An interview with Grammy-winning composer John Corigliano about his monumental piece for wind band, Circus Maximus. In this interview, the composer talks about writing this work, how he approaches composition, and why he especially enjoyed writing music for band.
John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan Garners Two Wins:
Best Contemporary Classical Composition and Best Classical Vocal Performance;
The Pacifica Quartet Wins Best Chamber Music Performance for Elliott Carter’s String Quartets Nos. 1 & 5;
The Los Angeles Opera Production of Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
Wins Best Classical Album and Best Opera Recording;
Charles Bruffy and the Phoenix Chorale Win Best Small Ensemble Performance
for Spotless Rose: Hymns to the Virgin Mary.
On February 8, 2009, The Recording Academy® honored artists from labels Naxos, EuroArts and Chandos Records with six Grammy® Awards.
Israeli-born soprano Hila Plitmann won the Grammy® Award for Best Classical Vocal Performance for the world premiere recording of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan. The Naxos recording features Hila Plitmann with conductor JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic. Pulitzer, Oscar, multi-Grammy®, and Grawemeyer award-winning composer John Corigliano won the Best Classical Contemporary Composition Grammy® Award for the work.
Recently named 2009 Ensemble of the Year by Musical America, The Pacifica Quartet won the Best Chamber Music Performance Grammy® Award for their acclaimed Naxos recording of Elliott Carter’s String Quartets Nos. 1 & 5. The Pacifica Quartet has recorded the complete cycle of Elliott Carter’s string quartets in two volumes, the second of which will be released by Naxos on February 24.
The Los Angeles Opera production of Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of The City of Mahagonny, released on DVD by EuroArts, earned Grammy® Awards for Best Classical Album and Best Opera Recording. The performance featured conductor James Conlon, soloists Anthony Dean Griffey, Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald; the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra and Chorus; and was produced by Fred Vogler. This marks the first time ever that DVD recordings have been eligible for Grammy® Award consideration in these categories. Only the audio portion of the DVD is considered.
Charles Bruffy and The Phoenix Chorale took home the Grammy® Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance for their recording Spotless Rose: Hymns to the Virgin Mary, from Chandos Records.
CORIGLIANO: Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems Of Bob Dylan
(JoAnn Falletta; Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra)
Best Classical Contemporary Composition
John Corigliano
Best Classical Vocal Performance
Hila Plitmann
CARTER: String Quartets Nos. 1 And 5
(Pacifica Quartet)
Best Chamber Music Performance
WEILL: Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahagonny James Conlon, conductor; Anthony Dean Griffey, Patti LuPone & Audra McDonald; Fred Vogler, producer (Donnie Ray Albert, John Easterlin, Steven Humes, Mel Ulrich & Robert Wörle; Los Angeles Opera Chorus; Los Angeles Opera Orchestra) Best Classical Album
Best Opera Recording
Spotless Rose: Hymns To The Virgin Mary
(Charles Bruffy, conductor; Phoenix Chorale)
On January 27, Naxos releases the latest recording by Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy®, and Grawemeyer winner John Corigliano, Symphony No. 3, ‘Circus Maximus’ (Naxos 8559601). Scored for a large concert band encircling the audience, the work is performed here by the University of Texas Wind Ensemble, led by Jerry Junkin. The recording also features Corigliano’s 1979 band work Gazebo Dances, inspired by “the pavilions often seen on village greens in towns throughout the countryside, where public band concerts are given on summer evenings”.
Recently nominated for a Grammy® Award in the category of Best Composition for Mr. Tambourine Man,
Mr. Corigliano has written:
“For the past three decades I have started the compositional process by building a shape, or architecture, before coming up with any musical material. In this case, the shape was influenced by a desire to write a piece in which the entire work is conceived spatially. But I started simply wondering what dramatic premise would justify the encirclement of the audience by musicians, so that they were in the center of an arena. This started my imagination going, and quite suddenly a title appeared in my mind: Circus Maximus.
The Circus Maximus of ancient Rome was a real place-the largest arena in the world. 300,000 spectators were entertained by chariot races, hunts, and battles … The shape of my Circus Maximus was built both to embody and to comment on this massive and glamorous barbarity. It utilizes a large concert band, and lasts approximately 35 minutes. The work is in eight sections that are played without pause.”
In January, Naxos also releases Vittorio Giannini: Piano Concerto and Symphony No. 4 (Naxos 8559352), featuring world-premiere recordings of his 1934 Piano Concerto and the Symphony No. 4. Giannini completed the latter in 1959, and it received its premiere in 1960 by the Juilliard Orchestra, led by Jean Morel. This recording features Daniel Spalding, founder and conductor of the Philadelphia Virtuosi, Romanian-born pianist Gabriela Imreh, and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.
The American composer and teacher Vittorio Giannini was born in Philadelphia in 1903. He studied the violin from an early age, won a scholarship to the Milan Conservatory, and, in 1925, entered The Juilliard School. In 1932, he won the first of three consecutive Prix de Rome. During the 1930s, several of his works-notably his operas Lucedia (1934) and The Scarlet Letter (1938) and his Requiem (1937)-enjoyed critical success in Europe. Giannini is, however, perhaps best-known for his popular song, “Tell me, Oh blue, blue Sky!”, a collaboration with poet Karl Flaster, who also provided the libretti for both of the aforementioned operas. When Giannini returned to the United States, he joined the teaching staff at Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music and also taught at Curtis. (Notably, Giannini was one of Corigliano’s teachers, possibly at Manhattan School of Music.) In 1963, he founded and became the first president of the North Carolina School of the Arts.
Considering many of his American contemporaries were exploring neo-classicism and twelve-tone composition, Giannini’s adherence to a late neo-Romantic style, more in line with Wagner and Puccini, was remarkable. Conductor Daniel Spalding notes that his search for his Piano Concerto required a great deal of detective work: “The first time I learned about the existence of Giannini’s Piano Concerto was about 10-11 years ago in 1997, while researching him in the vast and impressive Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music of the Philadelphia Free Library. At that time Giannini’s work wasn’t known much with the exception of his band music and his Concerto Grosso for strings, which I have conducted before … Out of one of the very few Giannini manuscripts that the library has, his obituary from The New York Times fell out and it happened to mention the existence of the Piano Concerto.”
Spalding’s search for the elusive Piano Concerto eventually took him to the libraries at Juilliard, Curtis, Manhattan School of Music, the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Library of Congress, among others, with little success. Finally, a librarian at the North Carolina School for the Arts (Gianinni’s last position) pointed him in the right direction, leading him to Wachovia Bank’s headquarters. After many months and calls, Spalding relates, “we were sitting in a large, icy cold office in Winston Salem, North Carolina, waiting anxiously to have the box brought up. And, as an added bonus, in a totally different box was a two-piano reduction, professionally copied in Rome and much more legible. I knew by then that the Piano Concerto, completed in 1934, was premiered in 1937 at Carnegie Hall in New York. Rosalyn Tureck was the pianist with the National Orchestral Association, [with] Leon Barzin conducting.”
Initial reviews for the work were positive; Francis Perkins, in the New York Herald Tribune, commented: “The opulence and expansiveness of Mr. Giannini’s score proved welcome.” Likewise, Robert Simon of The New Yorker enjoyed its “juicy melodies” and “healthy virtuoso bounce.”
This performance, featuring Spalding’s wife, pianist Gabriela Imreh, restores the original and extremely difficult octave passagework possibly edited out by Ms. Tureck due to “pencilled in tempo markings,” which, Spalding comments, “seem much faster than the composer’s own” and which might have been the choice of Maestro Barzin.
Garnering two nominations this year, the Naxos world premiere recording of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man picked up a Best Classical Contemporary Composition nomination for the Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy®, and Grawemeyer award-winning composer. The album, which features conductor JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic, also brought in a nomination for the recording’s soloist, Israeli-born soprano Hila Plitmann, who received a nomination for Best Classical Vocal Performance.
The Pacifica Quartet, recently named 2009 Ensemble of the Year by Musical America, was honored with a nomination for Best Chamber Music Performance for its acclaimed Naxos recording of Elliott Carter String Quartets Nos. 1 & 5. The second volume of this series is due for release in February 2009. Renowned producer Judith Sherman picked up a nomination for Producer of the Year for her work on the Carter String Quartets on Naxos and 4 additional albums.
A Choral Performance nomination went to chorus master Henryk Wojnarowski and conductor Antoni Wit for the Naxos recording of Karol Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater with the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir. A Best Engineered Album (Classical) nomination went to engineer John Newton for his work on the Naxos recording Respighi: Church Windows, Brazilian Impressions, Rossiniana, which featured conductor JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.
NAXOS OF AMERICA DISTRIBUTED LABEL ARTISTS NOMINATED FOR GRAMMYS®
Artists from British-based label Chandos received 5 nominations in multiple categories this year. Spotless Rose: Hymns to the Virgin Mary featuring the Phoenix Chorale, conductor Charles Bruffy, and produced by Blanton Alspaugh, was nominated for Best Classical Album (Awards to Artists and Producer). Additionally, Mr. Bruffy and the Phoenix Chorale were nominated in the Best Small Ensemble Performance category for this recording. Another Chandos choral recording, Rheinberger: Sacred Choral Works, conductor Charles Bruffy (with the Kansas City Chorale and Phoenix Bach Choir) earned nominations for Best Surround Sound Album and Best Choral Performance. Finally, a Best Orchestral Performance nomination went to conductor Rumon Gamba and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra for their Chandos recording D’Indy Orchestral Works, Volume 1.
A EuroArts production earned two nominations in the categories of Best Classical Album (Award to Artists and Producers) and Best Opera Recording (Award to Conductor, Producer, and Principal Soloists) for their DVD recording of Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of The City of Mahagonny. The performance featured conductor James Conlon, soloists Anthony Dean Griffey, Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald; the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra and Chorus; and was produced by Fred Vogler. This is the first Grammy® Awards in which DVD recordings of operas are eligible for nomination. Only the audio portion of the DVD is considered in the nominating process.
Also in the category of Best Opera Recording nominations went to conductors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs for their CPO recording of Jean Baptiste Lully’s Psyché with the Boston Early Music Festival (Mr. O’Dette and Mr. Stubbs also were nominated last year for their CPO recording of Jean Baptiste Lully’s Thésée with the Boston Early Music Festival).
Renowned Italian conductor and Baroque-specialist, Rinaldo Alessandrini was nominated for his Naïve classique recording of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo.
Finally, violinist Elmar Oliveira earned a nomination for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra for his Artek recording of Violin Concertos by Ernst Bloch and Benjamin Lees with John McLaughlin Williams conducting the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine.
“Ordinarily, when composing a piece, first I plan its shape. But I’d already completed half of A Dylan Thomas Trilogy before I realized what it should be-a memory play in the form of an oratorio-and it was only 40 years after I first encountered Thomas’s poetry that I completed it. It has been a long and serendipitous journey. Thomas’s poems have reappeared in my life precisely when they have felt most autobiographical, and just when I needed to write exactly the music they have evoked.” -John Corigliano
On October 28, Naxos releases the world-premiere recording of John Corigliano’s A Dylan Thomas Trilogy (Naxos 8559394), performed by the Nashville Symphony and its Music Advisor Leonard Slatkin. Also featured are the Nashville Symphony Chorus (George Mabry, Chorus Director), renowned British baritone Sir Thomas Allen, Canadian tenor John Tessier, and boy soprano Ty Jackson.
The genesis of this work began in 1959, when the composer, then a senior at Columbia University, first encountered Thomas’ poetry. He called it a “revelation” and composed the first of several settings in the following year using the text of Fern Hill. (The original version was for mezzo-soprano, chorus, and orchestra, but as the work morphed to reflect “the three stages of man,” Corigliano recast the mezzo-soprano solo for boy soprano.) In 1969, Charles Wadsworth of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center asked Corigliano to write a work for the Society’s opening season. He returned to Dylan Thomas, this time setting the bittersweet Poem in October, inspired by the poet’s 30th birthday. This time, the narrator’s voice was that of a tenor, accompanied by flute, oboe, clarinet, string quartet, and harpsichord.
In 1975, Corigliano again revisited Thomas’ poems while dealing with complex professional and personal issues. His discovery of Poem on his Birthday, in which the poet’s 35th year “is not celebrated but ‘spurned,” was an eerie reflection of his own struggles. Unlike the bel canto vocalism of Fern Hill and Poem in October, Poem on his Birthday needed to reflect the character’s midlife crisis. Scored for a baritone and full orchestra and chorus, Corigliano incorporates a broad spectrum of musical styles, “dreaming up an array of sounds (sea winds, bird calls, ghost cries) deciding on their precise shape first, their notation later.” In 1976, the newly-complete Dylan Thomas Trilogy received its premiere in Washington National Cathedral.
Twenty years later, and more at peace with his life, Corigliano asked Maestro Leonard Slatkin if he could finish the trilogy, which no longer felt complete. For the composer the oratorio was about a man “interpreting … his future through his past”; Fern Hill and Poem in October, therefore, needed to be recast to appear as memories rather than actual events. Additionally, Corigliano needed another work to frame the quasi-operatic oratorio, and eventually settled on Author’s Prologue, Thomas’s introduction to Collected Poems. The newly recast oratorio begins with baritone, chorus, and orchestra, presenting the first 51 lines of text from Author’s Prologue (Part I). Fern Hill, scored for chamber choir, orchestra, and boy soprano, follows. The baritone soloist then reappears with the chorus in Part II of Author’s Prologue, preparing the audience for the pastoral Poem in October (also rescored for chamber orchestra). The work concludes with Poem on his Birthday.
John Corigliano, among the most honored composers in the United States, was awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Symphony No. 2. In March 2000, his third film score, for The Red Violin, won the Academy Award (”Oscar.”) Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1, an impassioned response to the AIDS crisis, won the 1991 Grawemeyer Award for Best New Orchestral Composition; the Chicago Symphony’s recording of it won Grammy® Awards for Best New Composition and Best Orchestral Performance, and it has been played by over 150 different orchestras. A Distinguished Professor of Music at the City University of New York, Corigliano was named in 1991 to the faculty of The Juilliard School and to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an organization of American’s most prominent artists, sculptors, architects, writers, and composers. Commissioned by The Metropolitan Opera, where it premiered in December 1991, Corigliano’s “grand opera buffa,” The Ghosts of Versailles, sold out two Met engagements in 1991 and 1994, as well as its 1995 production at the Chicago Lyric Opera. It is due for another Met revival in the ‘09-’10 season. Corigliano’s recent works include 2004’s Circus Maximus: Symphony No. 3, for multiple wind ensembles, and Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (‘The Red Violin’), released by Sony in December 2007, with Marin Alsop leading soloist Joshua Bell and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Corigliano’s catalogue includes three symphonies, seven concerti (for violin, flute, clarinet, oboe, guitar, percussion, and piano), numerous shorter works for orchestra, and an extensive catalogue of chamber works, recorded on major labels. His music is published exclusively by G. Schirmer, Inc.
Leonard Slatkin was appointed Music Director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 2008, after completing his 12th and final season as Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra. The distinguished American conductor continues as Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Music Advisor to the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, and Conductor Laureate of the Saint Louis Symphony, of which he was Music Director for 17 seasons. He has served as Festival Director of the Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom Festival (1990-1999), Principal Guest Conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra (1997-2000), Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (2000-2004), and Principal Guest Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl (2004-2007). Mr. Slatkin’s many recordings have won seven Grammy® awards. He is the recipient of honors that include the 2003 National Medal of Arts, the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, the American Symphony Orchestra League’s Gold Baton for service to American music, ASCAP awards with both the National and Saint Louis symphonies, honorary doctorates from Juilliard, Indiana University, and the University of Missouri, and the Declaration of Honour in Silver from the Austrian ambassador to the U.S. for outstanding contributions to cultural relations.
Sir Thomas Allen is an established star of the great opera houses of the world. At the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden-where, in 2006, he celebrated the 35th anniversary of his début with the company-he has sung over 40 roles. In 2006, he also celebrated the 25th anniversary of his début at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. A regular guest at the world’s great opera houses, he is particularly acclaimed for his Billy Budd, Pelléas, Eugene Onegin, Ulisse, and Beckmesser, as well as the great Mozart roles of Count Almaviva, Don Alfonso, Papageno, Guglielmo, and Don Giovanni. Equally renowned on the concert stage, Sir Allen has appeared with many of the world’s great orchestras and conductors. He has recorded with distinguished names rhat include Solti, Levine, Marriner, Haitink, Rattle, Sawallisch and Muti. In the New Year’s Honours of 1989, he was created a Commander of the British Empire, and in the 1999 Queen’s Birthday Honours, he was made a Knight Bachelor.
On the international stages of opera, concert, and recital, Canadian tenor John Tessier has gained attention and praise for the beauty and honesty of his voice and his refined style and artistic versatility in the lyric tenor repertoire. He has performed with the major orchestras of Canada and the U.S., as well as in opera house throughout Canada, the U.S., and Europe.
12-year-old Ty Jackson has performed with the Nashville Symphony on numerous occasions, including a recent recording of George Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess. He is a member of the Nashville Boy Choir at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music.
Led by Music Advisor Leonard Slatkin, incoming Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero, and President and CEO Alan D. Valentine, the Grammy® Award-winning Nashville Symphony has a growing international reputation for its recordings and innovative programming. With 140 performances annually, the 84-member ensemble is an arts leader in Nashville and beyond, offering a broad range of pops and jazz concerts, special events, children’s concerts, and community outreach programs.
For over 40 years, the Nashville Symphony Chorus has regularly presented significant works from the classical choral repertoire, from Baroque music to contemporary. During George Mabry’s 10-year tenure as Chorus Director, the Chorus has also been featured in three CDs: Celebration in Song, a collection of sacred music recorded in 2000; Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, recorded on the Naxos label (8.557060) in 2003; and Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, released on Decca in 2006. A further Nashville Symphony recording with the Chorus is in progress with Naxos: Gian Carlo Menotti’s My Christmas, a cantata with male chorus to be coupled with Menotti’s popular opera Amahl and the Night Visitors.
“The fierce diversity of the tracks on this compilation is reflective of 20th century music as a whole, with its staggering range of innovation and expression. Discerning listeners will note the presence of such familiar touchstones as minimalism, serialism and polystylism, but there is nothing programmatic about their application in these pieces. The dissonant modernism in the third movement to Gloria Coates’ Symphony No. 15 is worlds away from the limpid warmth of Charles Wuorinen’s Renaissance-inspired Josquiniana. The angular contours conjured in John Corigliano’s A Black November Turkey find distinct counterpoint in the adagio of William Bolcom’s serene yet stealthily subversive Cello Sonata. José Serebrier demonstrates expressive melodic grace in his Fantasia for strings while Joan Tower marshals powerful rhythmic forces to dramatic effect in her aptly titled Tambor. The hard, trance-inducing repetition of Frederic Rzewski’s Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues is contrasted with the dark hued introspection of John Harbison’s
Piano Trio No. 1.”
-Dean Brierly
On August 26, Naxos of America releases Class of ‘38 (Naxos 8572087), a two-disc set of works by eight of America’s most compelling living composers: William Bolcom (Cello Sonata; II. Adagio semplice);
Gloria Coates (Symphony No. 15; III. What are the stars?); John Corigliano (A Black November Turkey); John Harbison (Trio, 1968); Frederic Rzewski (Four American Ballads: No. 4 Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues); José Serebrier (Fantasia for strings); Joan Tower (Tambor), and Charles Wuorinen (from Josquiniana). The second bonus disc contains podcast interviews with Naxos’ Raymond Bisha and composers Joan Tower, William Bolcom, John Corigliano, Charles Wuorinen, John Harbison, and José Serebrier.
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An interview with Grammy-winning composer John Corigliano about his monumental piece for wind band, Circus Maximus. In this interview, the composer talks about writing this work, how he approaches composition, and why he especially enjoyed writing music for band.
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