"Slalom" - Carter Pann

This is a nine-minute Orchestral composition by the winner of the 2001 Masterprize Competition.

It may be familiar to some of you already, because the piece has garnered quite a following amongst the musical elite.

The piece starts dramatically, a la "Beethoven's 5th Symphony", but a quick high woodwind flutter changes the course of the music just a little. The strings ascend rapidly and repeatedly - again, Beethoven springs to mind. But as the flautists are joined by xylophone percussionists - So is "Beethoven" joined by "John Williams", so to speak.

I'll cut through most of the mid-section. If I had to be judgmental at all about this excellent piece, it would concern the pretty repetitive and unorganized section in the middle which is darker than the rest of the piece - and whilst it does manage to fit in with the overall mood, it's what I would affectionately call a "skippy" (Fast-Foward/Skip the section entirely. Not something I'd do the first couple of times. I do it only after I've heard it sufficiently to know what I like and dislike)

So on to the end. Strings and Brass play a pseudo-marshall motif with restraint - as the flutes dance their ostinati, just before the Brass respond with a vengeance to the initial motif - Where intelligent use of rubato allows for a wonderful sustain between the dissonance and the resolve.

If I was to describe this piece to you, concisely, without your having never to hear it? I would say "It's what Copeland might write if he was alive today".