After Reading Shakespeare (2007)

Matt Haimovitz has devoted a large part of his distinguished career to playing and promoting the music of his time, often by young composers. On this disc, he turns to music by three older American composers, all of whom have won the Pulitzer Prize. Two of the pieces are based on literary texts. Ned Rorem's After Reading Shakespeare (1980) is a suite whose movements are evocations of characters from the plays or brief quotes from the sonnets. Rorem writes idiomatically and passionately for the cello. It's easy to hear the ... Read More

Matt Haimovitz has devoted a large part of his distinguished career to playing and promoting the music of his time, often by young composers. On this disc, he turns to music by three older American composers, all of whom have won the Pulitzer Prize. Two of the pieces are based on literary texts. Ned Rorem's After Reading Shakespeare (1980) is a suite whose movements are evocations of characters from the plays or brief quotes from the sonnets. Rorem writes idiomatically and passionately for the cello. It's easy to hear the connection between his brief, distinctively varied movements and the characters or texts they illuminate, but the music is fully independent of the literary references and would make an effective and attractive listening experience even if the movements were simply titled One through Nine. Paul Moravec and Lewis Spratlan are teaching composers whose work was not widely known before they were recognized with the Pulitzer, and Haimovitz commissioned both of the works on this disc.... Read Less