Word: concertos
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...familiar concerto in sonata form, with balanced themes and brilliant solos, seems to be dead, but composers still wirte concertos in the original sense of the word: simple two tonial forces opposed to each other. Some recent releases showing the directions the concerto has taken in this century...
CARTER: PIANO CONCERTO (RCA Victor). Unlike many of his contemporaries, Elliott Carter writes music for standard instruments, eschewing electronic effects and aleatory experiments. What's more, he even provides a dramatic script for this concerto. An individual (the piano) is influenced by society (the orchestra), learns that it is being misled, and ends up alienated and alone. Piano and orchestra converse in different chords like different dialects and at different tempos; swatches of sound appear in what seem desultory then frantic patterns; and at times the script calls for practically the whole Boston Symphony to damp down the valiant...
SCHOENBERG: PIANO CONCERTO AND VIOLIN CONCERTO (Columbia). A new release bringing together two earlier performances of these ripe, satisfying examples of twelve-tone composition. With Robert Craft conducting the nadian Broadcasting Corporation Symphony Glenn Gould plays the rich, almost Brahms-like piano part in the first concerto, and Israel Baker tackles the difficult violin work in the second concerto. Both pieces demonstrate that the intricacies of the dodecaphonic scale in no way limit emotional expression. "If a composer does not write from the heart, said Schoenberg, "he simply cannot produce good music." Schoenberg did both...
COPLAND: SYMPHONY FOR ORGAN AND ORCHESTRA (Columbia). Brooklyn-born Aaron Copland was finishing his composition studies in Paris in 1924 when he wrote this big, loose-jointed work, first cousin to a concerto. The organ does not contrast with the orchestra but stirs it up and then masses forces with it. Considered shocking at the time ("If a young man at the age of 23 can write a symphony like that, in five years he will be ready to commit murder!" declared Con ductor Walter Damroseh), the work has never been recorded until now. The New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein...
...BUSONI: CONCERTO FOR PIANO, ORCHESTRA AND MALE CHORUS (Angel; 2 LPs). A first recording of a huge, seldom heard work that dates in time to 1904 and in style to a still earlier romantic era. Ferruccio Busoni was a pianist in the tradition of Liszt. He was a teacher who boasted disciples rather than pupils (among them, Kurt Weill) and he was also a composer of grandiose notions and mixed talents, which are illuminated by English Pianist John Ogdon and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in this 70-minute work The introductory movement seems to be all stately facade, but once...