Word: cantatas
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Carl Ruggles' extremely dissonant Angels was written for either string or brass ensemble; the performance here by strings could not equal the extraordinary effect that three trumpets and five trombones can achieve. The concert ended with Daniel Pinkham '44 conducting the combined chorus and orchestra in his new Wedding Cantata. In five movements, this is a wholly ingratiating and captivating work, full of imaginative and nuanced timbres--his finest composing to date...
...Bach's cantatas are the backbone of his work, and to my mind the finest body of music ever written. Using almost every conceivable combination of soloists, chorus, and orchestra, the cantatas are varied in instrumentation but maintain an astonishingly high quality. More than 200 survive, but they are played all too infrequently, and it was a real pleasure to hear Cantata No. 32, for soprano, bass, oboe, and strings...
...musician, and Thomas Beveridge, who is a true bass and not a warmed-over baritone. Oboist Cynthia Deery played with a fine woody tone, but had a curious way of ending a phrase abruptly. The strings were fine, especially in the final duet, but the high point of the cantata was the accompanied recitative for the two soloists, with daring harmonies and beautiful, sweeping, melodic lines...
...Alexander Arutiunian, 36, Armenian-born writer whose 1948 cantata about the Homeland won a Stalin Prize. ¶ Otar Taktakishvili, 32, former student at the Tiflis Conservatory and twice a Stalin Prizewinner (for his First Symphony, in 1949, and Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, in 1952). ¶ Veli Mukhatov, 40, praised by Khachaturian for his oratorios. ¶ Akhmed Gadzhiev, 39, noted for a 1952 symphonic poem, Peace. Other young Russian composers, better known outside the Soviet Union: ¶ Karen Khachaturian, 36. Aram's nephew, whose eclectic, highly rhythmic Violin Sonata in G Minor has been recorded by Russian Virtuoso David...
Some of Diamond's colleagues also heard from last week: ¶J Alan Hovhaness' Easter Cantata got its first New York concert performance by the National Orchestral Association under Guest Conductor Newell Jenkins. Mystically described by Armenian-descended Composer Hovhaness ("The vocal element ... is the sun; the other sounds are the planets"), the work moved with melodic simplicity, derived its main effects from the repetitive. Oriental-sounding accompaniment which has helped to distinguish Hovhaness' output from more technique-tortured works of his contemporaries. ¶J Italian Composer Riccardo Malipiero's 45-minute Sinfonia Cantata was premiered...