Escher: Orchestral, Chamber & Choral Music

$16.99
Label
Brilliant Classics
Release Date
May 1, 2020
Format
Added to Cart! View cart or continue shopping.


    Featuring ⌄
    • COMPOSER
      ESCHER, RUDOLF
    • ORCHESTRA / ENSEMBLE
      Concertgebouw Orchestra, Netherlands Chamber Choir
    • PERFORMER
      Chailly, Spanjaard
    Product Details ⌄
    • RELEASE DATE
      May 01, 2020
    • UPC
      5028421959672
    • CATALOG NUMBER
      BRI95967
    • LABEL
      Brilliant Classics
    • NUMBER OF DISCS
      3
    • GENRE
      Classical
    Works ⌄

    1. I. Canto appassionato, energico alla breve

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Ensemble: Concertgebouw Orchestra

      Conductor: Riccardo Chailly

    2. II. Rondo mediterraneo, presto

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Ensemble: Concertgebouw Orchestra

      Conductor: Riccardo Chailly

    3. III. Ciaconna epica, grazioso e con moto

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Ensemble: Concertgebouw Orchestra

      Conductor: Riccardo Chailly

    4. Musique pour l'esprit en deuil, Op. 6

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Ensemble: Concertgebouw Orchestra

      Conductor: Riccardo Chailly

    5. I. Pavane

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Performer: Jacques Zoon, Bart Schneemann, Ronald Hoogeveen, Dmitri Ferschtman, Zoltan Benyacs, Glen Wilson

    6. II. Air No. 1

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Performer: Jacques Zoon, Bart Schneemann, Ronald Hoogeveen, Dmitri Ferschtman, Zoltan Benyacs, Glen Wilson

    7. III. Forlane

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Performer: Jacques Zoon, Bart Schneemann, Ronald Hoogeveen, Dmitri Ferschtman, Zoltan Benyacs, Glen Wilson

    8. IV. Sarabande

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Performer: Jacques Zoon, Bart Schneemann, Ronald Hoogeveen, Dmitri Ferschtman, Zoltan Benyacs, Glen Wilson

    9. V. Rigaudon

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Performer: Jacques Zoon, Bart Schneemann, Ronald Hoogeveen, Dmitri Ferschtman, Zoltan Benyacs, Glen Wilson

    10. VI. Air No. 2

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Performer: Jacques Zoon, Bart Schneemann, Ronald Hoogeveen, Dmitri Ferschtman, Zoltan Benyacs, Glen Wilson

    11. VII. Hymme

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Performer: Jacques Zoon, Bart Schneemann, Ronald Hoogeveen, Dmitri Ferschtman, Zoltan Benyacs, Glen Wilson

    12. I. Transformations

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Performer: Ronald Hoogeveen, Zoltan Benyacs, Dmitri Ferschtman

    13. II. Réminiscences

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Performer: Ronald Hoogeveen, Zoltan Benyacs, Dmitri Ferschtman

    14. I. Intrada à allegro risoluto à passaggio

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Performer: Herman de Boer, Zoltan Benyacs, Frank van de Laar

    15. II. Passacaglia notturna à passaggio

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Performer: Herman de Boer, Zoltan Benyacs, Frank van de Laar

    16. III. Comodo

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Performer: Herman de Boer, Zoltan Benyacs, Frank van de Laar

    17. No. 1. These Are the Days When Birds Come Back

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Ensemble: Nederlands Kamerkoor

      Conductor: Ed Spanjaard

    18. No. 2. Wild Nights

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Ensemble: Nederlands Kamerkoor

      Conductor: Ed Spanjaard

    19. No. 3. Heart, We Will Forget Him

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Ensemble: Nederlands Kamerkoor

      Conductor: Ed Spanjaard

    20. No. 4. The Wind Tapped Like a Tired Man

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Ensemble: Nederlands Kamerkoor

      Conductor: Ed Spanjaard

    21. No. 5. To Make a Prairie It Takes a Clover

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Ensemble: Nederlands Kamerkoor

      Conductor: Ed Spanjaard

    22. Poems, First and Second Series: No. 1. Taste a Liquor Never Brewed

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Ensemble: Nederlands Kamerkoor

      Conductor: Ed Spanjaard

    23. Le vrai visage de la paix

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Ensemble: Nederlands Kamerkoor

      Conductor: Ed Spanjaard

    24. No. 1. Ode

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Ensemble: Nederlands Kamerkoor

      Conductor: Ed Spanjaard

    25. No. 2. Chanson

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Ensemble: Nederlands Kamerkoor

      Conductor: Ed Spanjaard

    26. No. 3. Sonnet

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Ensemble: Nederlands Kamerkoor

      Conductor: Ed Spanjaard

    27. No. 1. If I Could Tell You

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Ensemble: Nederlands Kamerkoor

      Conductor: Ed Spanjaard

    28. No. 2. A Curse

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Ensemble: Nederlands Kamerkoor

      Conductor: Ed Spanjaard

    29. No. 3. Warm Are the Still and Lucky Miles

      Composer: Rudolf Escher

      Ensemble: Nederlands Kamerkoor

      Conductor: Ed Spanjaard


Rudolf Escher (1912-1980) is without doubt one of the most original, intriguing and successful Dutch composers of the 20th century. In his youth he studied piano, cello, and composition with Willem Pijper in Rotterdam. During the war all his works were destroyed in the Rotterdam bombing. After the war he experimented with electronic music and came into close contact with Pierre Boulez and the serial techniques. In the end Escher developed his own highly personal music language. In Escher's music we hear echos of the Dutch polyphonists, Mahler, Debussy and Ravel. After the war, Escher remained true to his own musical language, never buckling under the force of the latest trend.

Escher had not yet turned 30 when, in the depths of the Second World War, he began the score which would at a stroke make him the most important living composer in the Netherlands. Premiered by the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1947, Musique pour l'esprit en deuil (1941–3) – ‘Music for the grieving spirit’ – is a 20-minute score of intense, brooding pathos, inevitably overwhelmed by the shadow of conflict and a worthy counterpart to contemporary works such as Honegger’s Liturgique Symphony. Live recordings conducted by Eduard van Beinum and Bernard Haitink have been published, but this beautifully prepared studio recording is the work of their successor as music director of the Concertgebouw, Riccardo Chailly, who did so much to reconnect the orchestra with the music of our time during his tenure.

Musique pour l'esprit en deuil is paired here with the Concerto for String Orchestra (1947-48), which attracted the admiration of John Cage, perhaps more for its surprising points of serenity than its Bartokian passages of tension and exhilarated release.

Choral music occupied a significant place in Escher’s fairly slender output. As a teacher and writer on music, a painter and a poet, Escher first thoroughly absorbed the poetry he was setting to music, then carefully devised his treatment of the words to make them both singable and understandable. His choice of poets – Paul Eluard, WH Auden, Emily Dickinson – is notable for its response to text which makes the language new again. The same is true of Ciel, air et vents, a cycle of three songs to words by the 16th-century French poet Pierre Ronsard.

This 3-CD set is part of the reissue of the most celebrated recordings from the NM Classics label.