Charles Iv​es (1874 - 1954) / Henry Br​ant (1913 - 2008) - A Concord Symphony (1958 - 1994) I. Emerson [0:00] II. Hawthorne [17:37] III. The Alcotts [31:26] IV. Thoreau [37:39] San Fran​cisco Symp​hony, Mich​ael Tils​on Tho​mas (2010) Henry Brant's A Concord Symphony is an orchestration of Ives' monumental Concord Sonata. Brant worked on this project on and off for over 30 years, finally completing it in 1994. On his approach to orchestrating the work, Brant says, "Ives's music taught me that there are no limitations as to what can be expressed in music. My orchestration is partly in recognition for all I've learned from him. What I had to do was to imagine that symphony. I didn’t try to orchestrate in Ives's style. For that, I would have needed a conception of life just as complex as Ives had. I also wanted the work to be accessible to conductors, to encourage them to program more works of his. So, A Concord Symphony is influenced by my own conceptions, much as Ravel's or Schoenberg's orchestrations of other composer's work." "'This is, as far as I know, the only piece which, every time I play it or turn to it, seems unfinished,' Charles Ives wrote of the 'Emerson' movement of his Piano Sonata No. 2, 'Concord Mass., 1840-1860'. More than half a century after the Concord Sonata's premiere in 1939, a composer profoundly influenced by Ives agreed with him. Henry Brant thought the work cried out for orchestration. 'I sensed that here, potentially, was a tremendous orchestral piece [that] might well become the 'Great American Symphony' that we had been seeking for years.' While the musical Moby Dick no longer obsesses us as it did in the 1950's when Brant first considered the project, he has 'discovered' a significant orchestral work in its own right. Nothing less than a masterstroke by this talented orchestrator, this is a brilliant realisation that takes the sonata to new depths of understanding and new heights of expression. While an original can never be improved upon per se, A Concord Symphony captures the sonata's latent orchestral timbre so convincingly that it certainly stands a credible equal. 'Emerson' opens in an epic, growing sweep, with central allusions to Beethoven's Fifth taking on new-found emphasis in symphonic form. But it is the 'Hawthorne' movement that best justifies Brant's project. The intrusion of 'outside' music such as the circus band gains immeasurably from the rousing trumpets, blaring trombones, and twittering piccolos-creating the actual sound of a marching band rather than its pianistic approximation. Brant's use of hushed, shimmering strings intermittently provide a mystical backdrop. While the pleasure of the pure pianism of the sonata is missed, dissonances here and throughout ring more pungently a ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0iSII_LaKk

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791) - Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-flat major, K. 456 (1784) I. Allegro vivace [0:00] II. Andante un poco sostenuto [11:24] III. Allegro vivace [21:50] (Cadenzas: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) Murray Perahia, piano English Chamber Orchestra (1980) Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-flat major by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is in three movements and typically lasts around 30 minutes. "Neglected as Mozart's 'other' B flat concerto (the more famous being his last, K. 595), K. 456 rests just at the cusp of Mozart's greatest, most individual piano concertos. The interplay of piano and orchestra is assured, and the music occasionally drifts into minor mode realms hinting at the poignance to come in some of the later works. What holds this concerto back from Mozart's absolute first rank is the frilly nature of much of the piano writing; it's more entertaining than expressive. Mozart apparently composed this Concerto in B flat -- the fifth of six concerti he wrote in 1784 -- not for himself but for a 25-year-old blind pianist Maria Theresia Paradis. Blind or not, Paradis was famous as a virtuosa, and Mozart would later play the concerto in public himself. The orchestra creeps into the opening Allegro vivace with an almost tentative march figure that builds in busyness and loudness, only to give way to a vague, questioning passage in the woodwinds that is soon replaced by more chattering yet pastoral material, the strings eventually returning with music distantly related to a hunting call. The material Mozart has set out is fragmentary and harmonically unsettled, but the effect is hardly disturbing; it calls to mind the little surprises one encounters throughout a day in the countryside. The piano arrives to launch a recap of the themes, presenting, with orchestral backing, a more ornate version of several of the motifs. The keyboard often works in dialogue with the woodwinds, a trait of all Mozart's later concertos. The piano skips into the development section with a tripping, lighthearted version of the little march, and proceeds through the other themes with trills and filigree. A solo cadenza interrupts the loose recapitulation just before the brief coda. The slow movement, Andante un poco sostenuto, again foreshadows the minor key miracles of the concertos to come. It's a series of variations on a bittersweet theme presented by the orchestra and immediately ornamented by the piano. The melody becomes rather hazy in the pianist's hands, but intervening orchestral statements redefine it in treatments that become increasingly tragic and dramatic. The piano returns to relieve much of the tension, leading into a sequence of gentler, more pastoral and intermittently sunny variations. A caressing darkness descends, though, upon the movemen ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAfdeyLkfuU