Wuorinen's Whirlygig

[snyprrr]

Dadfrazzanabit, it is on that Naxos disc! I do have it already.

I was having the same problem. Wuorinen's discography is naturally confusing. I literally threw out the Koch disc when I was like, What's this here?, as I pulled out the same thing I had in my hand to put away. Arrrggh. And I almost bought a second of another Koch disc. (Koch discs have two covers, then a third with the Naxos re-issue,... three different versions of the same discs)

What of the 3rd Piano Sonata (Feinberg)?

[Karl Henning]

Program notes to the BSO première of the Eighth Symphony.

[Karl Henning]

Ah-ha! It was from these notes that I picked up that the first two symphonies are juvenilia and unavailable for performance.

[snyprrr]

Ah-ha! It was from these notes that I picked up that the first two symphonies are juvenilia and unavailable for performance.

What are these... Symphonies? Huh? Show me. Show me Wuorinen's Symphony No.5, or 6.

[Karl Henning]

Dude, did you read the program notes? Or are you gonna make me copy-&-paste? ; )

[Karl Henning]

Revisiting the Fourth Pf Cto this morning. Will hazard some more intelligent comment soon (I hope).  Fellow composer Carson Cooman interviewed Charles ahead of the première.

And Brokeback is on for Jan 2014.

[TheGSMoeller]

Revisiting the Fourth Pf Cto this morning. Will hazard some more intelligent comment soon (I hope).  Fellow composer Carson Cooman interviewed Charles ahead of the première.

And Brokeback is on for Jan 2014.

Which album is the 4th PC on? I have two discs of Wuorinen's music but haven't heard this PC.

[Karl Henning]

As yet unreleased.

[Karl Henning]

A review of that concert, printed in The New York Times

Beyond Polemical Battles in Music

In his first season as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra James Levine has been offering audiences a hefty dose of complex contemporary works. He realizes that some of his choices are putting off segments of the orchestra's subscribers. But his programming of tough-guy modernists like Milton Babbitt and Charles Wuorinen is not some intellectual pose. He is genuinely excited by these challenging works and is counting on his ability to entice listeners to open their ears to music he believes in.

Mr. Levine certainly had a responsive audience for the challenging program he presented with the orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Monday night. The mix of new and old works was emblematic of the programming Mr. Levine plans to continue. In the first half he conducted the New York premieres of John Harbison's "Darkbloom: Overture for an Imagined Opera," and Mr. Wuorinen's Fourth Piano Concerto. He led the world premieres of these commissioned works last week in Boston. Stravinsky's "Movements" for piano and orchestra served as a bridge between the new scores. After a rigorously contemporary first half, the program concluded with Brahms's Symphony No. 2 in D.

Though both were born in 1938, Mr. Harbison and Mr. Wuorinen represent bastions of contemporary music that were at war during the bad old days of the 1970's. With this program, Mr. Levine was signaling that those polemical battles are dated and pointless. To consider Mr. Wuorinen a doctrinaire serialist and Mr. Harbison a Neo-Romantic holdout for tonality is to oversimplify hugely their styles and stands.

"Darkbloom" was fashioned from preliminary fragments of an opera based on Nabokov's "Lolita" that Mr. Harbison decided to abandon. Though strands in the score are taken from music associated with characters and events in the story, this overture can be heard as an organic, harmonically tart and restlessly ambiguous 10-minute orchestral essay, which is how it came across in this engrossing performance.

With each work Stravinsky wrote during the 1950's, he inched closer to adopting the 12-tone technique pioneered by Schoenberg, a process that culminated in 1959 with "Movements," which employs Stravinsky's idiomatic brand of full-scaled serialism. But the radicalism of "Movements" comes less from its language than it extreme compression, inspired by Webern. Five eventful and restless movements are compressed into ten minutes of music. The pianist Peter Serkin, the soloist here, has long loved this remarkable work. Abetted by Mr. Levine and the orchestra, he found playful, intricate, tender and punchy qualities of this deceptively severe score. The rhythmically incisive performance made clear why Balanchine embraced this music as ideal for dance.

Mr. Serkin was the prime mover behind Mr. Levine's decision to commission Mr. Wuorinen's concerto. While it's true that in the last ten years Mr. Wuorinen had been exploring a less confrontational brand of modernism, this 25-minute concerto, structured in three sections, is still music of uncompromising complexity and intellectual rigor. Yet it was hard not to respond to the sheer intensity and brilliance of the score.

In the opening moments, atmospheric colorings and sustained orchestra harmonies with tremulous pedal tones give the music a sense of grounding, almost as in tonal music. The piano is introduced with alluring, lacy piano arpeggios. Whole stretches of the music are scored with the intimacy and specificity of chamber music. There are thick orchestral sonorities, sounding like 12-tone Brahms, and a passage of Ivesian atmospherics, complete with distant chimes and quivering strings. Each section builds inexorably to outbursts of aggressive intensity. Yet no matter how thick the music, almost every detail is audible.

Still, for all its unabashed modernism, there is something retro in Mr. Wuorinen's style. Viewed one way, the music is as dated as the tonal contemporary music that Mr. Wuorinen used to mock in his polemical writings of a generation ago. Yet, the concerto kept me hooked right through. And who could resist Mr. Serkin's stunning, bracing, subtle and exciting account of the monstrously difficult piano part? Any music that inspires Peter Serkin to this kind of performance must be taken seriously. Under Mr. Levine, the Boston musicians played this score as if they were a crack contemporary music orchestra.

After intermission, having heard all that new music, the Brahms Second sounded like the cutting-edge score it was when new, which surely was Mr. Levine's hope. The performance was vibrant, unsentimental and lucid. The chemistry between the Boston Symphony and its new conductor could not be better.

[Karl Henning]

Viz. structured in three sections, is still music of uncompromising complexity and intellectual rigor. Yet it was hard not to respond to the sheer intensity and brilliance of the score . . . why not simply in three sections?  And the sheer intensuity and brillance of the score are not to be denied; that prefatory it was hard not to respond to [it] is pure wishy-wash, isn't it?

[Karl Henning]

John Harbison had to have been pleased with the description this overture can be heard as an organic, harmonically tart and restlessly ambiguous 10-minute orchestral essay, which is how it came across in this engrossing performance.  But again, Tommasini pads the article and waters down his praise with the added verbal lard.  Better would have been this overture is an organic, harmonically tart and restlessly ambiguous 10-minute orchestral essay.  The only thing lost is a throwaway reference to the performance, which deserved better comment, anyway.

[Cato]

John Harbison had to have been pleased with the description this overture can be heard as an organic, harmonically tart and restlessly ambiguous 10-minute orchestral essay, which is how it came across in this engrossing performance.  But again, Tommasini pads the article and waters down his praise with the added verbal lard.  Better would have been this overture is an organic, harmonically tart and restlessly ambiguous 10-minute orchestral essay.  The only thing lost is a throwaway reference to the performance, which deserved better comment, anyway.

Here is the line which fried my potatoes:

"... Under Mr. Levine, the Boston musicians played this score as if they were a crack contemporary music orchestra."

You mean...they aren't? 

A little New York snobbery there, I would say!

For those unacquainted with Wuorinen, at least try the Grand Bamboula!  A fun work!

[not edward]

Viz. structured in three sections, is still music of uncompromising complexity and intellectual rigor. Yet it was hard not to respond to the sheer intensity and brilliance of the score . . . why not simply in three sections?  And the sheer intensuity and brillance of the score are not to be denied; that prefatory it was hard not to respond to [it] is pure wishy-wash, isn't it?

As someone who hasn't heard the work in question, 90% of this review could have been written without hearing it. It hardly stretches anyone's predictive power to guess that a new Wuorinen work would be post-serial but lean towards specific tonal centers.

I'm not sure what "uncompromising complexity and intellectual rigor" is meant to signify beyond "hey guys, this music isn't tonal." As if tonal music isn't allowed to be complex or intellectually rigorous.

[Karl Henning]

Cheers, Cato & Edward! Yes, Tommasini was quite a piece of work (or maybe is yet, I just haven't been aware of anything he may have written recently . . . .)

[Karl Henning]

I am late finding this, but Matthew Guerrieri mentioned the opera on his blog, Soho the Dog.

[Karl Henning]

And here's a general article.

[Karl Henning]

Review of his "birthday event" in June.

[San Antone]

I am late finding this, but Matthew Guerrieri mentioned the opera on his blog, Soho the Dog.

I've known about this opera, I guess since around the time of that blog article (~ 2007) but have not heard anything recently.  I think there was some news a couple of years ago about the premier being pushed off indefinitely.  But I could be wrong. 

[Karl Henning]

Hm, on his site at least, the première is still listed for next month. (Perhaps the site is not recently updated.)

[San Antone]

Hm, on his site at least, the première is still listed for next month. (Perhaps the site is not recently updated.)

I hope that is accurate, and as I said, I have not heard anything for a while.