Track Listing

1. Symphony No. 2: 1. Allegro
2. Symphony No. 2: 2. Adagio (In memoriam Stephen Albert)
3. Symphony No. 2: 3. Allegro
4. Flute Concerto: 1. �nhran
5. Flute Concerto: 2. Alla marcia
6. Flute Concerto: 3. Elegia
7. Flute Concerto: 4. Scherzo
8. Flute Concerto: 5. �nhran
9. Phaethon, for orchestra with augmented percussion

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #76484 in Music
• Released on: 1997-05-27
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

Customer Reviews

Exceptional in All Regards. A Must Have CD!
Listening to this disk today made me wonder how many other truly remarkable works of contemporary classical music I may have overlooked. The short version of this review is BUY THIS CD. It is remarkable in all regards.

Now for the long version. First, overall impressions:

Recording quality: A+, as good as it gets on standard CD

Performing quality: A, the orchestra seems to be very well rehearsed. The musicians for the most part seem to be totally confident in handling this at times technically challenging music.

Conducting: A+, Eschenbach seems to be totally committed to this music, the ensemble playing is tight, balanced, with glorious tone.

Composition Quality: A+, IMHO, the 2nd Symphony and the Flute Concerto are destined to eventually become staples for symphonic orchestras. Their time will come, hopefully much more quickly than it took audiences to appreciate works of some like Mahler and Bruckner.

Rhythmic Interest: A+

Orchestration: A+

Emotional Content: A+

I consider these performances inspired. At the end of the Flute Concerto I pictured myself hearing this live, jumping up, and repeatedly shouting BRAVO at the top of my lungs. I don't recall reacting this way in a home listening experience before.

I intentionally did not read the program notes prior to listening to this music. The first of movement of the 2nd Symphony is completely engaging with wonderful rhythmic drive. It is interrupted by the 2nd movement where it immediately becomes clear the composer has been inspired by something that has given him great pain and a sense of deep loss. I learned later it was the death of a fellow composer and friend.

I tend to become most attached to works where composers have attempted to deal with their deepest, most profound, and sometimes most painful emotions. It's perhaps why I have been so attracted to Mahler, among others. The 2nd Symphony makes my "A" team in this regard.

I may have to create a new category for the Flute Concerto though. Can a work be TOO BEAUTIFUL to listen to? I have never thought of such a concept before. I recently listened to the Mahler 10th which has one of the most beautiful, moving flute passages I can think of. This work completely trumps Mahler in that regard and has what is without a doubt the most beautiful, emotionally moving set of flute melodies I have ever heard.

But not all is beauty. These two works seem to deal with profound tragedy, pain, and loss, too. The Flute Concerto is a truly remarkable work, and is easily my favorite all-time "concerto".

The Phaethon, while no doubt a fine work, was anti-climatic after having heard the 2nd Symphony and Flute Concerto. In fairness to it, anything would have been anti-climatic after what I experienced listening to the Flute Concerto. Do you ever get the sense that time has stopped while listening to a work of music? I have only had that happen once or twice before. It happened while listening to final two or so minutes of the Flute Concerto.

In summary, this is a truly remarkable release. I hope everyone will take the time to listened to it in a totally quiet (it has very wide dynamic range) environment, on a good sound system (audiophiles will rejoice. This will make a great test CD to take to the store when auditioning new equipment), and with no distractions.

Enjoy. Keep a box of tissue handy just in case.

Hear what will be the century's most popular flute concerto
I've heard all these works live in three venues, and believe me, they are audience-pleasers! Standing ovations for contemporary music?? You bet! And these aren't Boston Pops-type bon bons, but serious, even profound works.

While the Symphony No. 2 and Phaethon have elements of Rouse in his dashing-crashing "Gorgon" mode--superb orchestration with rock-em-sock-em percussion--the Flute Concerto is a journey to the days of pure melody. I just melted in the "Elegy" movement when the strings come in with a melody worthy of the great English masters Elgar and Vaughan Williams.

Keep your chocolates in the refrigerator when you listen to this one!

Astounding
I'm writing about the flute concerto only here. The other pieces on the disk are also good, but nowhere close to what Rouse pulled off for Carol Wincenc, so I just want to focus on it, and let others take up the slack.

As other reviewers have noted, Ms. Wincenc's interpretation of the concerto is amazing, and flutists everywhere have her to thank for a) commissioning the work and b) turning what is extremely complex and difficult music and making it sound... wonderful. She is on the top of my list of favorite flutists and I do everything I can to hear her play. As of yet there is not another recording of this concerto, and I'm willing to bet that for awhile there will not be one as good as this one (it's unbeatable kind of like Dawn Upshaw's Gorecki Sym. #3). As this work begins to gain popularity I hope this album sells well.

The Music

The gems of the concerto are the Ahnrans (songs), which are the first and fifth (last) movements. They are similar - the first begins and the last ends in a sort of palindrome - 1223221, arca sacra, something that is the same backwards as forwards - with a percussion riff and then a mysterious flute motif leading into beautiful music into atonal chaos to the elegy back to chaos back to beauty back into mysterious flute motif and ending on that same riff - but the true interest is in the emotional beauty of the "songs" themselves, both with full string harmonies with the flute quite literally soaring over it all in some of the most beautiful music in the literature. Wincenc makes it sound easy - you'd never know it's so hard your lips feel like they're going to fall off after about twenty bars (piano/pianissimo melodies up to high C, and LONG!).

The music is emotional. It is, ostensibly, about death: the third movement contains an elegy to a boy who was murdered in England, and the emotions surrounding terrible loss escape outward from there and pervade the piece, even (or especially) the beautiful Ahnrans. Another reason I like the reptition of the Ahnrans: you hear the first one, and you're like, "Wow, that was really nice, so sad and pretty" and then you go through the roller coaster of the inner three movements culminating in the death of a child, and then you get to hear the music from the first movement again, and you say to yourself "My God, now I understand what was happening in the first one." Coming full circle, you appreciate where you started. Like T.S. Eliot said,

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

"Little Gidding" (the last of his Four Quartets)

Which leads us to the inner three movements. I'll be honest and admit I don't like the second. Partly it's because the second movement necessarily is responsible for ending the first (dramatically, I might add), which is so nice, but also it's just not a very strong movement. Dubbed a "march," it doesn't really go anywhere. Of course, that's not entirely true, because it goes to the third movement.

The third movement is the summit of the piece, containing the dual-form D major elegy in strings alone that eventually climaxes in the thunderous brass and percussion orgy that actually hurt my speakers, and the most chilling chime hit ever. Against that is "flute driven insane by loss," the solo stretching farther and farther away from tonality and sanity into some really tortured and painful territory - quite fitting given the subject matter.

I also really like the fourth movement (4 out of 5 ain't bad). Of special note is a really cool section where the three flutes from the orchestra join the soloist and "flute madness" truly ensues. A scherzo "that keeps trying to become a gigue," it eventually succeeds, momentarily, before sort of derailing... it gets going really, really fast near the end and I just imagine some dancer spinning around and around, and then the accompaniment stops and the flute is left to sputter and trip and twirl down into the fifth movement.

Back into the fifth, already described, and there you have it, a wonderful flute concerto. The only complaint I have is that the piece is so integrated with the orchestra that the piano reduction doesn't do it justice.