Learn more about this release on the Naxos Classical Spotlight podcast!

Duo Duel, a concerto for 2 percussion and orchestra, is dedicated to the two percussionists who inspired it, Svet Stoyanov and Matthew Strauss. The work is in one continuous movement, but the pacing of the individual sections is: slow, fast, slow, fast-cadenza (one of the fastest cadenzas ever written for percussionists), fast (with dueling timpani).

The soloists sometimes play together, and sometimes they “duel” their way through the music. There is some seriously high-speed playing in this concerto, so don’t blink – you might miss something!

The Concerto for Orchestra is truly a concerto in that it requires virtuosity from the principal players, the individual sections and the entire orchestra. The first movement was the last to be composed. It took writing the other four movements to create a clear picture of what was needed to start this virtuosic tour-de-force. The second movement was written next, inspired by the string sound of The Philadelphia Orchestra. The third movement was written first, and it is this movement that allows each principal player a solo, before moving into section solos. The fourth movement is a tribute to rhythm, and the percussion section of the orchestra. The fifth movement, which begins with the entrance of the violins, highlights the entire orchestra.

Apollo Chamber Players’ sixth commercial album, MoonStrike, is a universal celebration of storytelling, space and folk song, realized through new works by Jennifer Higdon, Jerod Tate, and Pierre Jalbert. Higdon’s In the Shadow of the Mountain (2020) is inspired by her upbringing in the Great Smoky Mountains and incorporates the sounds and colors of the area. Next is the title work, Emmy-winning Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s multidisciplinary MoonStrike (2019), which honors the Apollo space program through American Indian moon legends as narrated by astronaut John Herrington, the first Native American to fly in space. French-Canadian composer Pierre Jalbert’s L’esprit du Nord (“Spirit of the North”) (2019) is a three-movement work that fuses three of his culture’s folk songs with his unique, contemporary musical language.

Cold Mountain, composed by Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Jennifer Higdon, set to a libretto by Gene Scheer and based on a 1997 National Book Award-winning novel by Charles Frazier, is one of the three operas that will be released in the American Opera Series in 2016. It received its world premiere at The Santa Fe Opera on August 1, 2015 where it was performed by The Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, conducted by Miguel Hart-Bedoya and recorded live for this SACD album. It was co-commissioned by and is a co-production with both Opera Philadelphia and the Minnesota Opera.

"After years of searching for a story that would be the focus of my first opera, I read the first several pages of Charles Frazier's award-winning Cold Mountain and realized this was it. [...] Looking to confirm my suspicion, I checked and discovered that the [Higdon] family farm was a mere 60 miles, as the crow flies, from Cold Mountain. Writing this opera would be a recollection of the landscape of my formative years... a familiarity that I would welcome in a new-to-me genre." - Jennifer Higdon

REVIEW:

The characters are allowed to sing in natural (even if not 100 percent authentic Southern accents), and the leads, Nathan Gunn as the Confederate deserter Inman and Isabel Leonard as his self-reliant beloved Ada Monroe, are dramatically convincing. A worthwhile operatic entry in the long line of American vocal works descending from Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land.

– All Music Guide

[Higdon's] preoccupation with an elaborate tapestry of string textures [in An Exaltation of Larks], replicating the sounds of the natural world, fits in nicely with the proclivities of the Lark players. (...) The Higdon magic works! (...) [ Scenes from the Poet's Dreams,] explores a series of dream landscapes that allow the composer and the Lark Quartet to apply a variety of choice string techniques and sounds, in the interest of making the music more luminous. (...) Light Refracted...is a two-movement design of the utmost simplicity, replicating the process by which we take in our “inner Light” from our influences, and then project it out to the world. A slow drawing-inward that gradually gains momentum, then a fast-moving, energetic ending. Could anything be simpler?

-- Audio Video Club of Atlanta

-------------

Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962) is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Grammy award, and is one of the most performed living American composers working today. Ms. Higdon's upcoming work includes an opera on Charles Frazier’s book, “Cold Mountain”, for Santa Fe Opera and the Opera Company of Philadelphia. This recording feature three recent chamber works: In Scenes from the Poet's Dreams (composed for the performers who play it here) the piano left hand (virtuoso Gary Graffman) takes a prominent part in the unfolding of this highly contrasted work, bearing unusually descriptive titles: "Racing Through Stars", "Summer Shimmers Across the Glass of Green Ponds" etc.. Light Refracted is a meditation on light. The composer describes a first movement "that reflects on our inner light, and how we take that light in; and a second movement that is the opposite, our projection of light out to the world." She also writes about An Exaltation of Larks: "The first time someone told me that a collection of Larks is called an “Exaltation”, I immediately thought, 'What a sound an exaltation of larks must make!'--How to capture the beauty of the idea of exalting and singing? A string quartet seemed perfect!" - Bridge Records

No doubt about it, Jennifer Higdon is a master craftsman. The three works hear are all attractive, formally shapely, smartly and colorfully scored, thematically appealing, and approachable without ever pandering. The Viola Concerto and Oboe Concerto are especially effective, exploiting the unique timbres of the solo instrument with great sensitivity. They are also quite different from each other. The Viola Concerto adopts the standard, three-movement structure, with the finale alternately solemn and dance-like (sound clip). The Oboe Concerto, on the other hand, plays in a single movement a bit less than twenty minutes long, an ideal length that ensures a piece that’s not too fatiguing for either the player or the listener.

All Things Majestic is a four-movement suite with each movement inspired by some feature of the American landscape. There are, to be frank, lots of similar pieces by American composers, and you would be hard pressed to point to stylistic qualities that say “Higdon” as opposed to quite a few of those others, but once again there’s no denying the quality of workmanship throughout. The performances, too, do the music proud, with Roberto Diaz (viola) and James Button (oboe) the excellent soloists, and Giancarlo Guerrero leading the Nashville Symphony with unflagging enthusiasm. A beautifully produced disc, all around.

– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)

Pulitzer and GRAMMY® Award winner Jennifer Higdon is one of the most performed living American composers, and this program provides a unique opportunity to hear première recordings of her earlier chamber music. The String Trio was written while Higdon was a developing young composer, and the influences of Prokofiev and Copland can be heard in the Sonata for Viola and Piano. The beauty and immensity of the Western US sky was the inspiration for Sky Quartet, while Dark Wood explores the soulful and virtuoso character of the bassoon. Higdon’s “vibrant and individual voice” (Limelight Magazine) can be heard in further chamber works on Naxos 8.559298.

HIGDON Piano Trio. 1 Voices. 2 Impressions 3 • Anne Akiko Meyers (vn); 1 Alisa Wellerstein (vc); 1 Adam Neiman (pn); 1 Nicolas Kitchen (vn); 2 Melissa Kleinhart (vn); 2 Hsin-Yun Huang (va); 2 Wilhelmina Smith (vc); 2 Cypress Str Qrt 3 • NAXOS 8.559298 (57:42) Live: Vail 2003 1

Reviewer Jerry Dubins recently extolled the high performance standards of contemporary string-quartet-playing. It seems the composition of string quartets may be on a similar high. I was greatly impressed with a quartet by the young Swiss composer Fabian Müller (see my last Want List); from an older generation, John Harbison continues to produce vital works in the genre, and here, from a generation in between, we have a lovely quartet by Jennifer Higdon ( Impressions , composed in 2003). Deliberately intended to evoke the French Impressionists, both in music and painting— hence the title—it is a substantial work in four movements, modeled on the string quartets of Debussy and Ravel. As is often the case with Higdon, texture and color are the overriding features, yet she maintains an instinctive feeling for musical progression; the logic of inspiration, you might call it.

Higdon is a leading light among those American composers who are now settling into their prime. Her orchestral writing is brilliant: I would commend anyone even remotely interested in modern music to get hold of her Concerto for Orchestra and City Scape , recorded on Telarc by Robert Spano and the Atlanta SO. The same generous outpouring of ideas and playful shifting of instrumental textures inform these chamber works, and the smaller forces serve to accentuate her contrapuntal ingenuity.

The Piano Trio, also from 2003, consists of two movements, subtitled “Pale Yellow” and “Fiery Red.” While these descriptive titles convey the overall flavor of the pieces, they don’t tell the whole story. The first movement opens with a gentle, hymn-like theme in the piano, but once the other instruments join in, the piece surges forward and the initial “pale yellow” brightens conspicuously. The movement concludes with a return to the quiet opening mood. “Fiery Red” is an exciting moto perpetuo , requiring strength and precision from all three instrumentalists (which it certainly receives here). This movement also surges—at a faster pace—and even in its moments of respite it retains a sense of momentum: the music’s heart rate never drops.

Higdon’s Trio was recorded live at its premiere performance at the 2003 Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival. It gets such an exciting performance from the star violinist and her equally talented partners that I was disappointed to find audience applause had not been retained (especially as the festival is called Bravo!).

Voices , a three-movement work from a decade earlier, also for string quartet, shows the composer developing her language. I hear a less personal, all-purpose contemporary music style at work here, yet the composer’s personality peeps through, and her irresistible exuberance is already in evidence. One memorable passage makes beguiling use of pizzicato—a device that does not appear in the Impressions quartet, strangely enough.

Sound quality of these recordings is fine throughout, despite their differing provenances. The performances are full of zest and commitment, all contributing to an issue of real interest.

FANFARE: Phillip Scott