Dausgaard Seattle Symphony - Also Sprach Zarathustra - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

It is often said that Elliott Carter is the most European of all American composers. Without a doubt, the New York-born composer is one of the most interesting personalities of the New Music scene in the USA. His wide-ranging compositional output is complex, filled with philosophical and poetic allusions that range from orchestral and chamber music, solo instrumental and vocal pieces to his first opera, which he first wrote at the age of 90. He wrote his compositions from his head, without using any instruments, and many of his works were only heard at the premiere. For his 100th birthday, the Sonatina for oboe and harpsichord was premiered by Heinz Holliger and Peter Salomon and has now been recorded for the first time on GENUIN. With this recording, the Swiss Chamber Soloists honors the rich oeuvre of Elliot Carter - music that is full of elegance and transparency.

Zarathustra, a mouthpiece for Nietzsche, took himself to the mountains, staying there for ten years in solitude. Then, one morning, he arose and addressed the Sun, seeking his blessing, as he proposes to descend once more among men to impart to them his wisdom, setting as the Sun sets and pouring out to mankind his accumulated understanding. The complex process of the tone poem takes Zarathustra from the splendor of sunrise through a rejection of those who look to the past, to longing, joys and passions. He turns from satiety and despair, in the funeral song, and finds no comfort in science. Falling as one dead, he is revived and finds joy in the dance of laughter, in which all human aspirations may be combined. Night comes and the song of the watcher, as midnight renews it's eternal enigma. The opera Salome, based on Oscar Wilde's play, was first staged in Dresden in 1905 and won immediate favor, although the censors in Vienna prevented it's performance until 1918. Salome's dance, in return for which she demands from Herod the head of John the Baptist, was, as Strauss suggested, the dance of a chaste oriental princess, to be performed with the most simple and restrained gestures. His wishes have not always been respected in the theatre. Der Rosenkavalier, with a libretto by Hugo von Hoffmannsthal, was completed in 1910 and staged in Dresden the following year. The drama centres on the Marschallin and her unselfish renunciation of her young lover Oktavian in a work that seems filled with bitter-sweet nostalgia, a feeling that is perceptible in the waltz sequence from the opera that Strauss arranged in 1944, to which he added further thematic development. Nevertheless the concert version must make much of it's effect in reminding us of the opera itself. The Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra has benefited considerably from the work of it's distinguished conductors. These in

M. Charpentier - Messe Des Morts-Niqu [COMPACT DISCS] date 05/01/1995