Like Steve Reich and Philip Glass, John Adams has developed minimalism into a more expressive and versatile language than it promised in the 1970s, when pattern music was at its height but also at its most rigorous and severe. Judging from the works on this 2004 Naxos release, Adams has progressed from the limitations of static repetition, ...
The Heroes Symphony of Philip Glass is one of two symphonies he wrote based on albums by David Bowie (the other is the Low Symphony). This recording by Marin Alsop, one of Britain's (and now America's) most talked-about conductors, suggests that the idea has been successful enough to move beyond the usual Glass orbit and into conventional ...
Naxos' American Classics series has here gotten around to two Philip Glass symphonies not long after their premiere recordings on Nonesuch. Philip Glass: Symphonies No. 2 and 3 combines two works from the 1990s that are more or less not in the vein that made Glass popular, which is a good thing if the insistent patterning and repetition of his ...
For his Double Violin Concerto (1997) Mark O'Connor temporarily set aside his popular "Appalachian" mode (adequately represented in the last three pieces here), and turned his attention to the blues and jazz -- or at least the aspects of these genres he had absorbed and accepted as fair game for "classicizing." Considering the Texas swing and ...
Recorded on January 18 and 19, 2004, at Watford Colosseum with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, these performances of Brahms' Symphony No. 1 and Tragic and Academic Festival Overtures are Marin Alsop's first Brahms recording. For that matter, these are also Alsop's first recordings of standard repertoire works. Heretofore, Alsop has conducted ...
Unlike his insouciant, cabaret-styled music for The Threepenny Opera, Kurt Weill's Symphony No. 1 (1921) and his Symphony No. 2 (1933-1934) seem more dutifully observant of the European Classical tradition and perhaps a little straight-jacketed by formal obligations. This is not to say that these symphonic essays are dull or artificial -- far from ...
Long familiar as a concert suite, Béla Bartók's one-act ballet The Miraculous Mandarin (1926) is now more frequently recorded in its entirety, thanks to the CD's abundant playing time; the full piece easily fits with additional works. This 2004 release from Naxos offers not only the complete Mandarin, but also the rambunctious Dance Suite (1923) ...
The title of the Red Violin Concerto by John Corigliano may suggest to some listeners that they're getting an expanded version of the composer's music from the successful film, which grew from a recurring motif in the film soundtrack itself to the closely related The Red Violin: Chaconne for Violin and Orchestra. This is not exactly true; the last ...
While Gil Shaham's interpretation of Barber's violin concerto may have been more soulful, or David Zinman's interpretation of his Music for a Scene From Shelley more dramatic, no one would say that James Buswell's interpretation of the concerto is anything less than heartfelt or that Marin Alsop's interpretation of the Shelley music is anything ...
Roughly passionate and intensely dedicated, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg's disc of recordings of the violin concertos of Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Clarice Assad accompanied by Marin Alsop and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra on the violinist's own NSS label is ultimately persuasive if not always altogether convincing. Salerno-Sonnenberg is as volatile and ...
One of the most popular of modern choral works, Carl Orff's Carmina Burana has found its way into many collections just on the strength of its foreboding opening, "O Fortuna." Because this work is well represented in all the major labels' catalogs, one has a wide array of performances to choose from; while several are excellent, it is difficult to ...
While an improvement over her earlier recording of Brahms' First Symphony, American conductor Marin Alsop's new recording of Brahms' Second is still nothing to write home about. As before, the London Philharmonic plays superlatively, with strong strings, blended winds, and warm brass and, as before, Alsop conducts superbly, with a cogent ensemble, ...
Even though he was widely celebrated as one of the most important American musicians of the twentieth century, Leonard Bernstein has already become the subject of a critical reassessment and cautious revival in the early twenty first. This 2005 Naxos CD presents three of Bernstein's appealing but underplayed and under-appreciated concert works, ...
Reviews of Marin Alsop's recordings of Brahms' symphonies for Naxos have been mixed, partly because of her variable tempos and occasionally lax handling of important features in the music, but also for the London Philharmonic Orchestra's routine playing and Naxos' dull sound quality, all factors that make some critics recommend past classics that ...
The music of composer Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996) is perhaps the perfect antidote for today's overstimulated and overstressed society: endlessly circular wisps of melody, gentle string harmonics, and an intelligently slow and steady pace. Most of his fellow Japanese contemporaries, including Akira Ifukube and Yuzo Toyama, wrote in a style much more ...
Undoubtedly one of the most technically accomplished composers of the post-modernist generation, Michael Daugherty is famed for his suggestive tone painting, brilliant orchestration, and lively rhythms, and his works for orchestra are frequently provocative in their subject matter. Yet Daugherty's forays into popular culture sometimes stray too ...
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