Once a fluent, erudite author of program notes, Wuorinen rarely provides them today. “I just don’t know what to write anymore,” he said. In olden times, when I had a specific compositional method to describe, program notes served a purpose. I had something definite to say, you know, even though it seemed pretty technical to some members of the au­dience. Now my methods are more general, my solutions more intuitive and local, my preliminary material sparser and sparser, so it is difficult for me to draw any communicable con­clusion about what it is that I’ve done.

“Besides, program notes can do more harm than good” he contin­ued. “I’ve heard it said that Milton Babbitt’s music would never have gen­erated the kind of hostility that it did if he had explained it as the ‘yearnings of a passionate soul,’ or something like that. Moreover, to describe the meth­ods that a composer used to create a piece may have absolutely nothing to do with the meaning of the piece as a musical experience. There is often a profound difference between what a composition really is and what we think it is when we are making it.”

Wuorinen allows that the Fast Fantasy is “just what the title implies: a fantasy based on a big lump of notes, intuitively rhythmed, with some quali­ties of recitative.” Like most other cel­ebrated musical fantasies, this one is essentially rhapsodic in form and abounds in pyrotechnical display. From the opening flourish (built around an insistently repeated F note passed, rapid-fire, from instrument to instrument) through the hushed, sus­tained song-like central section, this is a work of charm and unfettered imagi­nation. Particularly effective are the last few bars, when cello and piano join forces to create rich, gonging, multi-textured chords that resound with the authority of conclusion. Yet there is one final surprise in store: As the chords are on the verge of dying out, the cello suddenly scampers off blithely, for an unexpectedly light­hearted ending. The Fast Fantasy is dedicated to Fred Sherry.

From liner notes to New World CD 385, written by Tim Page ã1990

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