Review: Three Pieces for Orchestra

Felder's Three Pieces for Orchestra is loosely based upon episodes from the composer's experience. The outer movements are dense yet form a purposeful continuum that clearly is going somewhere. This is music with an epic reach, cosmic energy, and unconcern with the commonplace, The central movement, however, is a study in sonority, open textures, and spare orchestral colorations, largely in slower, measured statements with a more reflective ambience. Heralding horns make thematic suggestions that never develop but give the form useful reference points. Summoning brass and timpani usher in the final movement, which resumes the character of the first movement, but is punctuated by interior exclamations and melodic fragments concluding with massive percussion hammer blows.