Author: gabriel'soboe
Date: 2005-12-04 10:00
Howard, I just don't know if that would solve once for all your problem but may I suggest you send me a mp3 sample of the Concerto in G performed by Holliger (for instance the opening movement), which would allow me to compare it with the concertos available on the complete release by Lencsès. In turn, I could of course send you an excerpt from the Dittersdof / Lencsès' CD or whatever other piece you'd need, provided the duration remains short. I indeed noticed cues over 7' are most of the time extremely difficult to send as attached pieces through e-mail.
A very different matter: I casually found yesterday an English horn concerto I didn't yet know, Peteris Vasks's one called COR ANGLAIS CONCERTO. The dedicatee of that work was Thomas Stacy but I could not locate any recording by Stacy. Instead, the one I have on the RCA Read Seal label features a musician called Normunds Schnee accompanied by the Riga Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Kriss Rusmanis. Indeed, as you might know, Vasks (b. 1946) is a Latvian composer. Here follow a short presentation taken from the liner notes: "His music combines traditional musical styles and contemporary techniques. It is the reciprocal relationship between nature and man, the beauty of life, and the threat of ecological and moral destruction of values that concern him...Vasks's influences are manifold: he feels particularly close the Polish school of composition, and has a life-long passion for the music of Witold Lutoslawski. He admires Gorecki and points out he admired him decades before he became famous. Another influence is Penderecki, who has performed Vasks's music at his festival in Krakow on several occasions. Other models include Mahler, Sibelius, Messiaen, the Georgian composer Kancheli and the American George Crumb"...For Vasks, "Music is an emotional art. If there is no emotion, there is no art."
"The COR ANGLAIS CONCERTO was the result of an unusual commission from America in 1989. Thomas Stacy, the cor anglais player of the NY Philharmonic, heard Vasks's MUSICA DOLOROSA, and asked him immediately to write a concerto. At the time the cor anglais was unexplored territory to Vasks. "I had never written anything for the cor anglais, not even in my orchestral music. At first I wondered if I should accept the commission, but then I investigated the instrument and decided that I would." The concerto is in four continuous movements, the first and the third (elegies) are slow, the second based on the idea of a folk song. The last movement is a powerful evocation of nature, aleatoric in style with oriental sounding harmonies which dissolve into the ether as the concerto draws to a close." (Kriss Rusmanis).
Well, the piece that made the strongest impact on me ain't the English horn concerto but CANTABILE (1979) for string orchestra. Just superb.
Laurent
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