NOVA | ALLMUSIC - REVIEW

Tobias Picker, NOVA

by: James Manheim | October 2025

The work of composer Tobias Picker is not as well represented on recordings as it should be, and this 2025 compilation of his chamber and keyboard works is most welcome. He is better known for orchestral and large vocal works, but Nova, a selection of performances from between 1979 and 2009, gives newcomers to his music an idea of his style. Picker studied with Elliott Carter, and the concision that came from those studies is evident throughout. However, Picker did not have to worry about the rise of postmodern styles, because his own music incorporated aspects of that trend before it even had a name. The album's title and its graphics come from the renowned New York City sandwich ingredient Nova lox, and one wouldn't have caught Carter using such an image. From this 1979 work, performed by the longtime and sadly missed Speculum musicae ensemble with Picker himself at the piano, the composer expanded out into pieces that were lyrical and even humorous (Carter would not have titled a movement "Svelto," as Picker did in the first of the Three Pieces for Piano) but retained the basic focus and concision of his work overall. The final, The Blue Hula, is a piece that combines the appeal of Hawaii with a modernist style, something few other composers could have accomplished. This is an appealing collection that is especially recommended to music libraries, and the mastering by Jeanne Velonis for the Bright Shiny Things label makes a coherent whole out of sonically very diverse materials.