Concerto for Orchestra (Higdon)

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The Concerto for Orchestra is an orchestral composition in five movements by the American composer Jennifer Higdon. The work was commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra with contributions from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Philadelphia Music Project, and Peter Benoliel. It was premiered at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia June 12, 2002, with conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch leading the Philadelphia Orchestra. [1]

Orchestra large instrumental ensemble

An orchestra is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which mixes instruments from different families, including bowed string instruments such as violin, viola, cello, and double bass, as well as brass, woodwinds, and percussion instruments, each grouped in sections. Other instruments such as the piano and celesta may sometimes appear in a fifth keyboard section or may stand alone, as may the concert harp and, for performances of some modern compositions, electronic instruments.

Jennifer Elaine Higdon is an American composer of classical music and composition teacher. She has received many awards including the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her Violin Concerto and two Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary Classical Composition - the first in 2009 for her Percussion Concerto, the second in 2018 for her Viola Concerto. The latter was on an album of her music, Higdon: All Things Majestic, Viola Concerto, and Oboe Concerto, that won the 2018 Grammy for Best Classical Compendium.

Philadelphia Orchestra American symphony orchestra in Philadelphia, PA

The Philadelphia Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, the orchestra is based at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, where it performs its subscription concerts, numbering over 130 annually, in Verizon Hall.

Contents

Composition

The Concerto for Orchestra has a duration of roughly 35 minutes and is composed in five numbered movements. [1]

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession. A movement is a section, "a major structural unit perceived as the result of the coincidence of relatively large numbers of structural phenomena".

A unit of a larger work that may stand by itself as a complete composition. Such divisions are usually self-contained. Most often the sequence of movements is arranged fast-slow-fast or in some other order that provides contrast.

Instrumentation

The piece is scored for three flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), three oboes, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four French horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, harp, piano, celesta, timpani, three percussionists, and strings.

Western concert flute transverse woodwind instrument made of metal or wood

The Western concert flute is a transverse (side-blown) woodwind instrument made of metal or wood. It is the most common variant of the flute. A musician who plays the flute is called a flautist, flutist, flute player, or (rarely) fluter.

Piccolo small musical instrument of the flute family

The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The modern piccolo has most of the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written. This gave rise to the name ottavino, which the instrument is called in the scores of Italian composers. It is also called flauto piccolo or flautino.

Oboe musical instrument of the woodwind family

Oboes belong to the classification of double reed woodwind instruments. Oboes are usually made of wood, but there are also oboes made of synthetic materials. The most common oboe plays in the treble or soprano range. A soprano oboe measures roughly 65 cm long, with metal keys, a conical bore and a flared bell. Sound is produced by blowing into the reed at a sufficient air pressure, causing it to vibrate with the air column. The distinctive tone is versatile and has been described as "bright". When the word oboe is used alone, it is generally taken to mean the treble instrument rather than other instruments of the family, such as the bass oboe, the cor anglais, or oboe d'amore

Reception

Andrew Farach-Colton of Gramophone praised the Concerto for Orchestra, saying, "One expects a concerto to be virtuosic, and Higdon peppers this one with solos for the first-desk players, while also offering plenty of opportunity for more general orchestral muscle flexing." [2] Reviewing a performance by the Mannes College The New School for Music Orchestra, Allan Kozinn of The New York Times lauded the piece as "accessible but technically demanding" and wrote, "Like the concertos for orchestra by Bartok and Lutoslawski, this is a showpiece that makes demands on every section and often calls for unusual timbres: the quickly descending violin glissandos, which create an almost electronic effect in the third movement, for example, or the eerie bowed percussion sounds that open the fourth." Kozinn further remarked:

<i>Gramophone</i> (magazine) UK monthly magazine published in London devoted to classical music, particularly to reviews of recordings

Gramophone is a magazine published monthly in London devoted to classical music, particularly to reviews of recordings. It was founded in 1923 by the Scottish author Compton Mackenzie. It was acquired by Haymarket in 1999. In 2013 the Mark Allen Group became the publisher.

Allan Kozinn is an American journalist, music critic, and teacher.

<i>The New York Times</i> Daily broadsheet newspaper based in New York City

The New York Times is an American newspaper based in New York City with worldwide influence and readership. Founded in 1851, the paper has won 125 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper. The Times is ranked 17th in the world by circulation and 2nd in the U.S.

Combinations of strings and bells yield a magical, sparkling effect, and some of the woodwind passages approach that spirit from a different direction, with allusions to the brisk descending clarinet lines that animate Bernstein’s "Candide" Overture along the way. But the work is not just a catalog of fancy effects. Ms. Higdon also provides long stretches of fast-bowed, percussion-supported, muscular orchestral writing, particularly in the opening movement and the finale, when both the score and this young orchestra were at their fiery best. [3]

Conversely, Andrew Clements of The Guardian called the piece "supremely forgettable" and "an example of American contemporary music at its most vacuous, a noisy mishmash of early 20th-century styles". [4]

<i>The Guardian</i> British national daily newspaper

The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian, and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, the Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of the Guardian free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for The Guardian the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders.

Recordings

The first recording of this work was released by Telarc on March 23, 2004 with a recording of Higdon's work City Scape (2002). [5] It was performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Robert Spano. The track listing is as follows;

Telarc International Corporation is an American audiophile independent record label founded in 1977 by two classically trained musicians and former teachers, Jack Renner and Robert Woods. Based in Cleveland, Ohio, the label has had a long association with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra, as well as with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Alhough it started as a classical music label, Telarc has released jazz, blues and country music recordings.

City Scape is an orchestral piece composed by Jennifer Higdon in 2002 and commissioned by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. On November 14, 2002, the piece was premiered under the direction of Robert Spano. This piece dedicated to Robert Spano calls for a concerto grosso, in which 35 instruments are used; yet many of these instruments have featured solos that are scattered throughout the piece. The piece lasts a total of 31 minutes.

Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) is an American orchestra based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Robert Spano has been its music director since 2001. The ASO's main concert venue is Atlanta Symphony Hall in the Woodruff Arts Center.

Concerto For Orchestra

1: I (8:04)

2: II (4:34)

3: III (10:31)

4: IV (5:36)

5: V (6:13)

City Scape

6: SkyLine (7:07)

7: River Sings A Song To Trees (17:39)

8: Peachtree Street (6:06)

See also

Related Research Articles

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Rainbow Body is an orchestral composition by the American composer Christopher Theofanidis. It was commissioned by the Houston Symphony, which first performed the work in April 2000 under the conductor Robert Spano. The piece is dedicated to the Texas lawyer and philanthropist Glen Rosenbaum. Rainbow Body is one of Theofanidis's most-performed compositions and won the 2003 London Masterprize competition.

Jennifer Higdon's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra was written in 2008. The work was jointly commissioned by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the Curtis Institute of Music. It was composed for the violinist Hilary Hahn and was given its world premiere by Hahn and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra under the conductor Mario Venzano on February 6, 2009. The piece was later awarded the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

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The Concerto for Viola and Orchestra is a viola concerto by the American composer John Harbison. The work was commissioned by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra with contributions from Meet The Composer and Reader's Digest. It was first performed by Jaime Laredo and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Hugh Wolff on May 18, 1990.

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The Concerto for Viola and Orchetra is a musical composition for viola and orchestra by the American composer Walter Piston. The work was written in 1957 for the violist Joseph de Pasquale, who first performed the piece with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on March 7, 1958.

The Concerto for Piano and Orchestra is a musical composition by the American composer Aaron Copland. The work was commissioned by the conductor Serge Koussevitzky who was then music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It was first performed on January 28, 1927, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Koussevitzky with the composer himself as the soloist. The piece is dedicated to Copland's patron Alma Morgenthau Wertheim.

The Low Brass Concerto is a concerto for four solo low brass instruments and orchestra by the American composer Jennifer Higdon. The work was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for their renowned low brass section and co-commissioned by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra. It was composed in 2017 and was first performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Riccardo Muti on February 1, 2018.

References

  1. 1 2 Higdon, Jennifer (2002). Program Notes: "Concerto for Orchestra" Archived 2015-07-16 at the Wayback Machine .. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  2. ↑ Farach-Colton, Andrew (April 2004). "Higdon Concerto for Orchestra; City Scape". Gramophone . Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  3. ↑ Kozinn, Allan (February 21, 2008). "Scores With a Youth Movement". The New York Times . Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  4. ↑ Clements, Andrew (April 29, 2004). "Higdon: Concerto for Orchestra; City Scape: Atlanta Symphony/ Spano". The Guardian . Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  5. ↑ "Higdon* / Robert Spano, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra - Concerto For Orchestra / City Scape". Discogs. Retrieved 2017-08-16.
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