Old & Lost Rivers / Encantadas

Picker (Artist), Gielgud (Artist), Atherholt (Artist), Eschenbach (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 14, 1998)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Virgin Records Us
• ASIN: B000007TKP
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #288,674 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Old and Lost Rivers for orchestra

2. The Encantadas, for narrator & orchestra: 1, Dream

3. The Encantadas, for narrator & orchestra: 2, Desolation

4. The Encantadas, for narrator & orchestra: 3, Delusion

5. The Encantadas, for narrator & orchestra: 4, Diversity: 'One noon my ship was cruising'

6. The Encantadas, for narrator & orchestra: 4, Diversity: 'As I lay in my hammock that night'

7. The Encantadas, for narrator & orchestra: 4, Diversity: To gaze abroad Þpon the Encantadas'

8. The Encantadas, for narrator & orchestra: 4, Diversity: 'Let us first glance low...' (Penguin Waltz)

9. The Encantadas, for narrator & orchestra: 4, Diversity: 'But look, what are you woebegone regiments' (Pelicans)

10. The Encantadas, for narrator & orchestra: 5, Din: 'Rondondo is the Aviary of Ocean'

11. The Encantadas, for narrator & orchestra: 5, As day advances'

12. The Encantadas, for narrator & orchestra: 6, Dawn: 'I found myself just before dawn'

13. The Encantadas, for narrator & orchestra: 6, Dawn: 'Along the entire cast'

14. Romances and Interludes, for oboe & piano: Prelude

15. Romances and Interludes, for oboe & piano: Romance 1, Nicht schnell

16. Romances and Interludes, for oboe & piano: Interlude 1

17. Romances and Interludes, for oboe & piano: Romance 2, Einfach, innig

18. Romances and Interludes, for oboe & piano: Interlude 2

19. Romances and Interludes, for oboe & piano: Romance 3, Nicht schnell

20. Old and Lost Rivers, for solo piano

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great CD, but who's the real star, Picker or Schumann?, March 20, 2002

By 

JJM Peters (Nijmegen, The Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Old & Lost Rivers / Encantadas (Audio CD)

As most people, I got to know Tobias Picker through his fabulous "Old and Lost Rivers". I was enchanted and looked a long time for this CD. I finally found it and it is, as I had hoped, great. This recording presents some of Picker's more accessible works, the record with the violin concerto (Composers Recordings - #589) being a totally different side of his output, with earlier and less approachable pieces (at least when you're not used to listening to modern classical music).

This CD presents to different guises of "Old and Lost Rivers". The one for orchestra which has been recorded a number of times and one for piano solo (transcribed for and first recorded by Ursula Oppens on Music and Arts CD-4862-2). The orchestra version is very good, with just the right tempo and sense for rubato. Yet, I like the version on Williams' "The Five Sacred Trees" (Sony - #62729) better, just because the sound of the Houston Symphony can't compete with the London Symphony Orchestra (although Williams takes the tempo a bit too fast). The piano version is a nice addition, although I get the feeling Eschenbach tries to "do" too much with the music in stead of letting it speak for itself. Therefore, the tempo is sometimes dragging.

The Encantadas for speaker and orchestra is really entertaining. Firstly, the texts are very well chosen and Sir John Gielgud brings them wonderfully with his sonorous, somewhat "mushy" voice and his British accent. The orchestral representation of the spoken words is delicate and very well composed, making the speaker more or less a part of the orchestra. The different moods in the texts are vividly painted by the orchestral colors and the use of instrumentation is great.

The romances and Interludes for oboe and orchestra are possibly the finest compositions on the disc. Ironically, the romances (three in number) are really exact copies of the romances written by Robert Schumann for oboe and piano, with 20th century orchestration provided by Picker. The prelude and two interludes are distinctly Picker's own and also distinctly 20th century. The contrast between the different styles and periods is what makes this piece so attractive. The playing Robert Atherholt is very sensitive and clear and it opened my ears to the possibilities of this instrument.

So, all by all, I like this CD very much, recommending it to everyone who wants to explore the lyrical side of Tobias Picker or really everyone enjoying accessible, but modern classical music.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Why We Love Picker's Old and Lost River, October 14, 2009

By 

Pmaxime - See all my reviews

This review is from: Old & Lost Rivers / Encantadas (Audio CD)

"...I wrote about a piano version of Picker's Old and Lost Rivers in March, after Ursula Oppens played it in Weill Hall; in full-orchestra colors, this web of gently wandering melodies proves even more beguiling." The New Yorker Andrew Porter

"...Picker's Old and Lost Rivers is not hard to characterize; its influences are not deeply buried; nor is it at all difficult to fathom why this six-minute piece, written in 1986 for the Houston Symphony Orchestra, has become his most popular work, what the composer himself calls his Sheherazade.

"Just think 'Aaron Copland'...To this American tradition, add richness of orchestration and a sense of timelessness, with a slow-moving thread of melody meandering through like a river in bayou country...

"It is lush, skillfully written, very artful, and very cinematic in orientation. There were cheers for the composer Tuesday night when the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the score its New York premiere." New York Newsday Peter Goodman

"...This four-minute evocation of the East Texas bayous is a kind of contemporary counterpart to Charles Ives' The Housatonic at Stockbridge, and Oppens handsomely captures its meandering, contemplative mood." Time Magazine Michael Walsh

"André Watts does not often turn his formidable pianistic technique to contemporary music, and it was interesting that he chose Tobias Picker's Old and Lost Rivers on which to do so in his recital...at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This little piece, from 1986, is disarmingly simple, with widely separated melodies evidently representing the high bridge and the winding bayous Mr. Picker describes in the program notes." The New York Times James R. Oestreich

"...Tobias Picker's austerely poignant Old and Lost Rivers, played with tender care, completed the program." Los Angeles Times John Henken

"...Comissiona had the idea of commissioning a series of short works to commemorate the Texas sesquicentennial, and Picker had the inspiration to suggest fanfares...They compiled a long list of the living composers who most interested them and then narrowed it down to about two dozen names, mostly American...

"The list of works is tantalizing, offering pieces by some of the best-known names in American music: elder statesmen like Elliott Carter and William Schumann; popular showboaters like John Williams...and Steve Reich...and Pulitzer prize-winners like Jacob Druckman."

...Picker's fanfare, Old and Lost Rivers, is at once the least fanfarish and the most impressive of all the pieces that have been performed. It's somewhat reminiscent of Copland's Appalachian Spring, but Picker's work is better than any comparable swatch of Copland -- it is subtler and more complex, technically and emotionally. The title...suggests the tenor of the work: it's about gentleness and mystery and nostalgia. Picker was attracted to the place commemorated in the piece because he had "never seen a more poetic name." He talked to a geologist and even consulted a geological map; the music seems to reflect the slow changes that have taken place in Texas over the last 150 years."

Texas Monthly
W.L. Taitte