Liner Notes
Cat. No. NWCR552
Release Date: 2007-02-01
American Composers Orchestra, Dennis Russell Davies, conductor; Paul Dunkel, conductor
“Any concert work of mine shows a strong influence of jazz,” notes Francis Thorne, and the Symphony No. 5 is no exception. “The other element that is always present is my lifelong fascination with the chromatic harmonies of Wagner, put these two basic elements together, and my music is understood; the fast sections more given to the jazz, the slow sections to the chromatic sequences. Every measure I write has a tonal center. If this be the third stream, I plead guilty. One has to listen to one’s inner ear, and my music is nothing if not intuitive.”
Nicolas Roussakis was born in Athens, Greece on June 10, 1934 and died in New York City in 1994. He wrote Fire and Earth and Water and Air (πύр καί γή καί ϋδωр καί αήр) on commission from the National Endowment for the Arts for a consortium of four orchestras: the Tri-City Symphony (which premiered the work on March 2, 1984), the American Composers Orchestra, the Oakland Symphony and the Milwaukee Symphony.
The United States was still in the throes of the Great Depression when the young Elliott Carter returned from Paris in the mid-1930s. He found “the musical world here had taken a new turn, toward a kind of populism which became the dominating tone of the entire musical life.” His ballet Pocahontas (1938-39) was meant to be a “parable of cooperation,” and Carter’s next orchestral work, the Symphony No. 1 was written “in a deliberately restricted idiom—that is, an effort to produce [a work] that meant something to me as music and yet might, I hoped, be understood to the general music public I was trying to reach...”
This title, originally issued on the CRI label, is now available as a burn-on-demand CD (CD-R) or download in MP3/320, FLAC or WAV formats. CD-Rs come in a protective sleeve; no print booklet or jewel case included. Liner notes are accessible via the link above.
“Any concert work of mine shows a strong influence of jazz,” notes Francis Thorne, and the Symphony No. 5 is no exception. “The other element that is always present is my lifelong fascination with the chromatic harmonies of Wagner, put these two basic elements together, and my music is understood; the fast sections more given to the jazz, the slow sections to the chromatic sequences. Every measure I write has a tonal center. If this be the third stream, I plead guilty. One has to listen to one’s inner ear, and my music is nothing if not intuitive.”
Nicolas Roussakis was born in Athens, Greece on June 10, 1934 and died in New York City in 1994. He wrote Fire and Earth and Water and Air (πύр καί γή καί ϋδωр καί αήр) on commission from the National Endowment for the Arts for a consortium of four orchestras: the Tri-City Symphony (which premiered the work on March 2, 1984), the American Composers Orchestra, the Oakland Symphony and the Milwaukee Symphony.
The United States was still in the throes of the Great Depression when the young Elliott Carter returned from Paris in the mid-1930s. He found “the musical world here had taken a new turn, toward a kind of populism which became the dominating tone of the entire musical life.” His ballet Pocahontas (1938-39) was meant to be a “parable of cooperation,” and Carter’s next orchestral work, the Symphony No. 1 was written “in a deliberately restricted idiom—that is, an effort to produce [a work] that meant something to me as music and yet might, I hoped, be understood to the general music public I was trying to reach...”
This title, originally issued on the CRI label, is now available as a burn-on-demand CD (CD-R) or download in MP3/320, FLAC or WAV formats. CD-Rs come in a protective sleeve; no print booklet or jewel case included. Liner notes are accessible via the link above.
Francis Thorne/Nicolas Roussakis/Elliott Carter
| MP3/320 | $9.99 | |
| FLAC | $9.99 | |
| WAV | $9.99 | |
| CD-R | $9.99 |
A *.pdf of the notes may be accessed here free of charge.
Track Listing
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Symphony No. 5: Maestoso
Francis Thorne
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Symphony No. 5: Scherzo, Presto con brio
Francis Thorne
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Symphony No. 5: Adagietto cantabile
Francis Thorne
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Buy
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Symphony No. 5: Andante, Allegro con gioia
Francis Thorne
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Buy
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Fire and Earth and Water and Air
Nicolas Roussakis
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Buy
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Symphony No. 1: Moderately, Wistfully
Elliott Carter
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Buy
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Symphony No. 1: Slowly, Gravely
Elliott Carter
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Buy
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Symphony No. 1: Vivaciously
Elliott Carter
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Buy
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