Corigliano Symphony No. 1
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: John (Paul) Corigliano
Label: Erato
Magazine Review Date: 12/2000
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 41
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 2292-45601-2
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Symphony No. 1 |
John (Paul) Corigliano, Composer
Chicago Symphony Orchestra Daniel Barenboim, Conductor John (Paul) Corigliano, Composer |
Author: Edward Greenfield
From now on, in reflection of the new Music Director, the regular record label for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will be Erato, quite an achievement for that adventurous company. This superb live recording is the first issue in Erato's CSO Edition, in association with the cumbersomely named Meet The Composer Orchestra Residency Series. Luckily the work here completely escapes the blight of well-meaning propagandism which such a title might imply, and emerges as a deeply felt, vitally communicative piece challenging the listener to respond in an openly emotive way.
In writing this sustained elegy in memory of friends who have died of AIDS, Corigliano unashamedly wears his heart on his sleeve in a way that Tchaikovsky would have recognized. As with Tchaikovsky the control of form and argument underpins and justifies what might on the face of it seem self-indulgent or even sentimental. So the first movement, ''Apologue: Of Rage and Remembrance'' begins by expressing the composer's fury at the scourge of the disease in music of brutal violence. When it dies down to a pianissimo he begins his sequence of specific tributes to three of his friends who have died. Set at a distance comes the sound of a piano. Played beautifully here by Stephen Hough, it is Godowsky's arrangement of the Albeniz Tango, not just hinted at, but quoted at some length. One hardly needs the explanation that the friend in question was a concert pianist, and that Corigliano associates him in particular with this haunting, nostalgic piece.
That effect is a bare-face assault on the senses, but the specific quality of the inspiration prevents it from seeming too soft-centred in the context of the whole movement, even if responses there will obviously differ. One is made in those moments of recollection to share the composer's own poignant memory, and so it is with more biting irony in the second movement, a vigorous ''Tarantella''. This, too, has a specific source of inspiration, a trivial piano piece that Corigliano wrote for the second of the friends he commemorates, a business man and amateur pianist. What he painfully points out in his note of explanation is that the association of the tarantella as a dance with madness proved horribly prophetic: the brilliant friend developed AIDS-dementia. So his own trivial dance is subjected to nightmare distortions, providing the central contrasting movement.
The third movement is more complex, ''Chaconne: Giulio's Song''. Giulio, the third of the friends commemorated, was an amateur cellist, and after his death Corigliano found a tape of an improvisation they had done together, years earlier in 1962. From that he used one of the principal melodies as a central motif, linking it with a chaconne which underpins the whole movement. The cello soloist (the Chicago SO principal, John Sharp) is joined later by a second cello, and the movement develops into a tribute to many more friends. Each one is represented by a melody echoing the words of eulogies specially prepared in their memory. The contrapuntal interweaving develops into a powerful funeral march, which subsides at the end on to the solo cello playing the A which opened the work.
Corigliano follows those three substantial movements with a relatively brief four-minute ''Epilogue'', hushed and slow. His main purpose is to introduce reminiscences of the first three movements, but having the Albeniz Tango quoted yet again seems to me once too often, so much does it stand out. Yet my reservation there does not prevent this from emerging very clearly as a heartfelt expression of grief, a work which with its approachable idiom and bold, atmospheric orchestration, will strike home with many more than regular devotees of new music. This live recording offers so formidable a performance, that I cannot think it could been bettered for precision of ensemble in studio conditions, and clearly live playing before an audience adds an emotive thrust that would have been hard if not impossible to capture in the studio. The composer is credited with acting as a co-director of the recording, and the sound gives high promise of the new Erato period in Chicago, vivid, immediate and full-bodied with plenty of detail to do justice to the many spectacular orchestral effects.'
In writing this sustained elegy in memory of friends who have died of AIDS, Corigliano unashamedly wears his heart on his sleeve in a way that Tchaikovsky would have recognized. As with Tchaikovsky the control of form and argument underpins and justifies what might on the face of it seem self-indulgent or even sentimental. So the first movement, ''Apologue: Of Rage and Remembrance'' begins by expressing the composer's fury at the scourge of the disease in music of brutal violence. When it dies down to a pianissimo he begins his sequence of specific tributes to three of his friends who have died. Set at a distance comes the sound of a piano. Played beautifully here by Stephen Hough, it is Godowsky's arrangement of the Albeniz Tango, not just hinted at, but quoted at some length. One hardly needs the explanation that the friend in question was a concert pianist, and that Corigliano associates him in particular with this haunting, nostalgic piece.
That effect is a bare-face assault on the senses, but the specific quality of the inspiration prevents it from seeming too soft-centred in the context of the whole movement, even if responses there will obviously differ. One is made in those moments of recollection to share the composer's own poignant memory, and so it is with more biting irony in the second movement, a vigorous ''Tarantella''. This, too, has a specific source of inspiration, a trivial piano piece that Corigliano wrote for the second of the friends he commemorates, a business man and amateur pianist. What he painfully points out in his note of explanation is that the association of the tarantella as a dance with madness proved horribly prophetic: the brilliant friend developed AIDS-dementia. So his own trivial dance is subjected to nightmare distortions, providing the central contrasting movement.
The third movement is more complex, ''Chaconne: Giulio's Song''. Giulio, the third of the friends commemorated, was an amateur cellist, and after his death Corigliano found a tape of an improvisation they had done together, years earlier in 1962. From that he used one of the principal melodies as a central motif, linking it with a chaconne which underpins the whole movement. The cello soloist (the Chicago SO principal, John Sharp) is joined later by a second cello, and the movement develops into a tribute to many more friends. Each one is represented by a melody echoing the words of eulogies specially prepared in their memory. The contrapuntal interweaving develops into a powerful funeral march, which subsides at the end on to the solo cello playing the A which opened the work.
Corigliano follows those three substantial movements with a relatively brief four-minute ''Epilogue'', hushed and slow. His main purpose is to introduce reminiscences of the first three movements, but having the Albeniz Tango quoted yet again seems to me once too often, so much does it stand out. Yet my reservation there does not prevent this from emerging very clearly as a heartfelt expression of grief, a work which with its approachable idiom and bold, atmospheric orchestration, will strike home with many more than regular devotees of new music. This live recording offers so formidable a performance, that I cannot think it could been bettered for precision of ensemble in studio conditions, and clearly live playing before an audience adds an emotive thrust that would have been hard if not impossible to capture in the studio. The composer is credited with acting as a co-director of the recording, and the sound gives high promise of the new Erato period in Chicago, vivid, immediate and full-bodied with plenty of detail to do justice to the many spectacular orchestral effects.'
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