"Langorous melodic lines or fragments, often with an unmistakable Americana flavour, interact in the orchestra, and the vocal parts engagingly follow suit. If Wilder's play is to have music, Rorem's is credible and often exquisite." -Financial Times
This is the world-premiere recording of Ned Rorem's (b 1923) acclaimed setting of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, one of the best-known plays of the 20th century. Intended from the start to be a chamber opera, the orchestration is small, and the scoring is light and transparent throughout-consistent with a work best suited to young voices. Rorem moves in and out of speech and utilizes more elevated recitative (parlando) than in his previous theatrical works.
He manifests Wilder's "emotional shyness" with abrupt stylistic cross-cutting between Americana (Thomsonian faux-Protestant hymns, plush sustained cinematic strings, Copland-esque woodwind solos, Ivesian collages), transatlantic modernism (the tartly-scored "sting" chords, jagged, off-kilter ostinatos in close-canon, denatured melodic fragments in place of memorable tunes), and Gallic lyricism (rapturous string obbligatos, sudden snatches of emotionally-vibrant melody, Debussy-esque orchestration).
Everywhere in the music there is a sort of cool, self-contained regretfulness-the regret so central to the play's initial impetus, a regret so intense as to border on dread-that perfectly underpins and undercuts the sentimentality of the portraits.
Rorem believes that Satie's Socrate may be "the greatest of all operas." Certainly, he exploits in his score for Our Town the same kind of baroque cantata textures and affects as Satie did in his 1920 masterpiece.
But the Rorem and McClatchy Our Town also contains-in the propulsive, off-kilter ostinati percolating uneasily beneath the Nantucket matter-of-factness of its musical surfaces and its stubborn unwillingness to wear its heart on its sleeve-an astonishing undercurrent of unanticipated, and highly effective dramaturgical fury.
Ned Rorem: Our Town
MP3/320 | $32.00 | |
FLAC | $32.00 | |
WAV | $32.00 | |
2xCD | $51.00 |
Our Town, Act I: Opening
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act I: "The Earth Turns, Just a Simple Turn"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act I: "See What I Mean?"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act I: "Why, Hello, George Gibbs"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act I: "What a Lot of Beans"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act I: "Thank You, Emily. Thank You, Mrs. Webb"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act I: "It's Evening Now in Grover's Corners"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act I: "Oh George, Can You Come Down a Minute?"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act I: "Can You Get Home Safe, Louella?"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act I: "Emily! Are You Still There?"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act II: "Well, Friends, Three Years Have Gone By"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act II: "Well, Mother, You're Losing Your Chick Today"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act II: "Morning, Everybody! Only Five More Hours to Live"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act II: "Well, George, how are you?"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act II: "Thank You, Thank You. I Have Another Question Here"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act II: "Emily, Can I Carry Your Books Home for You?"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act II: "Hello There, George. Howdy, Emily"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act II: "These Are So Expensive"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act II: "And Now We'll Get On With the Wedding"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act III: "This Time Nine Years Have Gone By, Friends"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act III: "We're All Coming Up Here"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act III: "Hello"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act III: "Little Cooler Than it Was"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act III: "One Can Go Back Again . . . Into Living"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act III: "Look! There's the Church Where I Got Married!"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act III: "Coming! Morning, Mama. Morning, Papa"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act III: "Seen Enough?"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act III: "Were You Happy, Emily?"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|
|
Our Town, Act III: "Most Everyone's Asleep in Grover's Corners"
Ned Rorem
|
Buy
|