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 |  |  | | | | Track Listings | | | 1 Night: Near the Wind’s Eye (Hawthorne) | 14:05 | | 2 Cathedral Images (Polay) | 9:14 | | 3 Elegy Eroica (Bullen) | 9:37 | | 4 Hodeeyaada (Nelson) | 17:06 | | 5 Symphonic Poem [Mount Washington] (Mascari) | 13:58 | | | | Total time: | 64:41 |
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| | | | | | MMC New Century: Volume V | | | Our Price: $9.95  | | | | Item Number: MMC2023 | | Audio Format: DDD | | Genre: Orchestral | | | | Description | | Excerpts from the Liner Notes (by Mark L. Lehman)
Night: Near the Wind’s Eye
The composer describes Night: Near the Wind’s Eye as a fantasy for viola and orchestra; though its solo part is a demanding one (with a cadenza midway through), the work is not a virtuoso showpiece in the concerto mold. It is instead more nocturnal and meditative in mood, with a contrasting central dance that remains more sensuous and lyrical than turbulent or aggressive. As the title suggests, this is a musical view from the calm, still center of the night.
Cathedral Images
Polay’s nine-minute tone-poem might be described as Gothic Anachronism: a layering of styles that mirrors (in the words of the composer) the “layered architecture of many building campaigns...at once medieval, renaissance, impressionistic, and contemporary.” Thus the piece uses a sort of musical equivalent of time-lapse photography, depicting the long progression of the cathedral’s construction over the centuries. It opens with a soft but sonorous chordal undulation, which provides the backdrop for the opening theme: a long-lined, plainchant-like melody of solemn, mystical fervor.
Elegy Eroica
Bullen completed his Elegy Eroica in 1994 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. It’s an (appropriately) American-sounding piece with some familial kinship to the “American Romantic” tradition of Howard Hanson. The work begins with an orchestral upbeat that leads quickly to a slower but intense lament under which the pounding timpani call up both the somber tread of a funeral march and–subliminally, perhaps–the grim opening of Brahms’ First Symphony.
Hodeeyaada
This three-movement tone poem is inspired by a Native American version of the creation myth (Hodeeyaada is Navaho for “In the Beginning of Time”), and dedicated to the memory of Maurice Abravanel.
Symphonic Poem (Mount Washington)
A fourteen-minute symphonic poem in one movement (inspired by a hike up the New Hampshire mountain), Mount Washington contrasts granitic and propulsive energy with pastoral calm in a tonal language and sumptuous orchestral dress that shows an affinity to such twentieth-century masterpieces as Gustav Holst’s The Planets and Arthur Honegger’s Symphonie Liturgique. |
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