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Schat's score calls for a sizable chorus and a huge orchestra, heavy on brass and percussion (including steel drums). Stylistically he is what might be called a postserialist. Having explored the twelve-tone system in earlier compositions, he now works in a freely eclectic vein, yielding at times to the "tonal nostalgia" that Robert Craft pointed out in Alban Berg's music, at other times borrowing the jazzy strains of theater music. At Aspen, his pounding rhythms generated a powerful momentum and his thickly massed sonoraties built to sharp climaxes, especially in the big choral scenes. His solo vocal passages and more lyrical moments, however, seemed to lack a distinctive melodic contour.
As Houdini, Tenor Jerold Norman was re-creating his role in the Amsterdam production, and the experience showed in his secure, if rather monochromatic, performance. Other major roles were ably filled by Rita Shane as Houdini's mother, John Brandstetter as his manager and Viviane Thomas as Bess. Conductor Richard Dufallo, who heads Aspen's annual Conference on Contemporary Music (at which Schat is one of this year's composers-in-residence), had the work firmly in hand. His youthful chorus and orchestra managed most of the score's difficulties, though without making them sound any less difficult.
In the end, both the music and text were upstaged by the magic. Several of Houdini's feats, including his water-can escape, were authentically and grippingly duplicated by Mark Mazzarella, a 19-year-old college sophomore. But the cost of going for such theatrical pizazz was a loss of psychological depth. Houdini offered almost no plot, almost no human interplay. Throughout the evening, a large portrait of the magician stared out at the performers from the ear of the stage, as if challenging them to account for his mysterious driven nature. The tricks, the career, the public appropriation of him as a hero were all here. But the man himself? Once again, he escaped. — Christopher Porterfield