|
This album presents four world premiere recordings of works by Christopher Rouse (b. 1949), the New York Philharmonic's second Marie-Josée Kravis Composer- in-Residence, three of them composed for the Orchestra and Music Director Alan Gilbert. Taken together, the Fourth Symphony, Prospero's Rooms, and Odna Zhizn bear witness to a remarkable period of artistic collaboration between the legendary Orchestra, its celebrated Music Director, and one of today's most evocative American composers.
"Chris Rouse is one of the most important composers working today. ... He actually shapes the sound and the flow of his music in a way that only great composers can." — Alan Gilbert
|
|
|
Listen to excerpts, download, or buy "Odna Zhizn | Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4 | Prospero's Rooms" directly from Dacapo Records
|
|
|
Naxos will release a new recording of music by Christopher Rouse on 11 September 2015. Kabir Padavali and Seeing are showcased on the CD, performed by the Albany Symphony with David Alan Miller conducting. The recordings follow 2011 performances of the works in Albany, and feature soprano Talise Trevigne and pianist Orion Weiss.
Winner of a Pulitzer Prize and a GRAMMY® Award, Christopher Rouse is one of America's most prominent composers of orchestral music, creating a body of work perhaps unequalled in its emotional intensity. Conceived from the start as differing from a traditional piano concerto, Seeing brings together seemingly disparate elements to explore the notion of 'sanity' through the music of Robert Schumann and Skip Spence, swinging between extremes of consonance and dissonance, stability and instability, to create a disorientating and hallucinatory work seen through the lens of mental illness. Kabir Padavali or 'Kabir Songbook' presents a range of the great Indian poet's religious concerns, from extraordinarily beautiful ecstasy to impishly humorous allegories. (Naxos 8.558799)
|
|
|
Buy "Christopher: SEEING | KABIR PADAVALI" (available from 11 September 2015)
|
|
|
"PASSION WHEELS" is a recording from Phoenix USA featuring The Concordia Orchestra with Marin Alsop conducting, playing four works by Christopher Rouse (Phoenix USA PHCD 180). Both Gramophone magazine and Fanfare magazine voted this recording "Best of the Year" for 2000.
KU-KA-ILIMOKU, completed in 1978, takes its name from Hawaiian mythology. "Ku" is the Hawaiian 'all-father,' similar to Zeus or Odin, and manifests as Ku-Ka-Ilimoku in his aspect as the god of war. Underlying the seeming simplicity of Hawaiian music, with its use of limited melodic range and repetitive percussion patterns, there is much subtlety of rhythmic inflection and variation. Using western instruments, KU-KA-ILIMOKU evokes the voice of ancient ritual via a "savage, propulsive war dance."
CONCERTO PER CORDE is based on the composer's earlier String Quartet No. 2. Completed in 1990 and much more than a transcription of the earlier work, CONCERTO PER CORDE pays tribute to composer Dimitri Shostakovich in its use of a musical acronym of the first initial of his first name and first three letters of his last name (D, SCH in the German spelling) for musical pitches.
The album's title is taken from the third work, ROTAE PASSIONIS, which translates as "Passion Wheels." ROTAE PASSIONIS is a chamber work that was completed in 1983, and is scored for seven players. The composer explains that "the word rotae is used because the materials are stated and developed (as well as repeated) in a circular fashion."
The last work on the album is OGOUN BADAGRIS for percussion ensemble, taking its title from a Haitian deity (or "loa") of Voodoo. The composer states that the work can be interpreted "as a dance of appeasement" to the loa in question, and the work's shape follows the outline of a Voodoo ceremony; "the word 'reler,' which the performers must shriek at the conclusion of the work, is the Voodoo equivalent of the Judeo-Christian amen."
Read what ClassicsToday.com had to say about this recording!
|
|
Listen to excerpts from this recording
|
|
Buy "Passion Wheels," containing KU-KA-ILIMOKU, CONCERTO PER CORDE, ROTAE PASSIONIS and OGOUN BADAGRIS
|
|
|
Three works by Christopher Rouse are highlighted on the Phoenix USA recording, "GORGON." The recording features the Colorado Symphony Orchestra as conducted by Marin Alsop, and a solo performance by Joseph Alessi on trombone (Phoenix USA PHCD 167), and earned a 'Diapason d'Or' award from the French magazine Diapason. Fanfare magazine voted it one their "best of the year" for 1997.
First up is Rouse's magnificent TROMBONE CONCERTO, winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize in Music. The concerto, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its 150th anniversary, was premiered in 1992 by the Philharmonic featuring Joseph Alessi on trombone. It is dedicated to the memory of Leonard Bernstein, who died around the time Rouse began working on the piece.
GORGON was commissioned by the Rochester Philharmonic in 1984, and is described by the composer as "a work of exorcistic rage, an attempt in music to heal by facing that which seems unfaceable." The Gorgons, in Greek mythology, were three monsters with women's bodies, and snakes for hair; the sight of Medusa, one of the Gorgons, could turn a person into stone.
Rouse calls ISCARIOT his most autobiographical piece, written "to purge certain emotional memories" from his system. Written in 1989 and premiered by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra conducted by John Adams, ISCARIOT seems like the musical antithesis of GORGON: reflective, and more like an unanswerable question than a declaration.
|
|
Listen to excerpts from this recording
|
|
Buy "Gorgon," containing TROMBONE CONCERTO, GORGON and ISCARIOT
|
|
|
"Transfiguration" is a collection of Christopher Rouse string chamber works performed by the string quartet. It includes String Quartet No. 1, String Quartet No. 2, and Compline. (E1 Music International Classics/Koch Records)
|
|
|
Download "Transfiguration" at E1 Music (account/credit card required)
|
|
|
Buy "Transfiguration"
|
|
|
The works that have been chosen for this second disc of Rouse music by Alan Gilbert and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra come from two distinct stages in Rouse's career, with the Flute Concerto (soloist Sharon Bezaly) and the Second Symphony sharing as starting-point their maker's preoccupation with the subject of death during the early 1990s. They also have a compositional strategy in common: in both works, a central slow movement acts like a pivot, changing the listener's perception of the music that follows, but also precedes it. But if the mood created by the Flute Concerto, with influences from both Irish and Scottish folk music, may be described as resigned, Symphony No. 2 addresses its subject in a much more furious way. In his liner notes to this disc, Rouse remarks that from 1995 he made a conscious decision to "turn his thoughts toward brighter subjects." The concluding orchestral work Rapture is an example of this, describing "a very gradual progression from the warm serenity in the opening through to an almost blinding ecstasy at the end." (BIS-CD-1586)
|
|
Listen to excerpts from this recording
|
|
|
Buy "Alan Gilbert Conducts Christopher Rouse 2," containing FLUTE CONCERTO, SYMPHONY NO. 2, and RAPTURE from Qualiton
|
|
|
Composed between 1963 and 2005, these four works form a spectrum that demonstrates a tendency among composers of American concert music to draw from a wide range of musical streams — classical, popular, folk and jazz — in order to reach out to their listeners. Christopher Rouse's Friandises is the last work on the album, and the composer has described it as "akin to a Baroque French suite," its five movements including both a Sicilienne and a Sarabande. "The finale," Rouse continues, "is a lighthearted Galop meant to end the work with a large dose of razzle-dazzle." This colourful programme is performed by the North Carolina Symphony on their first BIS recording, conducted by Grant Llewellyn and with solo appearances by the celebrated jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis and his quartet.
Friandises was composed on a joint commission from the New York City Ballet and the Juilliard School (on the occasion of its centenary). It was premiered on February 10, 2006 at the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, and it is published by Boosey & Hawkes. (BIS-SACD-1644)
|
|
|
Listen to an excerpt from FRIANDISES
|
|
|
Buy "American Spectrum," containing FRIANDISES
|
|
|
Christopher Rouse (b.1949) is one of America's most prominent composers of orchestral music, and has created a body of work of great emotional intensity. It is precisely this aspect of the music, coupled with its inherent honesty and lack of artifice which has attracted the conductor Alan Gilbert, music director designate of the New York Philharmonic.
During his recent tenure as chief conductor and artistic advisor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Stockholm, Gilbert programmed a number of works by Rouse, performances which were later recorded. This first of two discs includes the composer's Clarinet Concerto — with Martin Fröst performing the solo part — for which American television game shows of the 1950s provided an inspiration. The frantic atmosphere and the sudden reversals of fortune of such programmes infuse this one-movement work, which to quote the composer "exists in a state of constant flux and change." Symphony No. 1 is a far more sombre and introspective score, in which Rouse is preoccupied with the nineteenth-century concept of heroism, and the dismantling of this idea in the twentieth century. A reference to this programme is found in the principal motif of the symphony, derived from the opening of the adagio of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony, and played — as in the Bruckner original — by a quartet of Wagner tubas. Like its companion-pieces, Iscariot, which opens the disc, has an extra-musical background, but in this case it is kept a secret by the composer, who has called the work his "most privately autobiographical piece." Again a musical quote pervades the work: the famous chorale 'Es ist genug,' which bursts forth in a recognizable fashion at the end of the piece.
All three works are published by Boosey & Hawkes. (BIS-CD-1386)
|
|
Listen to excerpts from this recording
|
|
|
Buy "Alan Gilbert Conducts Christopher Rouse," containing ISCARIOT, CLARINET CONCERTO, and SYMPHONY NO. 1
|
|
|
American conductor David Zinman turns to the joyful sounds of the holidays with the RCA Red Seal release Karolju: Christmas Music From Rouse, Lutoslawski and Rodrigo. Featuring the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Philharmonic Chorus, the recording demonstrates Zinman's deep commitment to new music. The CD's centerpiece is Christopher Rouse's work Karolju, commissioned by Zinman during his time as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and inspired by the festive season.
The CD is 17 years in the making: "The idea to record Christmas music of Rouse, Lutoslawski and Rodrigo came to me not long after I had done the first performances of the Rouse in 1991," writes Zinman in the recording's liner notes. "Not that there wasn't enough holiday music on the market — every record company brings out at least two to three Christmas records each yuletide — but truly contemporary settings of carols are comparatively rare, and the uniqueness of Karolju spurred me on."
Karolju was commissioned with the generous assistance of the Barlow Foundation for Music Composition at Brigham Young University, and its composition was aided by a Guggenheim Fellowship. It was first performed by the Baltimore Symphony and Chorus, conducted by David Zinman, in November 1991. It is published by Boosey & Hawkes. (RCA Red Seal 88697-11561-2)
|
|
|
Listen to an excerpt from KAROLJU
|
|
|
Buy "Karolju: Christmas Music From Rouse, Lutoslawski and Rodrigo," containing KAROLJU
|
|
|
February 2004 marks the Ondine release of "Christopher Rouse," a recording of three Rouse works featuring the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Leif Segerstam, and soloists Evelyn Glennie (percussion) and Cho-Liang Lin (violin) (catalog number ODE 1016-2). This disc marks the world premiere recording of all three of the works.
The first work on the disc, DER GERETTETE ALBERICH, completed in 1997, was commissioned for Evelyn Glennie by a consortium of four major international orchestras. The twenty-two minute fantasy for solo percussion and orchestra postulates the return of Alberich, whose whereabouts are unknown at the end of Wagner's Ring, "so that he might wreak further havoc in what is quite literally the godless world in which Wagner has left us in the final pages of Götterdämmerung."
RAPTURE, for orchestra, was premiered in 2000 by the Pittsburgh Symphony. The composer writes "I wished to depict a progression to an ever more blinding ecstasy, but the entire work inhabits a world devoid of darkness — hence the almost complete lack of sustained dissonance. Rapture also is an exercise in gradually increasing tempi; it begins quite slowly but, throughout its...duration proceeds to speed up incrementally until the breakneck tempo of the final moments is reached."
The featured soloist on the disc's third work, VIOLIN CONCERTO, is Cho-Liang Lin, who also premiered the piece (at the Aspen Music Festival in 1992). The piece is a two-movement concerto, and is structured with a similar architecture as that of Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 1. The Baltimore Sun called the VIOLIN CONCERTO "a beautiful work, accessible yet challenging," while the Albany Times Union said it "comes close to being the best violin concerto composed in the last 25 years."
Read what ClassicsToday.com had to say about this recording.
Read what Music Manual (Austria) had to say about this recording
|
|
Listen to excerpts from this recording
|
|
|
Buy "Christopher Rouse," containing DER GERETTETE ALBERICH, RAPTURE and VIOLIN CONCERTO
|
|
|
Teldec has released a CD of Christopher Rouse's 1999 guitar concerto, Concert de Gaudi. The Gulbenkian Orchestra of Lisbon, Portugal performs, with Sharon Isbin as soloist and Muhai Tang conducting. This world premiere recording was released by Teldec on May 15, 2001 (Teldec Classics 8573-81830-2). For more information, click here.
The Dallas Morning News says of Concert de Gaudi, "It's uncommonly beautiful and here's predicting it's going to be performed and recorded a lot... Its emotional impact is reminiscent of Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain." Barrymore L. Scherer of Public Arts comments "Wonderfully eclectic... From the opening swirl of flamenco-style gestures, through the poignant, ballad-like slow movement and the scintillating finale, the score kaleidescopically presents memorably expressive passages."
Concert de Gaudi was jointly commissioned by the Norddeutsche Rundfunk and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for Sharon Isbin, with additional funding provided by Richard and Jody Nordlof. It is published by Boosey & Hawkes.
|
|
|
Listen to an excerpt from CONCERT DE GAUDI
|
|
|
Buy "Sharon Isbin Plays Tan Dun/Rouse," containing CONCERT DE GAUDI
|
|
|
"PASSION WHEELS" is a recording from Koch International Classics featuring The Concordia Orchestra with Marin Alsop conducting, playing four works by Christopher Rouse (Koch International Classics 3-7468-2 HI). Both Gramophone magazine and Fanfare magazine have voted this recording "Best of the Year" for 2000.
KU-KA-ILIMOKU, completed in 1978, takes its name from Hawaiian mythology. "Ku" is the Hawaiian 'all-father,' similar to Zeus or Odin, and manifests as Ku-Ka-Ilimoku in his aspect as the god of war. Underlying the seeming simplicity of Hawaiian music, with its use of limited melodic range and repetitive percussion patterns, there is much subtlety of rhythmic inflection and variation. Using western instruments, KU-KA-ILIMOKU evokes the voice of ancient ritual via a "savage, propulsive war dance."
CONCERTO PER CORDE is based on the composer's earlier String Quartet No. 2. Completed in 1990 and much more than a transcription of the earlier work, CONCERTO PER CORDE pays tribute to composer Dimitri Shostakovich in its use of a musical acronym of the first initial of his first name and first three letters of his last name (D, SCH in the German spelling) for musical pitches.
The album's title is taken from the third work, ROTAE PASSIONIS, which translates as "Passion Wheels." ROTAE PASSIONIS is a chamber work that was completed in 1983, and is scored for seven players. The composer explains that "the word rotae is used because the materials are stated and developed (as well as repeated) in a circular fashion."
The last work on the album is OGOUN BADAGRIS for percussion ensemble, taking its title from a Haitian deity (or "loa") of Voodoo. The composer states that the work can be interpreted "as a dance of appeasement" to the loa in question, and the work's shape follows the outline of a Voodoo ceremony; "the word 'reler,' which the performers must shriek at the conclusion of the work, is the Voodoo equivalent of the Judeo-Christian amen."
Read what ClassicsToday.com had to say about this recording!
|
|
Listen to excerpts from this recording
|
|
Buy "Passion Wheels," containing KU-KA-ILIMOKU, CONCERTO PER CORDE, ROTAE PASSIONIS and OGOUN BADAGRIS
|
|
|
The Meet The Composer Orchestra Residency Program sponsored this recording of two major Rouse works in 1989. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is conducted by David Zinman on this Nonesuch release (Elektra/Nonesuch 9 79230-2)
The composer's SYMPHONY No. 1 was commissioned by the Baltimore Symphony in 1986, and premiered in 1988. SYMPHONY No. 1 won the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award for 1988, and has entered Fanfare magazine's Hall of Fame.
PHANTASMATA consists of three movements, two of which can be performed independently, as separate works ("The Infernal Machine" and "Bump"). The complete work was premiered by the Saint Louis Symphony in 1986.
|
|
Listen to excerpts from this recording
|
|
Buy "Christopher Rouse: Symphony No. 1/Baltimore Symphony Orchestra" containing SYMPHONY No. 1 and PHANTASMATA
|
|
|
The Houston Symphony presents three works by Christopher Rouse on their 1997 Telarc Recording: SYMPHONY No. 2, FLUTE CONCERTO, and PHAETHON (Telarc CD-80452). Both Fanfare magazine and USA Today voted this recording a "best of the year" for 1997.
Although not actually composed until 1994, Rouse conceived his SYMPHONY No. 2 in 1984, along with his SYMPHONY No. 1. In his second symphony, the outer Allegros serve as bookends around a central slow movement, the Adagio. The trigger for this grief-laden Adagio was the sudden death in an automobile accident late in 1992 of Rouse's colleague and close friend, the composer Stephen Albert. The musical material from the first Allegro is refracted through what the composer calls "the prism that is the second movement" into an angry, tempestuous finale.
The FLUTE CONCERTO was co-commissioned by Carol Wincenc and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and is dedicated to the composer's wife, Ann. The concerto is in five movements, the first and last of which are entitled "Amhrán," the Gaelic word for "song." The middle movement, an Adagio, like so much of Rouse's music from the early 1990's, was created in response to a death: in this case that of James Bulger, a two-year-old English child abducted from a mall and brutally murdered by two ten-year-old boys. Rouse says that "in a world of daily horrors, it is sometimes only isolated, individual tragedies which serve to sensitize us to the potential harm that man can do to his fellow."
PHAETHON, in Greek mythology, sought to prove his divine origins by guiding his father Apollo's sun chariot across the heavens for one day. Unable to control the chariot, it plunged to earth and caused terrible destruction. Zeus was forced to hurl a thunderbolt to stop the runaway chariot, thus killing Phaethon. Rouse's treatment of this myth concentrates on the chariot ride itself. Premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Muti in 1987, PHAETHON was conceived as a mini concerto for orchestra.
|
|
Listen to excerpts from this recording
|
|
Buy "Rouse: Symphony No. 2/Houston Symphony Orchestra" containing these works
|
|
|
Recorded in 1996 during Philadelphia's biggest snowstorm of the century, "YO-YO MA PREMIERES" is a multi-Grammy Award-winning album of cello concertos written for and premiered by Yo-Yo Ma, and composed by Christopher Rouse, Richard Danielpour, and Leon Kirchner (Sony Classical SK 66299). Gramophone magazine honored this recording as "Best of the Month" in March 1997, and Fanfare magazine voted it a "best of the year" for that same year.
Christopher Rouse's VIOLONCELLO CONCERTO was commissioned for the 75th anniversary of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, and premiered on January 26, 1994. The concerto is in a two-movement structure, with each movement bearing a title from Monteverdi (whose spirit influenced the work). The composer calls the piece "a meditation upon death -- the struggle to deny it, and its ultimate inevitability."
In the printed score, the composer has placed the final stanza of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Conqueror Worm" as a sort of motto:
Out -- out are the lights -- out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
|
|
Listen to an excerpt from VIOLONCELLO CONCERTO
|
|
Buy "Yo-Yo Ma Premieres," containing VIOLONCELLO CONCERTO
|
|
|
"American Trombone Concertos, Volume 2" features three trombone concerti, recorded by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, with Grant Llewellyn conducting and Christian Lindberg as soloist, on the BIS label (BIS-CD-788). Christopher Rouse's 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning TROMBONE CONCERTO is the first and featured concerto on the recording.
The concerto was one of the works commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its 150th season. It was planned that Leonard Bernstein should conduct the premiere, but sadly he died before the piece was completed. It premiered in 1992 with the Philharmonic featuring Joseph Alessi on trombone.
|
|
Listen to an excerpt from the TROMBONE CONCERTO
|
|
Buy "American Trombone Concertos, Volume 2" containing the TROMBONE CONCERTO
|
|
|
Three works by Christopher Rouse are highlighted on the BMG Classics/RCA Red Seal recording, "GORGON." The recording features the Colorado Symphony Orchestra as conducted by Marin Alsop, and a solo performance by Joseph Alessi on trombone (RCA Red Seal/BMG Classics 09026-68410-2), and earned a 'Diapason d'Or' award from the French magazine Diapason. Fanfare magazine voted it one their "best of the year" for 1997.
First up is Rouse's magnificent TROMBONE CONCERTO, winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize in Music. The concerto, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its 150th anniversary, was premiered in 1992 by the Philharmonic featuring Joseph Alessi on trombone. It is dedicated to the memory of Leonard Bernstein, who died around the time Rouse began working on the piece.
GORGON was commissioned by the Rochester Philharmonic in 1984, and is described by the composer as "a work of exorcistic rage, an attempt in music to heal by facing that which seems unfaceable." The Gorgons, in Greek mythology, were three monsters with women's bodies, and snakes for hair; the sight of Medusa, one of the Gorgons, could turn a person into stone.
Rouse calls ISCARIOT his most autobiographical piece, written "to purge certain emotional memories" from his system. Written in 1989 and premiered by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra conducted by John Adams, ISCARIOT seems like the musical antithesis of GORGON: reflective, and more like an unanswerable question than a declaration.
|
|
Listen to excerpts from this recording
|
|
Buy "Gorgon," containing TROMBONE CONCERTO, GORGON and ISCARIOT
|
|
|
|
Odna Zhizn | Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4 | Prospero's Rooms
Christopher Rouse: Seeing | Kabir Padavali
Passion Wheels
Christopher Rouse: Gorgon / Trombone Concerto / Iscariot
Transfiguration
Alan Gilbert Conducts Christopher Rouse II
American Spectrum
Alan Gilbert Conducts Christopher Rouse
Karolju: Christmas Music from Rouse, Lutoslawski and Rodrigo
Rouse: Der Gerettete Alberich / Rapture / Violin Concerto
Sharon Isbin plays Rouse: Concert de Gaudi; and Dun: Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra (YI2)
Passion Wheels
Christopher Rouse: Symphony No. 1 / Phantasmata
Rouse: Symphony No. 2 / Flute Concerto / Phaethon
Yo-Yo Ma Premieres
American Trombone Concertos, Vol. 2
Christopher Rouse: Gorgon / Trombone Concerto / Iscariot