Bamberger Symphoniker Bollon - Symphonic Poems 2 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Groundbreaking new-music sextet Eighth Blackbird, winners of four Grammy Awards for their previous Cedille Records albums, are heard in the world-premiere recording of a collaborative, all-instrumental program of intensely rhythmic works written expressly for the Chicago-based ensemble by the founders of the celebrated Bang on a Can composers collective. Each piece on Singing in the Dead of Night takes it's name from Paul McCartney's lyrics to The Beatles song InchBlackbirdInch - but this music exists in another realm altogether. Pulitzer Prize winner Julia Wolfe's title track conjures a dark, silent solitude from which creative inspiration emerges. Michael Gordon's music melds Inchthe nervous brilliance of free jazz and the intransigence of classical modernismInch (The New Yorker). In Inchthe light of the dark,Inch he evokes the wild spontaneity of an uninhibited, late-night jam session. Pulitzer Prize winner David Lang's three-movement Inchthese broken wings,Inch a Inchglamorously beautiful suiteInch (The Guardian), takes flight via Eighth Blackbird's boundless stamina and high-voltage virtuosity. Eighth Blackbird sequences the component pieces in the unconventional, composer-approved concert order they've employed since the collaborative work's 2008 premiere They play the Gordon and Wolfe works in between movements of the Lang, whose piece thus frames the program.

Before the Austro-Hungarian composer Carl Goldmark conquered the international concert halls and opera houses with his Ländliche Hochzeit and Queen of Sheba, he initially attracted attention with some chamber compositions. When his overture after the drama Sakuntula by the great Indian poet Kâlidâsa then celebrated it's premiere in Vienna in December 1865, the news of this masterfully designed, tonally beautiful music spread like wildfire beyond his home terrain. In view of this trailblazing success it is not surprising that Goldmark repeatedly returned to the overture form during the course of the next twenty-five years or so. Examples here include his reflections on the tragedies involving Penthesilea, the Queen of the Amazons (after Heinrich von Kleist), and the Greek poetess Sappho (after Franz Grillparzer) in one-movement works that may very much be termed variants of the symphonic poem. The three female protagonists of Goldmark's overtures are heard here along with his two Scherzos for Orchestra - works in which the composer reveals his flirtatious side.

Famous Symphonic Poems 2 / Various - Famous Symphonic Poems Vol. 2 [COMPACT DISCS] date 06/21/1996