Genuinely novel in an age where it's been said that all the great themes have been used up and turned into theme parks, the three pieces by Argentine-American composer Florencio Asenjo recorded here are generally similar in style. They're tonal, or at least not particularly dissonant, and they're written for conventional orchestral instruments. Each is based on a work of literature, which it follows closely, in the time-honored manner of program music. So what's the novelty? Asenjo's music follows a unique principle that he ...
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Genuinely novel in an age where it's been said that all the great themes have been used up and turned into theme parks, the three pieces by Argentine-American composer Florencio Asenjo recorded here are generally similar in style. They're tonal, or at least not particularly dissonant, and they're written for conventional orchestral instruments. Each is based on a work of literature, which it follows closely, in the time-honored manner of program music. So what's the novelty? Asenjo's music follows a unique principle that he names maximalism, although what he means by the word is very different from the way serial composers have used it as a pejorative contrast to "minimalism." Asenjo's maximalism entails, as far as possible, an avoidance of repetition, but that doesn't mean his works have a pastiche-like effect. Instead he derives each new theme or passage of music from the preceding one, much as the second theme of a Classical sonata forms a contrast with the first but also follows naturally from it....
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