Dan Goble & Russell Hirshfield: Second Flight
Navona Records

While one might reasonably presume from its title that Second Flight is the sophomore album from saxophonist Dan Goble and pianist Russell Hirshfield, the two have, in fact, issued more than two recordings over the course of their twenty-year collaboration. The title is significant, however, for alluding to the contemporary focus of the release, which couples the 2018 title work by Joan Tower with others by Jennifer Higdon, John Adams, Philip Glass, James David, and David Biedenbender. Such a grouping offers a representative sampling of today's classical field when all of the composers are still physically with us.

Goble and Hirshfield are certainly well-equipped for the task. Goble, currently director of the School of Music, Theatre and Dance at Colorado State University, performed with the New York Philharmonic for over nineteen years and with many other ensembles, including saxophone quartets. Hirshfield, presently a music professor at Western Connecticut State University, has given recitals around the world and has issued well-received solo recordings, including a set of early Scriabin works issued on Navona Records in 2020.

The earliest of the six pieces,Glass's “Facades,” was written in 1981 and released on Glassworks a year later. In hindsight, the album might be regarded as a pivotal moment in his career in offering the public a dramatically more accessible portal into his world than something like, say, Music in Twelve Parts (1971-74) or even Einstein On the Beach (1975-75). Forty-plus years on from its first appearance, “Facades” is today no less alluring, especially when delivered with conviction and feeling by Goble and Hirshfield. The only other work from the same general period is Adams' “Postmark,” which comes from 1989's Fearful Symmetries, with the writing of the other four pieces extending from 2008 to 2021. A satisfying structural symmetry is established by the album's sequencing when it begins with David's three-movement sonata Pradakshina and concludes with Biedenbender's also three-part Images.

In writing Pradakshina, David drew for inspiration from a recent visit he made to Great Stupa in the Colorado Rockies and his circumambulation of the remarkable Buddhist structure. With Goble soaring on alto and Hirshfield his enthusiastic partner, the work begins with the sonorous sparkle and high energy of “Prelude a la Courante” before moving onto the meditative languour of “Ciacona di ‘Gradus'.” Here the duo's slow, reverberant ruminations effectively suggest the deep spiritual experience a visitor to the site might undergo upon encountering architecture of such arresting kind. “Hoquetus” reinstates the exuberance of the opening movement, with the alto slithery and piano spidery as the musicians wend their acrobatic way through the oft-spiraling material.

With alto saxophone and piano entwining complexly, Higdon's Yes, No, Maybe? is at times as quizzical as its title, though no less engaging for being so. The duo's instruments flutter and dance in a display of controlled abandon, though the presentation gradually eases into something more contemplative and soothing. Composed as a follow-up to her popular clarinet piece Wings, Tower's Second Flight grants an exhilarating solo spotlight to the alto saxophonist. Goble makes the most of the opportunity in delivering a performance that meets all of the challenges Tower worked into material that floats serenely at one moment and then flies at high-velocity during the next.

However much Glass and Adams are collected by some into a common group, their pieces on Second Flight, both featuring Goble on soprano saxophone, couldn't be more different: whereas Glass's haunting “Facades” is as absorbing as always, Adams' always beguiling “Postmark” wobbles jauntily like some semi-drunken uncle at a wedding party. Images, which was written after Biedenbender woke from a dream and retained a vague yet nonetheless powerful impression of what he'd experienced, mirrors David's Pradakshina in bookending a peaceful movement with two lively ones. In Biedenbender's case, “Deep” traffics in a stream of agitated alto sax and piano figures, whereas “Wild” unleashes a frenzy of freewheeling, jazz-tinged gestures. It's the becalmed central movement, “Still,” however, that is the work's brightest gem for being a quietly rhapsodic expression of tranquil beauty.

July 2024