Antheil: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1

Opis

Antheil: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1Opis:Product Description Alongside its ongoing much-lauded Copland series, the BBC Philharmonic embarks on a new American journey, this time with its chief guest conductor, John Storgårds. Known as the bad boy of music, George Antheil began his career with a reputation as an enfant terrible, composing shockingly avant-garde works such as his ever-popular Ballet mécanique, inspired by the dynamism and dissonances of Stravinskys early ballets. Although he is well-established on the film music scene, too, it is his symphonic output sampled here that today survives in the concert hall. This new series documents the evolution of his musical style, which moved towards a fundamentally tonal and melody-based idiom, Antheil joining the growing ranks of famous US symphonists. The war-inspired Fourth Symphony and joyous Fifth clearly represent this compositional shift, breaking with what the composer called the now passé modernism. Also here is the premiere recording of the Texas-inspired Over the Plains, memorable for its allusions to cowboy music and offering some unexpectedly dramatic and atmospheric twists along the way.

Review In 1926 Aaron Copland declared that George Antheil possesses the greatest gifts of any American now writing . Ten years later, he added: But something always seems to prevent their full fruition. Whether this is due to a lack of artistic integrity, or an unusual susceptibility to influences, or a lack of any conscious direction, is not clear. Those familiar with the two symphonies on this Chandos recording may nod vigorously at the phrase susceptibility to influences , as both bear striking resemblance to works by Shostakovich (in No 4) and Prokofiev (in No 5). Antheil is a fine melodist, however, with a sensitive feeling for harmonic colour, so I d always rather enjoyed the music s felicities even if their brazen borrowings had me shaking my head. Honestly, given the excellence of Hugh Wolff s CPO disc of these same two symphonies, I wasn't sure the music truly merited yet another recording. I was wrong. Rather than placing these symphonies squarely in the mid- century mainstream, as Wolff does, John Storgårds revels in their idiosyncrasies, revealing a wealth of expressive detail I d never heard before. In Storgårds's hands, the stark and often macabre juxtapositions of the Fourth Symphony (1942) suggest that Antheil knew Mahler s music very well, and not just the Mahlerian aspects of Shostakovich's work. Storgårds doesn't quite generate the white heat that Stokowski does in the broadcast recording of the 1944 premiere (Cala), but Storgårds s emotionally involving interpretation is ultimately more satisfying. The Fifth (1948) is only slightly less compelling. In the first movement, Storgårds's measured tempo adds weight but often at the expense of bite- though the coda packs quite a wallop. The central Adagio is beautifully sustained and sounds (to my ears at least) as much Czech as Russian, particularly in the ravishing passage beginning at 1 12 . And, somehow, Storgårds, manages to take much of the Prokofiev out of the finale. Here, it simply sounds cosmopolitan - which Antheil (friend of Joyce, Pound, Hemingway, Picasso, among others) certainly was. The disc also includes the recorded premiere of Over the Plains (1945), inspired by the composer s visit to Texas. It s pure Antheil in its unabashed weirdness, veering between rollicking cowboy music, impressionist tone- painting and (near the end) what appears to be a homage to Mahler s Seventh. A brilliant recording all around, and an important one. Bring on the next instalment! --Gramophone, June'17George Antheil's Symphony No. 5 represented the composer's abandonment of musical modernism in favour of melody and tonality. It is cast in three movements. He described his first movement as an impression of the rather happy American music I hear about me daily . Indeed it is sunny and with helter-skelter material sometimes sounding mechanical, and otAutor:BBC PhilharmonicNośnik:Audio CDPłyt:Język: Data wydania: 2017Waga: 0.18 gramWysokość: 0.6 cmSzerokość: 5 cmDługość: 5.6 cmUWAGA: Kupując produkt na tej aukcji zgadzasz się na wydłużony termin realizacji wysyłki (10-14 dni roboczych). Podany towar pochodzi z zagranicznego magazynu, stąd wydłużony czas realizacji który podany jest obok.