This year marks the 51st season of the Grand Teton Music Festival. In celebration of their 50th season, they commissioned Pulitzer and Grammy Award winning composer Jennifer Higdon. Now that world premiere performance, along with Beethoven's Pastorale Symphony, is available as a DVD/CD set from the festival.
The Grand Teton Music Festival is one of the most prestigious and finest musical gatherings in the world. Musicians from around North America come together by invitation and play under maestros ranging from (music director) Donald Runnicles to Bernard Labadie, and soloists such as Lynn Harrell, James Ehnes, and Stephen Hough.
So when you mix excellent new music to this fun and eclectic band of musicians, it is completely inspiring, for both the listener and the orchestra!
Clare and Higdon
All Things Majestic is about 20 minutes long and is in four movements. Teton Range sets the mood perfectly, mostly relying on the brass, but using the full orchestra to good use, for a true "maestoso." Not since Hovhaness' Second Symphony have chords struck so true for such a landscape! The second movement, String Lake, aptly features the string section, and even outdoes Smetana (Moldau) and Debussy (La Mer) for colors with a water theme. At this point, I have to mention the images from the dvd. They are spectacular scenes from Henry Holdsworth, Thomas Mangelsen, and Edward Riddell! Pictures run the gamut, and range in season, color, wildlife, day, night, and everything in between. Snake River continues the charming score by Higdon, using percussion and woodwinds to begin and returning to full orchestra, a scherzo for this all but in name symphony. Cathedrals, the finale, returns musically and visually to the mountains -and serves as a perfect peak to this modern masterwork.
Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 "Pastorale" is given a fine reading by the orchestra and Runnicles. This time for the dvd, steady video is shown of various nature scenes - far less compelling visually than All Things Majestic's awesome photos - but musically moving.
Here is a link to an interview and the entire All Things Majestic performance from Wyoming PBS. We recommend this new release highly with the chance to see and hear the music on dvd and cd (http://www.gtmf.org/merchandise/). Bravo!!! - host John Clare
As July Fourth approaches, we thought another Top Ten list would be nice for America's birthday, and so here are great living American composers you should listen to this summer!
Just out today (June 26, 2012) is Pulitzer Prize winning composer Steven Stucky'sAugust 4, 1964. An evening length work we wrote about around the premiere, it is now available on compact disc and digital download.
There is a lot to love about this work, and after having performances in Dallas and New York City's Carnegie Hall, listeners everywhere can enjoy this recording! Especially moving is "August Fourth" sung by Kristine Jepson, Indira Mahajan and Rodney Gilfry. Central to August 4, 1964 is an all orchestra interlude Elegy - moving as Barber's Adagio and not yet overused! It serves as a perfect function, allowing the soloists rest and further setting the mood.
Gene Scheer's libretto is also fitting without bias or ornamentation. In The Secret Heart of America (movement 5) the writing shifts between President Johnson's March 1965 speech to Congress "We shall overcome" and Mrs. Chaney's family story of her grandfather's farm - absolutely brilliant! (And ironic that neither are from the actual day, August 4,1964.)
I spoke to Stucky and Scheer in Dallas the week of the premiere:
Now released! (courtesy of Dallas Symphony)
From the DSO site: "Previous DSO Live releases distributed by Naxos include Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh Symphonies; Tchaikovsky's Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, Capriccio Italien and Mozartiana Suite, all conducted by Jaap van Zweden. These recordings are available for download on iTunes, Amazon.com and other leading stores and websites. The DSO released its first recording in 1946, and has since grown its catalog to more than 75 recordings under such eminent conductors as Antal Dorati, Walter Hendl, Donald Johanos, Eduardo Mata and Andrew Litton."
Congratulations to composer Jerod Tate, who has won an Emmy Award for his work in the documentary "The Science of Composing." This documentary featured Jerod's residency with the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, where he taught composition to seven world-renown research scientists. At the end of the residency, his students' compositions were performed at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art by members of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic. Watch the documentary here: http://www.oeta.tv/video/914.html
This weekend the San Antonio Chamber Choir performs a program entitled "Let there be light." A world premiere by Timothy Kramer is a new five movement work called Lux Caelestis. Host John Clare caught some of the dress rehearsal of the new work:
