Higdon: City Scape / Concerto for Orchestra

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Jennifer Higdon is a masterful colorist whose music is immediately appealing, full of energy and dash, but also with lyrical movements that grab you and hold your interest with their variety and melodic freshness. She can be brassy and bold like William Schuman and lushly Romantic like Samuel Barber, to mention just two American predecessors her music calls to mind. She also has a strong profile of her own, as we hear in City Scapes, a musical portrait of Atlanta that captures the bustle of a metropolis on the move. It's centerpiece, "river sings a song to trees," is wonderfully paced and engrossing. Concerto for Orchestra is a grand workout for a virtuoso band, teeming with solo turns that can tax all but the best musicians, and passages that spotlight sections of the orchestra with opportunities to strut their stuff. It's a brilliant piece brilliantly played by the Atlantans. Add Telarc's usual terrific sound and this disc becomes a must for fans of accessible modern music. --Dan Davis

Higdon: City Scape / Concerto for Orchestra, Music, Jennifer Higdon, Robert Spano, Atlanta Symphony, Classical, Classical Artists, Concerto, Orchestral, Orchestral & Symphonic, Orchestral Music

Average customer rating:

two non-added value pieces

Wow!

A thrilling sound, as usual, from Atlanta

Music by Committee

New Masterpieces

Higdon: City Scape / Concerto for Orchestra
Jennifer Higdon , Robert Spano , and Atlanta Symphony
Manufacturer: Telarc
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Concertos | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Classical | Styles | Music
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra | ( A ) | Featured Performers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music
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Jennifer Higdon: Piano Trio; Voices; Impressions

ASIN: B0001KL4HW
Release Date: 2004-03-23

Tracks:

I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
SkyLine
River Sings A Song To Trees
Peachtree Street

Amazon.com

Jennifer Higdon is a masterful colorist whose music is immediately appealing, full of energy and dash, but also with lyrical movements that grab you and hold your interest with their variety and melodic freshness. She can be brassy and bold like William Schuman and lushly Romantic like Samuel Barber, to mention just two American predecessors her music calls to mind. She also has a strong profile of her own, as we hear in City Scapes, a musical portrait of Atlanta that captures the bustle of a metropolis on the move. It's centerpiece, "river sings a song to trees," is wonderfully paced and engrossing. Concerto for Orchestra is a grand workout for a virtuoso band, teeming with solo turns that can tax all but the best musicians, and passages that spotlight sections of the orchestra with opportunities to strut their stuff. It's a brilliant piece brilliantly played by the Atlantans. Add Telarc's usual terrific sound and this disc becomes a must for fans of accessible modern music. --Dan Davis

Customer Reviews:

two non-added value pieces.......2006-06-16

These two new pieces sound grey and academic.
Melodical imagination and the management of stress and release are absent features.
For new interesting symphony-like pieces, try Adams, Rouse, Hovhaness, Rautavaara or even Corigliano, Daugherty (at least is is brillantly scored and colored, and at the end exciting) and Glass (although his symphonies have been neglected, the new Symphony N.8 is a true masterpiece).
Jennifer Higdon still has to prove!

Wow!.......2006-03-16

I really enjoyed this disc! Well-written and well-performed. I don't normally like new music, but this was a-okay. Came by it via a recommendation from a friend.

A thrilling sound, as usual, from Atlanta.......2005-07-09

First off, to address some of the earlier reviewers, it is worth noting that few composers have the luxury of complete control over their careers. They have to earn a living sometimes; Shostakovich's work during the last years of Stalin's life come to mind as an immediate example. I don't know what motivates Higdon to compose, but I do know that the output is gorgeous. [And, I might add, the late Robert Shaw--despite his association with the choral classics--was also a champion of newer music; it's great to see them continue the trend.]

Top billing on this CD goes to "City Scape," written for Spano and the Atlanta SO, and based on Higdon's memories of Atlanta itself. The resemblances to Barber are fairly obvious, and the sound is incredible.

The other work is the slightly shorter "Concerto for Orchestra," consciously modeled on Bartok's, written for the centennial of the Philadelphia Orchestra. I was in Philadelphia when it premiered, but not knowing who Higdon was at the time, I passed on the chance to see it. Hearing it now, I regret that decision. Works like this are hard to write--the listener's interest must be sustained, while still showing off the skills of the orchestra--and harder to perform well. But the ASO rises to the occasion.

Another top-notch job by Telarc.

Music by Committee.......2005-04-12

What does it say about "classical" new music that scores are becoming more and more fearful of silence and ambiguity, its listeners insecure enough in their personal tastes that they desperately want to be solicited as fellow interactants (or co-creators) in the musical experience?

We do seem to move further and further from Glenn Gould's idea of music as "not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline... but the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity" and closer to the notion of the musical work as communal love-in or group lament. Apparently we hanker more and more for music designed by committee, music as a civic occasion. And to raise our lighters, flames aloft, at the next New York Philharmonic premiere. And maybe, while we're at it, to evade security long enough to get up on stage and snort loudly in approval or disapproval at the principal violist's negotation of her tougher string-crossings.

Jennifer Higdon's music sparkles and is beautifully orchestrated. Audience enthusiasm is testimonial to that. But I also find her music superficial, anonymous, and noncommittal in the way tract homes are. The Concerto for Orchestra begins (just as its fourth movement ends) with heavy strokes on timpani and bells, followed by an athletic string figure. Opening a piece like this -- as a commercial spot for Lots-o'-Drums, as it were -- can no longer be a compositional decision, but is now necessarily a cliche, an empty gesture, a kind of sylistic commercialism. At least I would have thought the more private utterances of Debussy, Webern, Bill Evans, Takemitsu, and Brian Eno have made that point.

If we do live in increasing fear of silence, that might explain why the works on this CD never so much as pause in their forceful forward trajectory of pleasure and sentiment. In "river sings a song to trees" (second movement of "City Scape"), Higdon does begin with sparse and mystical glimmers of water-gong, cymbals, flexatone, and glocken; and goes on to parse the music into lush and homey, pseudo-Coplandesque phrases. But elsewhere, and in the entire Concerto for Orchestra, the music moves unrelievedly and stultifyingly forward with all the rhythmic and metric subtlety of a typewriter, never so much as pausing to inhale. But maybe I'm being unfair: if headphoned young people are on the search for software that will vanquish silence and securely curtain themselves off from a dangerous and fickle world, then why shouldn't they have some new "classical" music for that purpose?

In terms of Higdon's material per se, I can only protest again a work that offers no distinctions whatsoever as regards melody, harmony, or rhythm. And a piece where any initial attractions pall on repetition. Agile, clever, and adept with idiomatic effects, the string writing in the second movement reminded me of Britten -- the Prelude and Fugue for Strings, maybe. But Britten's quirky, slightly banal ideas linger obsessively in the memory while I spent more than an hour with Higdon trying to remember things, hoping for an inspired tidbit, some kind of memorable idea. In the Concerto for Orchestra, she helps by putting her themes in quotes, citing and reciting modal and fanfare-like ideas in steady rhythm and unison-and-octave strings. What interest there is comes from her scales and neo-Hindemithian harmonic syntax, which can come close to eloquence in some quieter passages.

There can be no doubt over Spano and his Atlantans. This is musicianship and playing of much greater command and profile than we hear from many other ensembles: rhythms snap, crescendos lift off, and everyone obviously believes in Higdon's music. Especially toward the middle of "river sings," Telarc beautifully frames the warm Atlanta strings in a way that does much credit to engineer and players. But to what purpose?

New Masterpieces.......2005-02-19

I heard City Scape on the radio and was impressed enough by what I heard to order the CD. For me the music is hard to categorize as "who it sounds like." I think that Jennifer Higdon has her own voice and this is reflected in the works recorded here, a Grammy nominee.

The Concerto for Orchestra, written for the Philadelphia Orchestra, is structured after Bela Bartok's work of the same name. This Concerto begins with chimes and timpani and goes on to give the strings quite a workout with spiraling scales before moving onto the woodwinds and brass sections. The second movement is for strings alone and is a Scherzo in tempo. It starts with a pizzicato theme and gradually all of the players move to the bow beginning with the concertmaster. The middle movement turns to the entire orchestra with each principle player having a solo before the entire orchestra, moving from woodwinds to strings to brass and percussion. The fourth movement belongs to the percussion and is perhaps the most inventive music pitting the various drums and timpani in a battle against each other. The use of a harp, piano and celesta added a mysterious quality to their part of the movement but this music, for me, explored this section of the orchestra as completely as no other has. The final movement is for the full orchestra. It begins with strings alone but soon the orchestra is playing over the perfusion, carrying on their "battle" from the prior movement.

The same orchestration is reflected in City Scape. The first movement, representing downtown Atlanta, is heavy with percussion. It depicts the changing skyline of the city as it grows and become bolder. The middle movement, depicting nature is pastoral. It is a journey through the parks and green landscapes of Atlanta: a quite movement that slowly builds to the entire orchestra and resumes a quiet, meandering exploration. The find section recalls Peachtree Street, a main road in the city. The music recalls the busy nature of the street and the motion of those walking and those driving along. The music depicts the changing nature of the street with a quick, rhythmic theme played by the orchestra. The bustling nature of the music slows and becomes quieter for a brief section before returning to the busy, bustling theme.

I felt engaged by Ms. Higdon's music: it is not abstract, atonal music (like Luciano Berio, for example) but tonal and filled with interesting ideas. The Concerto for Orchestra allowed her to juxtapose the sections of the orchestra and present some interesting effects. City Scapes presents an interesting picture of a growing metropolis. Anyone curious about current day composers should find this CD of interest.

Jennifer Higdon: City Scape; Concerto for Orchestra [Hybrid SACD]

Average customer rating:

Jennifer Higdon: City Scape; Concerto for Orchestra [Hybrid SACD]

Manufacturer: Telarc
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music
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ASIN: B0001KL4IG
Release Date: 2004-03-23

Music Review: