Customer Reviews

Higdon: City Scape / Concerto for Orchestra

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Jennifer Higdon's concerto for Orchestra is one of the most exciting pieces of the 21st century. Her music is solidly crafted, colorful, energetic, brimming with enthusiasm and imagination. One can hear the influences of Bartok's masterwork of the same genre, but with equally great dramatic impact and instead of merely featuring sections in the style of concerto grosso, it is spotlights highly virtuosic passages for solo instruments throughout the orchestra, including both first chair as well as all other players in the section. This concerto is truly a celebration not only of the orchestra but of orchestra players, who seem to relish the considerable technical challenge her piece presents. Anyone who appreciates contemporary music will appreciate this, one of the first 21st century masterworks for orchestra.

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 is one of the most interesting and promising of today's American composers, I believe. This CD illustrates that view pretty well. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra plays well, under the able conducting of Robert Spano.

There are two works featured on this CD: "Concerto for Orchestra" and "City Scape," a paean to Higdon's years living in Atlanta. I'll briefly note my reaction to each of these works.

"Concerto for Orchestra": There are five movements to this piece, simply labeled as Roman Numerals I through V. Across the five movements, each section of the orchestra has a chance to "strut its stuff."

Movement I: It is infectious. There is a nice use of chimes and percussion. The liner notes aptly describe this movement as "whirlwind." The strings also play in an animated fashion here.

The second movement features strings; the third allows the different principal players and sections a chance to play; the fourth focuses on percussion. The fifth movement allows the full orchestra to shine. This movement begins at a quick tempo, with interesting musical effects. The piece moves toward an almost manic pace as it progresses.

All in all, this is a very nice orchestral piece and one that most listeners, I would think, would enjoy and appreciate. Very energetic.

The second part of this CD is a piece commissioned for Atlanta, "City Scape." There are three sections to this. I'll just mention the third, "Peachtree Street" (the other two are titled "Sky Line" and "River Sings a Song to Trees"). I'll focus on the third, simply because when I've been in Atlanta, I've enjoyed taking in Peachtree Street. Lots of energy! Again, this is an infectious piece. There is a nice use of percussion, as with the Concerto. The different parts of the orchestra have a chance to shine. The liner notes speak of the Peachtree artery as "so full of life and energy." This section of Higdon's composition surely fits that statement. The energy of the Street is portrayed exceedingly well.

In short, to my unsophisticated musical ear, Jennifer Higdon is one of our finest contemporary American composers. This CD, I think, will convince those not familiar with her work that this is the case. Lots of fun!!

Some composers today write music that appeals mainly, perhaps exclusively, to their academic colleagues. Music created with that kind of intent can become constricted, and usually is not cosmopolitan enough to make a mark in the music world and really reach people. It's the reason many folks walk out of concert halls these days. Such is not the case with Jennifer Higdon's music: Cityscape is a grand example of 21st century music that is dynamic and exciting, compositionally well constructed, tonally very beautiful, and unique. The composer's strengths are evident throughout this CD, with orchestrations that are thrilling. Higdon's music is interesting to listen to, which of course is what the goal should always be for any composer. Music like this will always stand the test of time. Highly recommended.

Jennifer Higdon is one of the finest of America's contemporary composers, and someone who has demonstrated that contemporary classical music doesn't necessarily have to be atonal or repetitious. And here on this recording by Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, she proves it in two tremendous works that received their world premiere recordings--the "Concerto For Orchestra", and the three-movement tone painting "Cityscape"

The Concerto For Orchestra was composed by Ms. Higdon in 2002 for the Philadelphia Orchestra, which gave the work its official world premiere performance in June of that year as part of its centennial celebration. It is structured along the lines of Bartok's similarly-named 1945 masterwork, with various solo instruments or groups of instruments standing out amidst the big orchestral sound produced Although the movements are marked only by Roman numerals as opposed to evocative titles or even tempi indications, they all flow seamlessly together in the work's half-hour running time. "Cityscapes", meanwhile, was inspired by the first ten years of life that the Brooklyn-born Higdon spent in Atlanta. It is a highly evocative piece, a sort of modern equivalent of such past American composing legends as Samuel Barber, William Schuman, and Aaron Copland. The three movements of the work depict certain aspects of this great Southern city, whose orchestra and conductor gave the work in November 2002. "Skyline" is self-explanatory; "River Sings A Song To The Trees" is about the natural beauty along Peachtree Creek"; and "Peachtree Street" is about the main surface thoroughfare that runs through the city.

Both works are performed splendidly by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, which has boasted conductors like Yoel Levi, Donald Runnicles, Louis Lane, and, in its growth during the years 1967 to 1991, the late, great Robert Shaw. Robert Spano has added his own personal and welcome stamp to the orchestra, particularly in this recording, made in September 2003. For anyone interested in contemporary American music, this is a must-have recording.

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?

The music of Higdon's on this CD is very professional and well done. In many ways, 'everything' that is needed to make the music work is all there: craft, technique, proportion, color, contrast. However, the music seems to be lacking in more important, yet less definable ways. It is not very interesting or original beyond a certain point. While exciting much of the time, I could not help but feel I have heard this all done before better by other composers, most of them 'older' and not very new.

My impression was that I was listening carefully at the moment the music was sounding, but had almost no lasting memory or impression, and most importantly, no feeling about the music I just listened to. The music sounds impressive, but there is not much happening beneath the surface.

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.

Higdon is a master orchestrator and this CD is sparkling example of her genious. For those here entering 1 & 2 stars...send me your manuscripts and awards...I just want to be sure you can do better.

Higdon has captured the city of Atlanta in todays terms...and done it beautifully. GET THIS CD as the soundstage is very wide, detailed and an exciting experience for the ear...all brought to us by the geniuses at TELARC. ITS A WINNER.

I can only add a personal touch in that Jennifer and I were classmates at the Bowling Green State University College of Musical Arts (1981-1985). We met in our very first class (Music Theory); she is an immediate likeable person with a charming, unassuming Southern sensibility. A Tennessean, she drawls very sweetly and is a rarity in that I never heard her speak badly of anyone. Also an accomplished flutist, we share many memories of our years in band. Her wonderfully bombastic brass writing stems partly from our college experiences (those Claude Smith barnburners we borrowed from the military bands). We haven't seen each other in 20 years, but her emails are still indicative of the same spirit I described.
Oh yeah--- she's a heck of a composer, to boot:)