Seeing Is Believing

Thomas Gould (Artist), Nico Muhly (Composer), Nicholas Collon (Conductor), Aurora Orchestra (Orchestra) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Orchestra: Aurora Orchestra
• Conductor: Nicholas Collon
• Composer: Nico Muhly
• Audio CD (June 21, 2011)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Decca Records
• ASIN: B004P1YX3U
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #93,708 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Decca is proud to continue its association with American composer Nico Muhly with the release of their third album together, Seeing is Believing. Having previous concentrated on choral music and a complete ballet score, this album includes four original compositions and three orchestral arrangements of vocal works originally by both William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons. The Aurora Orchestra, the relatively new, young British ensemble, records this album under the direction of contemporary music specialist Nicholas Collon. The album will be released on June 21, 2011 just days before the premiere of Muhly's opera, Two Boys, in London. The centerpiece of the album is the concerto for electric violin, Seeing is Believing. This unique, six-string instrument makes available a variety of sounds that are both vaguely familiar and wholly new. The leader of the Aurora Orchestra, Thomas Gould, became acquainted with Muhly's work while in school and that eventually led to this composition. On his initial response to Gould's proposition of composing a work for electric violin, Muhly said: "Of course, it sounds like a kind of crazy idea. And also I liked it because it sort of sounded like a bad idea. And that's the best thing: take something that seems like a bad idea and make it into a good idea." In addition to Seeing is Believing, the album includes three more works for chamber orchestra: Motion, By All Means and Step Team.

Interspersed with Muhly's original compositions are three arrangements of vocal works by William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons. Early English choral music has always been an influence on Muhly's music, and these arrangements highlight this connection. Renowned composer John Rutter worked on this recording project and lent his expertise. In Muhly's music, Rutter hears that the composer is, "somebody from one century and one continent commenting on the work of somebody from a previous century and a previous continent. It's really the old world and the new world interacting in a very exciting way." Muhly has orchestrated Byrd's Miserere Mei, Deus and Bow Thine Ear, O Lord and Gibbons's This is the Record of John. The release of this album will coincide with the world-premiere of Muhly's new opera, Two Boys, at the English National Opera in London. Presented as a co-production with the Metropolitan Opera, the work features a libretto by Craig Lucas (Prelude to a Kiss and Reckless) and is directed by Tony® Award-winner Bartlett Sher. The opera is scheduled to be presented at the Met during the 2013-14 season.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nico Muhly: Hearing is believing, June 21, 2011

By 

Porter Anderson (USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Seeing Is Believing (Audio CD)

"'Seeing Is Believing' immerses the listener in a night transfigured by Nico Muhly's sweeping vision. He calls up a starscape of clear-nocturnal wonder, sweetly juicing his lead for Thomas Gould's six-string electric violin. Listen at 11:20, when a flourish right out of Byzantium announces the composer's inspiration, what he calls "the ancient practice of observing and mapping the sky." Shortly after that, at 12:48, Muhly lays a proud cadence on the table, the violin's insistent search racing around it. Barely do you hear a muted trumpet's wry question when, at 14:00 Muhly throws down the gauntlet again. And from there, the piece unfolds into a high, bright night-field of Nicholas Collon's richly colored fluency with the Aurora Orchestra. Big brass and those "rapturous pulses" Muhly loves spiral up around Gould's assured solos, at times as edgy as a fiddler in "L'histoire du soldat." This 25-minute concerto, crawling with what Muhly terms "random, insect-like formulations," is an arresting new statement of his developing voice, so generously articulated by Gould, Collon, and the Aurora.

There are also three shorter but substantive key works from Muhly on the CD: the Webern-Weelkes wonder "By All Means" (get a load of John Reid's piano at 4:30); the plucky Gibbons-based "Motion"; and "Step Team," my favorite. Its conversational exchanges between strings and woodwinds are shoved around by hussy-brass into piano-paced arguments. For those of us who have loved Muhly's "Detailed Instructions," echoes of continuity (11:25) travel awfully well here, in the work of this guy who talks so fast but smiles at us in his music with unhurried, and sometimes brilliantly sad grace. Listen to this "Step Team" end. And then end. And then finally end. Lovely.

A radiant revelation here, too: three settings of motets (at Nick Collon's wise request) of Tudor-Jacobean composers Orlando Gibbons and William Byrd. My favorite is "Bow Thine Ear, O Lord." No decent deity could refuse such a request when it sounds like this from Muhly. The orderly restraint of our modern knave's nave gradually glows-up in a resplendent Aurora of such detailed and instructive brassy resolution at 2:00 that what Muhly calls "scandalously lush" is braced for good in our hearts.

Nico Muhly is on a superb tear. We do expect the main things from him. And we have good reason. This entry in his growing body of recorded work has been released, handsomely packaged by Decca, in the week of the English National Opera's world premiere of his opera "Two Boys" in London. The librettist is the formidable Craig Lucas ("The Light in the Piazza," "Prelude to a Kiss," "Longtime Companion," "The Dying Gaul"), the staging is directed by Bartlett Sher with projection designs by 59 Productions. Online buzz about the composer is building, of course. And Q2 is rolling out a full week of "Muhly mania." Q2 is the superb streaming contemporary-classical service of WQXR in New York. Found at Q2live dot org, it has become a major seat of Muhly's gathering momentum, a key force in helping audiences find him and vice-versa, thanks especially to the tireless advocacy of Muhly's colleague and friend, violist and Q2 host Nadia Sirota.

So quickly are things moving for Nico Muhly, this 29-year-old former Philip Glass associate, that it may be hard for some to believe reports of his primacy in the pantheon of "new music" makers today. So "see" for yourself: hearing is believing.