David Loeb

Fantasias on Eurasian Melodes

David Loeb's new collection Fantasias on Eurasian Melodies, for piccolo alone, gathers together his Balinese Fantasies, Tibetan Fantasias, and Preludes on Eurasian materials for a thorough tour through these interconnected musical languages. The Fantasias, distinct among Loeb's works, draw on native musical sources while building complex, intriguing music more akin to concert repertoire than native folk music. The Balinese Fantasies utilize several Balinese scale types, rarely combined in single native works. Here they are allowed to intermingle freely throughout the fantasies, and within the ornamentations and variations. The Tibetan Fantasias are evocations of images; tone poems for the solo piccolo player. Surprising complexity hides within the three works - the first a beautiful day on a highland plain, the second a moonlight night, and the third a Tibetan minstrel song painted with a particularly haunting brush. The Preludes draw from a huge variety of traditions, even occasionally crossing languages within single movements, though each movement still emphasizes a single mood. This collection contains the previous stand-alone books - catalog numbers P-04, P-09, and P-17.