 |
 |  |  | | | | Track Listings | | | 1 Spectral Chimes/Enshrouded Hills-Music for Three Orchestral Quintets and Orchestra (Richter) | 29:16 | | Concerto Domestica (McKinley) | | | 2 Early Morning Blues | 2:27 | | 3 Morning Rush | 3:16 | | 4 A Lull | 3:45 | | 5 Transiting the Meridian | 3:24 | | 6 Siesta | 2:53 | | 7 To Home We Go | 2:50 | | 8 Evening Tranquillity | 3:04 | | 9 Thoughts of Night | 3:23 | | 10 Burning the Midnight Oil | 3:37 | | 11 Together and Sleep | 3:17 | | 12 Quantum Quirks of a Quick Quaint Quark (Richter) | 4:45 | | Total time: | 66:58 |
| | | | | |
| | | | | | Modern American Classics: Volume III | | | Our Price: $9.95  | | | | Item Number: MMC2066 | | Audio Format: DDD | | Genres: Concerto\Orchestral | | | | Description | | Excerpts from the Liner Notes (by Mark L. Lehman)
Spectral Chimes/Enshrouded Hills-Music for Three Orchestral Quintets and Orchestra
Richter completed Spectral Chimes/Enshrouded Hills in 1980; this recorded performance represents the work’s premiere. “While writing Spectral Chimes,” she explains, “I was reading Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. My consciousness was gradually permeated with the image of Tess constantly toiling up and down those misted English hills, seeking something which proved to be always beyond reach. These feelings are reflected in the music...[Hardy’s] references to phantoms and to bells became my spectral chimes, and his distant vistas my enshrouded hills.”
Concerto Domestica
Being an art that gives dramatic shape to emotion‹often intense emotion‹music seldom concerns itself with the prosaic. When composers do venture into the realm of everyday life, it’s usually to write study pieces for children or entertaining piano cycles like Darius Milhaud’s La Muse Menagere (“The Household Muse”) and Erik Satie’s Sports et Divertissements. More grandiose ventures into the quotidian are very rare (if not almost paradoxical), the most famous such example surely being Richard Strauss’ epic Symphonia Domestica.
McKinley brings several novel twists to this curious musical genre in his 1991 Concerto Domestica. First, there’s the notion of a domestic concerto, with the resultant emphasis on virtuosity. Second, there’s the unusual arrangement of employing two soloists to represent the two partners in a marriage. And third, there’s the even more unusual choice of solo instruments: trumpet and bassoon‹a seemingly eccentric coupling but the natural result of McKinley’s writing his Concerto Domestica for a married couple (Jeff Silberschlag and Deborah Greitzer) who just happen to be virtuosi on those two instruments.
Quantum Quirks of a Quick Quaint Quark
This brief comic overture (written in 1991) takes its “Q” from those evanescent subatomic particles that make up our universe‹and furnishes a kind of satyr-play burlesque to follow the exalted tragedy of Spectral Chimes. It is - as its title suggests‹short, fast, bumptious, and indeed quick, quaint, and quirky. If there is irony in this piece - as there certainly is where, for instance, Richter affectionately mocks boogie-woogie, writes a waltz in five-four time, or deconstructs Antonio Soler’s Fandango - it’s all offered in the spirit of harmless fun and merry good cheer. |
| | | | | | | Reviews | | “That McKinley chose a trumpet and bassoon as the instruments to represent the couple [Concerto Domestica] may seem strange, but Jeff Silberschlag and Deborah Greitzer, the characters in the story, are virtuosos on these two instruments.”
“We are so often in the debt of Gerard Schwarz for bringing American music to the world’s attention…”
“…this is music that demands your attention.”
-Fanfare: David Denton |
|
|
