum, on tam-tams and numerous brass, which were never played with full force, but frighteningly colorful (reminiscent of Alban Berg's 'Reigen'). For those who had a strong need for dramatic sounds it was a feast."

Hans Jörg von Jena
Spandauer Volksblatt, Berlin
Sunday, January 12, 1992