Customer Reviews

Christopher Rouse: Symphony No. 1; Phantasmata

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There seems to be a stigma surrounding new music that prevents many audiences from ever experiencing the sheer passion and beauty that is often created by today's many gifted composers. Fortunately, Christopher Rouse's music is heard relatively often, which is a blessing for both the composer and the listener.

The "Symphony #1" is one of Rouse's most tonal pieces. It was composed shortly after the extremely dissonant, atonal, and fast-paced "Gorgon"--Rouse describes the two as a "yin and yang to each other". Therefore, the aim of this piece is an adagio and tonal (though still dissonant, but do you expect otherwise from Rouse?) piece. The tonality is often blurred, but certain recurring melodic and rhythmic motives enrapture the listener. Rouse infuses too much passion and emotion into the score to solicit any loss of interest. In short, it's difficult to get bored during the 24 minutes that make up this piece.

"Phantasmata", on the other hand, is less emotionally taxing and more fun. It is a much more dissonant piece, which may turn off some listeners, but if you don't mind that sort of thing, this piece shouldn't be missed either.

I can't really comment on the performance, since there are no other recordings I know of that I can compare it with, but the Baltimore Symphony does justice to the demanding score.

It's a keeper.

Christopher Rouse has become one of America's most special and amazing composers. This is a wonderful recording of his deeply moving first symphony, a tragic but finally consoling work. David Zinman is one of Rouse's biggest champions, so I am certain that this recording represents the music as the composer wished it to sound. This is not difficult music to listen to in terms of style, though its dark message may make it hard for some to grapple with. Phantasmata is a more dissonant piece, but somehow it all turns out to be fun. This is extraordinary music.

This is powerful music. Though it is modern music, I think it will find a large audience of classical music and beyond. The theme is very sad throughout and reminds me of Wagner, Shostokovitch and Mahler. There are a couple of times when the music is quiet and suddently startles with it's intensity. The recording is good.

Rouse's "First Symphony" is indeed a serious affair. In fact if you look out at the world,all you see is the deep disturbed anxiety Rouse manipulates here. He has this gut-wrenching melos in the money-making part of the high register of the violins. You could almost say it is a few feet away from film music. But I'm sorry Rouse is much to bound to his aesthetic object to be so obvious. This is also a marvelous piece of orchestration with the middle register of the orchestra torn out setting up this gut-churning opening. The low densely packed violoncellos,bassoons, and lower brass work so well, you can almost move a mountain with them. I found this so overwhelming and powerful that there was nothing left for me in the remainder. Like Rouse wants you to spend your emotions up front at the box office. The quick toccata like rhythms which take us home to the finale I don't think equals the expressive torrent of bursting passion. But then we live under the primary sign of postmodernity, not every artistic element can or should be explained and is a creative problem Rouse must ultimately deal with,not us out here. The "Infernal Machine" etc. we see yet another gifted talent bought off by facile market persuasions. It makes a fascinating orchestration ride a la Adams This is a fast paced,quick contrast,quick fix, like a stand-up comic waiting for the right timing. Henny Youngman could learn something from Rouse, at least in this piece. Zinman and Baltimore play their hearts out.

After listening to this, I couldn't help but think: "is the musical-cultural landscape so grey and indistinguisable that we award the award-winners because they already have awards?" I'm no dog, but I can smell the cat-dookie in the flowerbed. If I wanted the same "slick" orchestrations and "orgasmic" percussive explosions, I'll watch the Grammy's; at least I will have some poorly-executed jokes to poke fun at.

Once, at a party with classical composers and performers, I put this disc in the stereo in order to drive people outside so I could more easily bum a smoke. It worked.

I'm just saying: be critical. There is nothing here that hasn't been done before and done better.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I heard that Mozart farted symphonies in his sleep.

Give me a break, this is glorified film music,tried and tested orchestral ideas, the high register violin melody reaching for the Stars,all things from Ravel's "La Valse" but then I correct myself that is the content of today's new music scene, or do we still call it "culture". Rouse's 'First Symphony' would be interesting if it had a conceptual affinity like Ravel's work a piece of music about music,(or a piece of time Waltz time Vienna gone forever, beauty trangressively gone) but it merely is puppet-like of things already experienced. It first draws you into the sensuous inviting melody,high register,plaintive,gentle,childlike almost like the best film music of Jerry Goldsmith like waiting for Arnold Schwarzenegger to jump off a building, or a tree, then POW!, BAM! in your face MAN,full orchestra in this wall of sound; things can't be this bad!, well maybe it is, in that Rouse has been recently interested in Alberich from Wagner's RING, that deceitful theive who steals the gold from the poor Rhine Maidens, taking away their longevity.(opening of Act One Das Rheingold)

This is exciting music I guess for the concert hall,it shows how moribund the orchestra;commissioning scene has become with the same clone-like rotation of composer-in-residences who write music deritivative from each other incestuously.Rather I've come to be drawn to other places for similar experiences as Rouse but you want rock??? listen to AC/DC they have more an interesting sense of sound, of timbre, with the powerful clarity they get from the electronified guitars.

All this 'Phantasmata' imagery has franchised itself,a cul-de-sac of expression for how does one move on from here,simply more graphics,vacuous extremities a very post-modern signifier,(perhaps today's composers should ponder their destiny; like Madonna;composers will also sing and act,paint,dance; sculpt, and do films)

Adorno referred to Wagner's aesthetic as an indulgence in the "phantasmagoria" a mortgage to the future of content,because we really don't know what things mean to us now;only that the composer we are listening to has won numerous prizes,that means he/she writes good music; Rouse is indeed interested for his extreme gestures he cultivates,it has a sense of enlivening the moribund concert scene on its surface in the 'shock value' of his music, like Hitchcock (Although Hitch was truthful about it) that his films or Rouse's music is about how it, when it, where it why it?, moves actually pummeles the audiences psychology. Rouse should read Jacques Lacan more if he wants to understand his own music.For the Real in music today is only what sells, it is the realms of the symbolic the Master Signifier(as the Symphony is a Master Signifier) where we can understand why we would plunck down well-earned bucks to buy Mr.Rouse's music or others

I guess the concert hall today needs' entertainment, and we certainly have it here.Brilliant orchestrations with tried and tested "licks".