Big name soloists, a symphonic work plucked from obscurity and a premiere. It’s an oft-used – and winning – programming formula used by The Orchestra Now. The ensemble’s performance at Carnegie Hall on November 18, 2021 was the latest in this successful framework. TŌN is a graduate program at Bard College founded in 2015 by Bard’s president, Leon Botstein, who is also the ensemble’s conductor. Its goal is to give conservatory graduates orchestral performance experience, training in communicating with the audience, and other essential skills for concert musicians. Throughout the concert at Carnegie, the quality of the performance was outstanding.
Read moreBest of 2018 – Orchestral CDs In ictu oculi Kenneth Hesketh BBC Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Christoph Mathias Mueller Paladino Three large orchestra works by British composer Kenneth Hesketh are attractively scored in multifaceted, often muscular, fashion. Hesketh’s unabashed exploration of emotionality, imbued with strongly etched motives and intricate formal designs, provides a cathartic journey for listeners. Sur Incises Pierre Boulez The Boulez Ensemble, conducted by Daniel Barenboim Deutsche-Grammophon There is a previous, much vaunted, studio recording of Pierre Boulez’s composition Sur Incises (1998), one of the composer’s most highly regarded late works (in the
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Best of, Boston, CD Review, CDs, Choral Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Orchestral, Orchestras
Best of 2018: Orchestral CDs with Voices Requiem John Harbison Nashville Symphony Chorus and Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor Naxos Records John Harbison’s Requiem Mass had a long and fragmented gestation, but it certainly sounds of a piece. This debut recording by Nashville Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, led by Giancarlo Guerrero, emphasizes the contrasts between hushed reverence and explosive drama that make the work an exciting and vital addition to this well-populated genre. Harbison’s fluid orchestration and deft vocal writing are fully in evidence here. Despite his deep catalog, Requiem is one of his most compelling compositions
Read moreGeorge Perle Orchestral Music 1965-1987 Jay Campbell, cello Seattle Symphony, Ludovic Morlot, conductor George Perle Vol. 4, Bridge Records 9499 A recording of five previously unrecorded pieces, Orchestral Music 1965-1987 supplies excellent renditions of an underserved segment of composer George Perle’s output. Best known for his chamber music – he received a Pulitzer for his Wind Quintet No. 4 – Perle (1915-2009) also had significant orchestra commissions, including a residency with San Francisco Symphony and a 150th anniversary commission from the New York Philharmonic. Those who know his work as a music theorist will also be aware of his
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Bang on a Can, Composers, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Orchestral, Orchestras, Review, Seattle
David Lang’s symphony without a hero received its premiere on February 8/10 by its commissioner, Seattle Symphony and Music Director Ludovic Morlot. As usual, Lang spells his title in all lowercase letters, a gesture of acquiescence that particularly befits the resigned tone of this work’s namesake, Poem Without a Hero by the Soviet writer Anna Akhmatova. Lang, who is quite the Russophile, took his inspiration from Akhmatova’s wartime lament for her hometown Leningrad (St. Petersburg), besieged and abused at the hands of both Nazis and Stalinists. Lang’s reflections present as a single-movement essay that, regardless of one’s feelings toward postminimalism
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Best of, Boston, CD Review, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Criticism, Critics, File Under?, Orchestral, Recordings, Review, San Francisco, Saxophone
Wayne Peterson Transformations Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor; PRISM Quartet BMOP/sound 1053 Composer Wayne Peterson (b. 1927) served as one of his generation’s fixtures on the West Coast music scene where, in addition to several other academic appointments, he elevated the composition program at San Francisco State to prominence. Despite fine recordings of his chamber music, this is his first portrait disc of orchestral music. 2017 has been a year where Boston Modern Orchestra Project, under the inspired direction of Gil Rose, has released a number of fine recordings, including CDs of works by Paul Moravec, David
Read moreInterview with Carson Cooman Sequenza 21: The latest CD of your compositions, Liminal on Divine Art, features three works, a short orchestra piece, Shoreline Rune, Liminal, your Fourth Symphony, and Prism, an older work for organ. How did you decide on this grouping? Carson Cooman: A number of recordings of my music have been released, and the music on them has been grouped and organized in different ways, depending on the repertoire at hand. For this release, I wanted to try a “mini-album” (shorter length than a full CD and priced accordingly). So the symphony was the main affair, and
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Brooklyn, CDs, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Interviews, jazz, Minimalism, New Amsterdam, New York, Orchestral
If you’re a fan of new music, be it “indie-classical” or whatever it’s being labeled this week, then you must check out the music of composer and conductor Joseph C. Phillips, Jr. Phillips’ music, composed and arranged for his ensemble Numinous, a large chamber group (or small orchestra?) of woodwinds, brass, strings, tuned percussion, electric instruments and vocalists, is a complex, finely detailed amalgam of classical, minimalist, South American, Asian, and African American influences, with a distinctive “sound” that is instantly identifiable, yet full of surprises. (You know those descriptive terms “Brahmsian” or “the Mingus effect”? It’s like that.) Phillips’
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Composers, Concert review, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Criticism, Festivals, Orchestral, Twentieth Century Composer
Just before intermission of the opening concert of the Beyond Cage Festival on October 22, I pulled out my iPhone to see if the Giants were beating the Cardinals for the National League Pennant, and was disoriented to see that it was 9:49pm. It seemed like there must have been a massive network malfunction, because the extraordinary performance of Atlas Ecpliticalis with Winter Music that I and the rest of the audience had fervently applauded could not possibly have gone on for an hour and forty-five minutes. The duration had felt assuredly like a leisurely performance of an early Romantic
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Classical Music, Concerts, Music Events, Orchestral, Orchestras, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Orchestra
Last Thursday evening, just before the lights dimmed at the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall, the audience purred in anticipation of the evening’s forthcoming concert. Tonight was to be a momentous occasion – the official inaugural concert with Yannick Nézet-Séguin being installed as Music Director. I expected a concert full of classical music royalty highlighting the event as one of the most important in the Philadelphia Orchestra’s history. What was delivered was an all-around humble performance delivered by, as Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia introduced them, the “greatest orchestra in the world” – the Philadelphia Orchestra.
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