Canterbury Cathedral
Photo: Antony McCallum (WyrdLight.com) / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Step inside the 15th-century Three Tuns Inn, however, and a notice will remind you of the city’s Roman roots that are buried beneath the current street level; the Romans lived in Canterbury from c. 70 AD to c. 410 AD. At one nearby hotel, part of the foyer floor is constructed of glass so visitors can view part of the walls that defined a modest theatre, constructed around the same time as the Colosseum in Rome, and subsequently developed into a vast, four-storey amphitheatre. Down the road in Canterbury’s Roman Museum, the well-preserved mosaics of a domestic building are just one of the attractions.

For this blog, then, I thought I would move from wordy descriptions to six pieces of music that are redolent of the Roman way of life — from Julius Caesar to thundering chariots, delicate mosaics, Roman roads and stupendous arenas.

The Appian Way
Photo: Livioandronico2013 / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

“The Pines of the Appian Way — misty dawn on the Appian Way. The tragic landscape is guarded by solitary pines. Indistinctly, incessantly, the  rhythm of innumerable steps. To the poet’s fantasy appears a vision of past glories; trumpets blare, and the army of the Consul advances brilliantly in the grandeur of a newly risen sun toward the Sacred Way, mounting the Capitoline Hill in triumph.”

 
The Pines of the Appian Way (8.574013)

Roman Chariot
Photo: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

“I fell in love with one song, The Chariot, and continued to add songs one at a time until I had twelve. The poems themselves gave me direction, one that I hoped would be appropriate to Miss Dickinson’s lyrical expressive language.”

Here’s the text:

Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me —
The carriage held but just Ourselves
And Immortality

We slowly drove — He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too
For his civility —

We passed the School where Children played
Their lessons scarcely done —
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain —
We passed the Setting Sun —

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground —
The Roof was scarcely visible
The Cornice — but a mound

Since then — ‘tis centuries — but each
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity

The Chariot (8.559731)

Julius Caesar
Source: Musei Vaticani (Stato Città del Vaticano) / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Caesar sings his aria Va tacito e nascosto when he finds himself at the palace of Tolomeo, king of Egypt, who has just given Caesar a cool reception and whom Caesar views with suspicion. Accompanied by strings and horn, Caesar compares himself to a stealthy hunter carefully tracking his prey (Tolomeo). Here’s the English translation of the aria:

How silently, how slyly,
When once the scent is taken,
the huntsman tracks the spoor.

The traitor shrewd and wily,
ne’er lets his prey awaken
unless the snare be sure.

The role of Caesar was sung at the opera’s premiere by the celebrated alto castrato Senesino. Our recording features the voice of Jochen Kowalski (b. 1954), the noted Polish–born German counter-tenor. I suspect the original Caesar would have considered himself more of a heldentenor.

Va tacito e nascosto (C10213)

Medusa by Caravaggio
Source: Caravaggio / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

“Carlos Salzedo, the extraordinary harpist, was a member of the small group of modernists that surrounded Varèse and Ives in the 1920s and 1930s and has remained a memory which I cherish. His unusual developments in harp technique always seemed to me too infrequently explored in recent times. So in writing Mosaic, commissioned by the Nash Ensemble, I decided to explore many of his exciting inventions to recall his friendship in the early 1930s. The score is formed by many short mosaic-like tessera that I hope make one coordinated impression.”

Here’s the second half of the work.

Mosaic (8.559614)

The Chariot Race in the Circus Maximus
Source: Alfredo Tominz / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

“The Circus Maximus of ancient Rome was a real place. The largest arena in the world, it entertained over 300,000 spectators daily for nearly a thousand years. Chariot races, hunts and battles satisfied the Roman public’s need for grander and wilder amusement as the Empire declined. The parallels between the high decadence of Rome and our present time are obvious. Entertainment dominates our culture, and ever-more-extreme ‘reality’ shows dominate our entertainment. Many of us have become as bemused by the violence and humiliation that flood the 500-plus channels of our television screens as those mobs of imperial Rome who considered the devouring of human beings by starving lions just another Sunday show. The shape of Circus Maximus was built both to embody and comment on this massive and glamorous barbarity.

Circus Maximus, the sixth movement and the peak of the work incorporates all the other movements and is a carnival of sonoric activity. A band marching down the aisles counterpoints the onstage performers and the surrounding fanfares. Exuberant voices merge into chaos and a frenzy of overstatement.”

Circus Maximus (8.559601)

We return finally to Respighi and his take on the same subject. He preferred to title his symphonic sketch Circenses (think panem et circenses, as in the ‘bread and circuses’ of often bloody entertainment) and introduced it as follows:

“A threatening sky hangs over the Circus Maximus, but it is the people’s holiday. Ave Nero! The iron doors are unlocked, the strains of a religious song and the howling of wild beasts mingle in the air. The crowd comes to its feet in a frenzy. Unperturbed, the song of the martyrs gathers strength, conquers and then is drowned in the tumult.”

Circenses (8.574013)

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First up, red, for which I’ve chosen John Corigliano I’s Red Violin Concerto, in which the composer elaborates on music from his third film score, The Red Violin. This traces the history of a beautiful antique violin from its creation in Cremona, Italy, in 1681, where a legendary violin maker paints it with his dead wife’s blood to keep her memory alive, to an auction house in modern-day Montreal, where it draws the eye of an expert appraiser. Over the years between, the violin travels through four different countries, where it has a profound impact on all those who own it. Corigliano describes his structural approach to composing the score:

“The story of The Red Violin is perfect for a lover of the repertoire and the instrument. It spans three centuries in the life of a magnificent but haunted violin in its travels through time and space. A story this episodic needed to be tied together with a single musical idea. For this purpose I used the Baroque device of a chaconne: a repeated pattern of chords upon which the music is built. Against the chaconne chords I juxtaposed Anna’s theme, a lyrical yet intense melody representing the violin builder’s doomed wife. Then, from those elements, I wove a series of virtuosic etudes for the solo violin, which followed the instrument from country to country, century to century.”

A further three movements were subsequently added to this chaconne to produce a full-length concerto. We’ll hear the finale, described as follows by the composer:

“The fourth movement (Accelerando Finale), as the title suggests, is a rollicking race in which the opposed forces of soloist and orchestra vie with each other. They each accelerate at different times and speeds, providing a virtuoso climax befitting a last movement. Some other unusual techniques are used here: the violin (and orchestral strings) are asked to press so hard on their strings that there is no pitch at all, just a crunch. This percussive and unusual sound provides energy, especially during the races. A major theme from the film that was not used in the concert chaconne was that given to Moritz, the contemporary violin expert who discovers the mystery of the Red Violin. It is a sadly romantic theme, and becomes the lyrical counterpoint to the high spirits of this final movement. Near the end of the work, the original chaconne from the first movement comes back to complete the journey of this violin concerto.”

Accelerando Finale (8.559671)

I turned to the contemporary British composer Jonathan Dove for an orange reference, and to his three-song cycle Cut My Shadow. Premiered in 2011, Dove adopts the gritty realism of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) for his texts, which were translated by Gwynne Edwards. Lorca, a member of the Generation of 27, was executed in 1936 by nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War. His remains were never found, making these lines from the first song (Surprise) tragically prophetic:

He lay dead in the street
With a Knife in his heart
And no one knew him

The final Song of the Dry Orange Tree offers no respite from the pervading mood of real fear and a need for justice and liberation. The song pleads for freedom from anguish, and there is a hopeless sense of defeat and tiredness throughout. The accompaniment prods and interjects – ‘liberation’, when it comes, is swift. Dove maintains a constant unease and longing for a homeland in these songs.

 
Woodcutter,
Cut my shadow.
Free me from the anguish
Of seeing myself fruitless.

Oh! Why was I born among mirrors?
The day moves around me,
And the night reflects me
In each of its stars.

I want to live but not to see myself
And I shall dream
That my leaves and birds
Are turned into ants and hawks.

Woodcutter,
Cut my shadow.
Free me from the anguish
Of seeing myself fruitless.

Song of the Dry Orange Tree (8.573080)

The first movement of Jennifer Higdon’s 2-movement Piano Trio is titled Pale Yellow. Here’s how the American composer explains the concept of her work:

“Can music reflect colors and can colors be reflected in music? I have always been fascinated with the connection between painting and music. In my composing, I often picture colors as if I were spreading them on a canvas, except I do so with melodies, harmonies and through the peculiar sounds of the instruments themselves. The colors that I have chosen in both of the movement titles of my Piano Trio, Pale Yellow and Fiery Red, and in the music itself, reflect very different moods and energy levels, which I find fascinating, as it begs the question, can colors (in music, words and painting) actually convey a mood?”

You can decide for yourself as we listen to the first movement.

Pale Yellow (8.559298)

There are numerous green shoots in the catalogue, but I’ve gone for a piece by Percy Grainger to showcase the colour. Green Bushes is a passacaglia on an English folk-song collected by Cecil Sharp (1859-1924), the founding father of the folk-song revival in England. Originally scored for small orchestra in 1905-06, it was re-scored for larger forces in 1921, which is the version we’ll listen to here. The Green Bushes tune is heard almost constantly throughout, to which Grainger adds a multitude of original counter-melodies. The innovation of using folksong in passacaglia form was a first in British music and, so Grainger suggested, led Delius to write his Brigg Fair and Dance Rhapsodies in a similar mould.

Green Bushes (8.554263)

Capriccio in Blue by Polish composer Romuald Twardowski (b. 1930) was premiered in its orchestral version at the 1979 DoRe-Mi Festival in Łódź; it’s a national event promoting contemporary music for young people. Bearing the subtitle ‘George Gershwin in memoriam’, it’s one of two Twardowski works inspired by the great American composer (the other, written in 1986, is Symphonic Variations on a Theme by George Gershwin).

The piece opens with a lengthy cadenza for the soloist. Once the orchestra enters, one hears occasional harmonic flavouring and syncopated rhythms reminiscent of Gershwin, but the American’s influence comes most prominently to the fore in the lyrical theme that follows. But this is not faux-Gershwin; Twardowski’s originality is stamped on every bar, especially in the ensuing passage featuring unmissable syncopations. A jazzy lick for solo clarinet leads to a second lyrical idea, but the syncopations return. A second, shorter cadenza leads back to the opening material. This cross-pollination of two widely divergent composers and cultures results in something delightfully original, neither American nor Polish, but highly entertaining.

Capriccio in Blue (8.579031)

Staying on the jazz wavelength for the colour indigo, I’ve chosen one of the works that helped secure Duke Ellington’s name on the American jazz scene. For most of his long and illustrious career Duke Ellington was a major figure in the genre, and an active participant in the evolution of recordings spanning the years 1923 to 1973. By the early 1930s he was already established as a top bandleader, and celebrated both as an arranger and a composer in his own right. Always willing to adapt, Duke mirrored and often anticipated new directions and it is to this that we owe the existence of many of the great standards he left behind. Dating from 1930, here’s his best-selling Mood Indigo.

Mood Indigo (8.555017)

Mozart has the final word today with his song Das Veilchen (The Violet), written in Vienna in 1785. Here’s an English translation of the German poem by Goethe which Mozart set so beautifully, and colourfully, to music:

A little violet stood upon the meadow,
Lowly, humble, and unknown;
It was a dear little violet.
There came a young shepherdess
With a light step and a merry spirit
Along, along,
Along the meadow, and sang.

Ah! thinks the violet, if I only were
The most beautiful flower in nature,
Ah, only for a little while,
Until the darling had picked me
And pressed me to her bosom until I became faint,
Ah only, ah only
A quarter of an hour long!

Alas! but alas! the maiden came
And paid no heed to the little violet,
She trampled the poor violet.
It drooped and died and yet rejoiced:
And if I must die, yet I die
Through her, through her,
Yet I die at her feet.

Das Veilchen (8.557900-01)

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Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of The Little Mermaid, first published in 1837, has delighted generations of readers and been adapted to various media. Two examples are transformations into symphonic works that were written around the turn of the 20th century.

The Austrian composer Alexander Zemlinsky (1871–1942) completed his 40-minute symphonic fantasy Die Seejungfrau (The Mermaid) in 1903 (8.570240). First performed in 1905, with the composer conducting, it was well received by the audience. Unfortunately, critical attention focused largely on the work in the second half of the programme, Arnold Schoenberg’s symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande (8.557527). Sadly, Zemlinsky soon lost interest in his work and it languished in obscurity until many years after his death; happily, the work’s fine music is now much better known to audiences. The three movements closely follow the course of Andersen’s story. Here’s an extract from the second movement.

Eugen d’Albert (1864–1932), the Scottish-born German composer, was a titan of the keyboard and one of the greatest virtuosi of his age. A pupil of Liszt (who dubbed the young man ‘Albertus Magnus’) d’Albert was also devoted to composition; his output included nineteen operas which demonstrated the narrative excitement he could generate. His rarely performed Das Seejungfräulein (8.573110) is scored for soprano and orchestra. It was written in 1897 and intended for performance by d’Albert’s third wife, the singer Hermine Finck. It reveals a Wagnerian influence, with its theatrical self-confidence, skilful orchestration and strong, exciting themes. Cast in a single movement, here’s part of the central section.

From mermaids to sirens, more seductive and sinister, and to a symphonic poem written around the same time as the works already heard, but from the pen of Russian composer, Reinhold Glière (1875–1956). His symphonic poem Sirens (8.550898), completed in 1908, provides an evocative picture of the ripples and undulations surrounding the enchantresses that lured sailors to their doom.

Born in 1923, the American composer Ned Rorem composed his Flute Concerto (8.559278) in 2002 in response to a commission from the Philadelphia Orchestra, and partly to a perceived lack of repertoire for flute and large orchestra. Deciding on a title for the work was an additional challenge. Rorem wrote:

“The hardest part about composing a piece like this lies in finding an accurate title. “Suite” might have seem apt for a series of loosely related movements. “Six Pieces for Flute and Orchestra” could even be more precise. “Odyssey” was my first thought, when I’d planned to use descriptive subtitles from Homer. If I fall back on “Concerto”—which, over the centuries, has as many definitions as definers—it’s from sheer practicality.”

The work’s third movement, titled Sirens, is described by Rorem as an ambling succession of melodies and ripples.

Tony Banks (b. 1950), founder member of the rock band Genesis, conceived his SIX Pieces for Orchestra (8.572986) as six evocative songs without words which may evoke in the listener ideas of seduction, journey, hero, quest, decision and goal. Two of the pieces feature solo instruments—alto saxophone in Siren and violin in Blade—which mesh into Banks’s orchestral tapestry with bewitching effect. Here’s the closing section of Siren.

In his Circus Maximus (8.559601) American composer John Corigliano puts an intriguing interpretation onto the television screen as a seductress that beguiles us into keeping the set switched on. He draws a parallel between the entertainment industry of today’s available 500-plus channels and “ …the Circus Maximus of ancient Rome which was a real place—the largest arena in the world. 300,000 spectators were entertained by chariot races, hunts, and battles. The Roman need for grander and wilder amusement grew as its empire declined. The parallels between the high decadence of Rome and our present time are obvious.”

The work was conceived spatially, with the forces of a large concert band encircling the audience. In the second movement, Screen/Siren, a saxophone quartet and string bass call from the 2nd tier boxes in seductive inflections, while other instruments scattered around the hall (clarinet, piccolo, horns, trumpet) echo the calls.

Finally, and on the cusp of marking the centenary of his death next month, to Debussy’s 3-movement orchestral suite Nocturnes (8.570993), which was originally planned as a series of pieces for the famous Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. The final orchestral version was completed in 1900. The third movement, Sirènes (Sirens) paints a picture of the sea in full majesty, beauty and variety, foreshadowing his symphonic sketches La mer. Portraying their mythological role in luring sailors to their doom, the song of the Sirens is hauntingly represented by a wordless female chorus.

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War is a significant spoiler of liberty; we need little reminder of that today. Here’s a musical throw-back to the First World War: the Flags of Freedom March (8.559396) was one of Sousa’s World War I efforts in support of the sale of World War I Liberty Bonds. Written in 1918, it skilfully combines the national airs of Belgium, Italy, France, Great Britain and America. And if you need a bit of help unravelling the tunes, you can always consult the Naxos complete collection of National Anthems of the World (8.201001)!

It wasn’t long, of course, before history was repeating itself and composers were again doing their artistic bit in the defence of freedom against the tyranny of World War II. The American composer Morton Gould’s (1913–1996) versatility was reflected in his wide-ranging output that integrated jazz, blues, gospel, country-and-western and folk elements into masterfully orchestrated and imaginatively conceived compositions. Here’s his Fanfare for Freedom (8.572629) which, like Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, was commissioned by the conductor Eugene Goossens and served as a patriotic concert-opener during the Second World War.

Fellow American Randall Thompson (1899–1984) wrote The Testament of Freedom (9.81010) around the same time and against the same backcloth as Gould’s short curtain-raiser. It was written to celebrate the bicentennial of the birth of the American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson and was originally scored for men’s chorus and piano. Here’s an extract from the first movement, in an arrangement Thompson subsequently made for chorus and orchestra. The text is taken from Jefferson’s A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774):

The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them.

The Flagello brothers combined their remarkable musical talents in Passion of Martin Luther King (8.112065): Nicolas (1928–1994) composed the work and conducts on this recording; Ezio (1931–2009) is the rich bass-baritone soloist. Nicolas Flagello had long admired Martin Luther King’s dedication to the ideals of human justice and brotherhood and was deeply moved by the influential black leader’s assassination in April 1968. The comment made by Pope Paul VI, upon learning of King’s sudden martyrdom, ‘I liken the life of this man to the life of our Lord,’ immediately galvanised Nicolas’ creative energy. The result was Passion of Martin Luther King. Flagello decided to combine excerpts from the speeches of the slain civil rights leader in alternation with the Latin liturgical texts, so as to suggest King as a latter-day embodiment of Jesus Christ. He ended the work with a heartfelt setting of a portion of King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. Here’s part of that setting.

Based on the texts of songs by Bob Dylan, John Corigliano wrote his Mr Tambourine Man (8.559331) for voice and piano in 2000. He later orchestrated the 7-movement, 35-minute work. Dylan’s award of the Nobel Prize for Literature last year underscored the impact the songs made in the 1960s. Corigliano described the artistic conception of his work:

“A colleague suggested that I look into the poetry of the songs of Bob Dylan. Having not yet listened to the songs, I decided to send away for the texts only…and found many of them to be every bit as beautiful and as immediate as I had heard—and surprisingly well-suited to my own musical language…these would be in no way arrangements, or variations, or in any way derivations of the music of the original songs, which I decided to not hear before the cycle was complete…I intended to treat the Dylan lyrics as the poems I found them to be.”

The five songs at the core of the cycle trace a journey of emotional and civic maturation, from the innocence of Clothes Line through the beginnings of awareness of a wider world (Blowin’ in the Wind) through the political fury of Masters of War, to a premonition of an apocalyptic future (All Along the Watchtower), culminating in a vision of a liberating victory of ideas (Chimes of Freedom.) Here’s the powerful closing section of that final song:

Tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake
Tolling for the luckless, the abandoned an’ forsaked
Tolling for the outcast, burnin’ constantly at stake
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing…

Tolling for the deaf an’ blind, tolling for the mute
Tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute…

Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed…
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

(Words by Bob Dylan. Copyright © 1964 Warner Brothers, Inc. Copyright renewed 1992 Special Rider Music.
International copyright secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission of Special Rider Music.)

We end with Michael Tippett’s oratorio A Child of Our Time (8.557570). Although the work was inspired by an incident which took place on the cusp of World War II, in Paris in 1938, Tippet inserts arrangements of negro spirituals throughout the piece, rather in the way J. S. Bach inserted reflective chorales in his passion settings. Our final flag for freedom from oppression is one of those interludes: Tippet’s arrangement of Go down, Moses.

Go down, Moses, ’way down in Egypt land;
Tell old Pharaoh, to let my people go.

When Israel was in Egypt’s land,
Let my people go.
Oppressed so hard they could not stand
Let my people go.

“Thus spake the Lord”, bold Moses said,
“Let my people go.
If not, I’ll smite your first-born dead.
Let my people go.”

Go down, Moses, ’way down in Egypt land;
Tell old Pharaoh, to let my people go.

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The circle is no longer used in modern staff notation, but the notion of circles in music, how they can be represented in the laying out of a composition, continues to engage composers. Rondo form, for example, in which the music digresses but constantly comes back to where it started, continues to attract. This week’s blog homes in on a selection of works that use, shall we say, ‘circular’ musical ideas.

Anthony Girard (b. 1959) wrote a set of 24 preludes for piano which explore an inner journey, and which he titled Le cercle de la vie (The Circle of Life) (8.572993). The 2 sets of 12 preludes each depict an inner journey passing through different and opposing states of mind. If the sets were laid out on a circle, the North and South poles in the first set would be Joy (Prelude 1) and Sorrow (Prelude 7), with east and west representing Anxiety (Prelude 4) and Tranquillity (Prelude 10). Here you can listen to the corresponding stages in the second set:

Light (Prelude 13)
Darkness (Prelude 19)
Dream (Prelude 16)
Reality (Prelude 22)

Margaret Brouwer (b. 1940) wrote her 3-movement concerto Aurolucent Circles (8.559250) for the distinguished percussionist, Evelyn Glennie. She manufactured the word aurolucent by blending the idea of the lucent percussion sounds she uses in the work with the way sounds arc around the physical performance space, reminiscent of the aurora borealis. You can hear this arcing effect in sections of the central movement. Here’s an excerpt.

Round Time (8.572981) by Luis Tinoco (b. 1969) stands on points around the circle, looking inwards towards the centre point. The composer’s process of connecting the work’s starkly contrasting atmospheres is explained as follows:

Each of these seems to evolve in its own way and is linked to the others in the same way as the different shots in a TV control room are connected: several cameras film the same programme but from different angles, and the producer moves from shot to shot to bring a particular rhythm to the continuous flow of images. Here the composer chooses from a number of different layers of sound, producing a kaleidoscopic effect of ambiances that seem to come and go in a circular manner.

Christopher Rouse’s (b. 1949) intriguingly titled Wolf Rounds (8.572439) presents ‘circular’, or repetitive ideas that repeat over and over until metamorphosing to a new idea, which is then similarly repeated until becoming yet another. The episodes are of different lengths, so their repeated overlaps produce a constantly changing sonic landscape. But what about the Wolf in the title? The composer explains:

“My first impulse was to entitle the work Loops as it seemed to me that this was an accurate description of the processes involved in composing the piece. However, this title seemed a bit prosaic. The word ‘loops’, though, led me to think of the Latin word lupus, which means ‘wolf’. I was put in mind of the way in which wolves circle their prey, and these predatory rounds of course reminded me of the circular nature of my musical presentation. Thus the final title: Wolf Rounds.”

The opening section sets the scene.

It’s a short hop from a circle to a circus, so we’ll end with a couple of contrasting pieces that were written with the circular entertainment zone in mind.

The first is John Corigliano’s (b. 1938) Symphony No. 3 (8.559601), subtitled Circus Maximus, ancient Rome’s notorious setting for entertaining masses in the round with displays that were by turn spectacular and brutal. What goes around comes around. The composer explains the ancient and modern relationship in his symphony:

“The parallels between the high decadence of Rome and our present time are obvious. Entertainment dominates our culture, and ever-more-extreme ‘reality’ shows dominate our entertainment. Many of us have become as bemused by the violence and humiliation that flood the 500-plus channels of our television screens as those mobs of imperial Rome who considered the devouring of human beings by starving lions just another Sunday show. The shape of Circus Maximus was built both to embody and comment on this massive and glamorous barbarity.”

Here’s the opening of the sixth section, itself headed Circus Maximus.

To bow out today, we turn to Stravinsky and to the last piece he wrote for piano. It was commissioned, improbably, by the Barnum and Bailey circus troupe, as music to accompany a ballet of young elephants: his Circus Polka (8.570377). The legendary choreographer George Balanchine approached Stravinsky with the commission. Apparently, the conversation went something like this:

“I wondered if you’d like to do a little ballet with me, a polka perhaps?”
“For Whom?”
“For some elephants.”
“…How old?”
“Very young.”
“…”
“…?”
“All right… If they are very young elephants, I will do it.”.

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View album details of John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1 at naxos.com
Catalogue No.: 8.559782

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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)

Best Small Ensemble Performance

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On January 27, Naxos releases the latest recording by Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy®, and Grawemeyer winner John Corigliano, Symphony No. 3, ‘Circus Maximus’ (Naxos 8559601).

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.

The post New in January from Naxos American Classics: Works by John Corigliano and Vittorio Giannini appeared first on The Naxos Blog.

The Recording Academy® honored artists from labels Naxos, Chandos, EuroArts, CPO, Naïve classique and Artek-with a combined 15 nominations across 11 categories this year, thus capturing 23% of the available classical category nominations. The 51st Annual Grammy® Awards will be announced on February 8, 2009.

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.

The post Artists from Naxos of America Family of Distributed Labels Honored with 15 GRAMMY Award Nominations appeared first on The Naxos Blog.