Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

In My Room

The final evening of John Luther Adams installation Veils and Vesper will be this coming Saturday, May 27 at Diapason Gallery. The young and very cute Molly Sheridan has a wonderful article in Time Out New York. And Meredith Williams (who is probably also young and cute--at my age, everyone is) has posted some very nice photos at flickr from the opening night--one of which I've "borrowed" above. Reminds me a bit of certain stoner parties attended by your correspondent back in the late 60s, early 70s, although I'm sure this is a lot healthier.

The young and cute David Toub has an article titled New Opportunities for Music Dissemination (or “How to Get Your Music Heard When You Are Outside the System”)in Maria de Alvear’s World Edition. Looks like he also contributes to something called "Sequenzazzi."

Now Playing:

Rilke Songs; The Six Realms; Horn Concerto
Peter Lieberson
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson mezzo soprano, Peter Serkin, piano
William Purvis, horn, Michaela Fukacova, violoncello
Odense Symphony
Bridge

If you’re going to write art songs, it doesn’t hurt to be married to one of the world’s great singers. Peter Lieberson is especially fortunate in this regard; his wife, mezzo soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson could sing the BMW owner’s manual and make it sound good. Lieberson’s settings of five Rilke poems is considerably better than that and this performance, recorded live at the Ravinia Festival with Peter Serkin at the piano, is first-rate. Having never heard Lieberson’s orchestral work before, I found the two others pieces that fill out this generous disc to be even more revelatory. Lieberson's music balances tonality and atonality in ways that are likely to please or, perhaps, not offend either side of the great harmonic divide. The Horn Concerto for horn and a chamber orchestra, played by its dedicatee, William Purvis is a lively 18-minute composition in two movements that perfectly showcases Purvis’ virtuosity, not to mention lung capacity. The Six Realms is a 27-minute concerto for amplified cello in six movements, originally composed for Yo Yo Ma. Lieberson is a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism and The Six Realms travels much the same dark, foggy highway of human consciousness as John Adams’ Dharma in Big Sur although Lieberson’s writing is denser, more complex and less serial. The amplified cello produces a deeper, more subtle sound than does the amplified violin which in places in Dharma sounds like Hendrix keening on the high notes. That’s not a bad thing but it does diminish the “zen” quality somewhat. Lieberson’s path is more direct and balanced, less exciting, but more likely to endure. This is an extraordinarily ambitious release that shows what a small record label with big ambitions can do.

posted by Jerry Bowles 5/24/2006