Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This program documents almost four decades of Ernst Toch’s artistic development. His romantic First Violin Sonata marks the end of the composer’s early period. The Divertimento and Cello Sonata were written during his most productive period, the 1920s, while the String Trio is the work of an exile determined not to compromise a style declared ‘asphalt music’ by the Nazis. The Adagio elegiaco commemorates the many relatives and friends Toch lost to the Holocaust.

The Violin Concerto is at one and the same time George Rochberg' most widely performed and least known work, since it was heavily cut in the "Stern version" played and recorded in the 1970s.

Strongly inclined towards neo-romanticism, Richard Danielpour's music is a rich unity of energy, intensity, and serenity. First Light reveals these elements perfectly with it's rhythmically charged writing contrasting with hypnotic chant melodies. The Awakened Heart is a kaleidoscopic three-movement work that ranges from darkness and passion through a stately chorale to an exuberant and breathless conclusion. Symphony No. 3 charts a triumphant ascent from "the dream of death and our own fearful existence" to a belief "in a world of hope and love." "Danielpour is an outstanding composer for any time - one who knows how to communicate deep, important emotions through simple, direct means." (The New York Daily News)

Championed by distinguished conductors such as Marin Alsop and Mariss Janson's, since his mid-20s, Michael Hersch's music has been performed by leading orchestras and concert artists.

Over the last decade the music of the Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra has become internationally admired, and this has led to prestigious commissions and performances around the world. Fandangos was heard at the BBC Proms in London and employs a harpsichord work attributed to Antonio Soler as a departure for a richly inventive orchestral fantasy. The dramatic Sinfonia No. 4 was described by ArtsNowNashville as 'a textbook example of how this composer breathes new life into old forms. The piece is basically a classic Germanic symphony imbued with Spanish sensibilities and reinvigorated with new harmonies and rhythms.' Robert Schumann is subtly evoked in Carnaval, five character pieces that explore mythical creatures, both menacing and serene.

•Two compelling American Piano Sonatas.

Ives Lincoln the great commoner, gould Lincoln legend, harris abraham Lincoln walks at midnight, bacon ford's theatre, copland Lincoln portrait, McKay to a liberator, turok variations on an American song: aspects of Lincoln and liberty, persichetti a Lincoln address.

Winner of the coveted 2002 Grawemeyer Award and one of the youngest composers ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Aaron Jay Kernis is among the most distinguished musical figures of his generation. Conceived as a concerto for toy piano and orchestra, and with touches of Indonesian gamelan, French lyricism and jazz, Three Flavors appears here in it's final version, adapted by soloist and long- term collaborator Andrew Russo. Commissioned for renowned violinist James Ehnes, the introspective Two Movements (with Bells) is a memorial to the composer's father with echoes of blues singing and improvisatory impetuousness, while the virtuoso Superstar Etude No. 3 is his homage to Gershwin and the blues. The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis (b. 1960) studied composition with American heavyweights John Adams, Jacob Druckman, Morton Subotnik and Charles Wuorinen. He has developed a truly eclectic musical language over time, initially rigorous but evolving toward a new transparency and emotional eloquence. He incorporates influences of Latin rhythms, jazz and rap into his work as willingly as the harmonic worlds of the Romantic masters, the Renaissance and Hildegard von Bingen.

Conducted by Christopher Bell, Chicago’s Grant Park Chorus, “as fine a symphony chorus as any to be found anywhere in the nation” (Chicago Tribune), makes its a cappella CD debut with an all-American program of eight imaginative, moving, and sometimes whimsical works written between 1975 and 25, including four world-premiere recordings. Premieres include Abbie Betinis’s Toward Sunshine, Toward Freedom: Songs of Smaller Creatures. Lee Kesselman’s Buzzings: Three Pieces about Bees offers vignettes based on Emily Dickinson poems. Paul Crabtree’s Five Romantic Miniatures is a set of affectionate tributes to characters from The Simpsons animated TV series. The chorus made its commercial recording debut performing with the Grant Park Orchestra on the 211 Cedille Records release The Pulitzer Project, which attracted international attention. Chicago’s New City said the CD “spectacularly showcased” the chorus’s “remarkable transparency and flexibility.”

Gaudete Brass, a quintet devoted to presenting serious brass chamber music and commissioning new works, brings a fresh perspective to music of John Corigliano with an inventive album of brass works by the prolific American composer and his protégés. “The excellent Gaudete Brass” (Gramophone) honors Corigliano, winner of Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a Pulitzer Prize, with world-premiere recordings of his groundbreaking Fanfares to Music for on- and off-stage brass choirs, his stately Antiphon for double brass quintet, and a new arrangement of the Rossini-esque Overture from his popular Gazebo Dances. Gaudete commissioned the title track, Steven Bryant’s sevenfive, in honor of Corigliano’s 75th birthday, and the numbers seven and five figure prominently in its musical architecture. David Sampson’s boisterous Entrance opens the program, while his surprisingly restrained Still is luxuriously lyrical. Jonathan Newman’s Prayers of Steel evokes the Midwest landscapes in Carl Sandburg’s poetry. Jeremy Howard Beck’s ROAR exploits the brasses’ ability to do just that. Conrad Winslow’s The Record of a Lost Tribe summons an imaginary, bygone civilization. All works except Entrance receive their world-premiere recordings on the album.

PANN: Differences / FUNG: Miniatures / GARROP: String Quarte

Eclipse encompasses world-premiere recordings of inventive, virtuosic, and impassioned chamber works, written in a present-day musical language by the strikingly original American composer and pianist Mischa Zupko. Joining him are two close friends and accomplished colleagues, the sublime violinist Sang Mee Lee, who chairs the string department at the Music Institute of Chicago, and internationally renowned cellist Wendy Warner, a protégé of Mstislav Rostropovich. Eclipse explores themes of separation, contrast, and convergence on cosmic as well as intimate levels. In the album’s centerpiece and title track, Eclipse, violin and cello approach like two celestial bodies, their musical lines merging and becoming one luminous entity. Mischa Zupko is currently the composer-in-residence at the Music Institute of Chicago. He has received plaudits from The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, and he has been featured in the Chicago Reader and New Music USA’s New Music Box, which called him “a humble, energetic, and constantly searching artist.”