Peter Dickson Lopez

HOLIDAY CHEER
(Lake Park Retirement Residence News Letter, January, 2009)

On December 19 [2008] Peter Lopez gave an elegant piano concert to a packed house, equally divided between residents and friends from the outside. Beginning with Bach's French Suite No. 4 in E-flat Major, Peter quickly established his command of our Steinway ...

Four Songs Without Words by Mendelssohn were appealing, but the excitement grew when Peter played two of his own compositions [from] Pieces from a Distant Land. These were delicate Debussy-like with lovely tone clusters - quite romantic and moving. The final work, Brahms' Rhapsody #1 in B Minor really showed Peter's mastery of the piano. Passionate, and in turn lyrical, the old Steinway sounded great - [with] crashing chords [and] warm tone ...

-Mary Lyn Cox



ARCH ENSEMBLE TACKLES A TOUGH ONE
(Oakland Tribune, Sunday, February 17, 1980)

... Peter Dickson Lopez' score [The Ship of Death] is the most difficult piece of music he's seen, says Arch's conductor, Robert Hughes ...

... Is it reasonable to play so difficult a piece? Why bother?

"Who else would do it?" Hughes counters. "Yes, it should be done; it bears out all those long months of rehearsal. It's sustained itself. It's rewarding esthetically and challenging technically. There's satisfaction in that."

... Out of the incredible piles of notes romantic melodies erupt occasionally, suggesting Messiaen or even Berg ...

Pieces like this should be played; the dedication, work and evolution they disclose should be made public ...

-Charles Shere



THREE DIVERSE CONCERTS BY ARCH ENSEMBLE
(Oakland Tribune, Tuesday, February 26, 1980)

All three composers were on hand for the most ambitious Arch Ensemble concert yet over the weekend -- performed three times: San Francisco State Friday night, at Sonoma State Saturday, at Mills College Sunday.

...Peter Dickson Lopez' "The Ship of Death" is enormously complex, requiring its 20 or 25 musicians to subdivide beats 13 against 16 across measure lines, to go from one extreme of loudness and range to another, to double on instruments, to emerge as soloists from the ensemble playing, to produce all sorts of nontraditional sounds.

In addition its vocal part requires something like three octaves, subtle shifts from sung to half-sung to spoken production, end electronic enhancement through amplitude modulation and reverberation.

In addition, the tempi change according to a very strictly imposed plan, and the ensemble varies through a number of changing trios within the larger group.

The piece works in spite of its complexity -- or maybe because of it. It is continuously interesting to the listener, absorbing even; and its carefully developed large structure leads the listener through all this complexity to an appreciation of Lawrence's visionary ... meditation on death and rebirth.

-Charles Shere



IMPRESSIVE WORK BY ARCH ENSEMBLE
(San Francisco Chronicle, Monday, February 25, 1980)

Sometimes you can't even tell a book by its apparent contents much less its cover. Some time ago, in anticipation of Friday's Arch Ensemble program at San Francisco State's Knuth Hall, we were loaned a big score (16x19, maybe 15 pounds) bound in black leatherette, bearing the catchy title "The Ship of Death" in gold letters.

I shuddered, spent more than an hour in it, shuddered again thinking, "This needs four or five times the estimated 40-minute performing time to realize it in performance." Wrong on the second count. Peter Lopez' "The Ship of Death" (and inevitably then the performance, Robert Hughes conducting), was deeply impressive.

The incredible complexities Lopez created for the musicians and the varieties of his sound resources are not strictly matters for our immediate concern. It must be said however that there are supra-rational rhythmic relationships and intricacies which might make Elliott Carter blanch...

... "The Ship" is an uninterrupted dramatic voyage. Instrumental interludes infrequently mark the sectioning... [until] finally, the work dissolves in an amazing sense of peace as the players exercise free choice in an "open form" epilogue, Hughes' guidance shaping eloquently the close of his extraordinary performance of an extraordinary work.

-Robert Commanday