Boston, MA (For Release 08.04.20) — Known as the nation’s foremost label launched by an orchestra and devoted exclusively to new music, Grammy Award-winning BMOP/sound today announced the release of Harold Shapero: Orchestral Works, led by conductor Gil Rose and performed by the intrepid Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and celebrated Australian pianist Vivian Choi. A central figure of the midcentury musical landscape, Harold Shapero (1920-2013) advanced a unique vision for American music that incorporated the neoclassicism of Stravinsky, the clean elegance of Copland, and the edginess of serialism, all with a highly personal stamp. Marking the 100th anniversary of Shapero’s birth, this portrait album of the composer’s orchestral music features five works that harmonize tradition and modernity in a distinct American neo-classical style.
A composer, pianist, Harvard alumnus, and long-time professor of music at Brandeis University, Shapero was the last representative of the golden age of American music at the time of his death in 2013. In the 1940s, he became associated with the American “Stravinsky school” of neo-classical composers that included lifelong friends and fellow Brandeis faculty members Arthur Berger, Leonard Bernstein and Irving Fine. Shapero’s friend Aaron Copland described him as “the most gifted and the most baffling composer of his generation,” citing his “phenomenal ear” and his “brilliant (but erratic) mind.”
According to Gil Rose, Artistic Director, Founder, and Conductor of BMOP, Shapero embraced an unambiguously neo-classical style throughout his career. “Shapero’s music was fresh and invigorating when he wrote it. Even 100 years after his birth, his music has not aged over time.”
Shapero’s works are emotionally intense and expertly structured, hailed for their rhythmic vitality, elegance, and memorable thematic material. BMOP/sound’s latest album gathers a small but exquisitely crafted group of his works for orchestra. Two tracks demonstrate Shapero at his peak in the 1940s when he was most prolific, in his twenties, and writing music filled with youthful exuberance. The intricate Baroque suite Serenade in D for String Orchestra (1945) is the earliest and most substantive work on this release, and is considered one of Shapero’s finest gems. The Sinfonia in C Minor (1948), commissioned by the Travelers Insurance Company, is modeled after Haydn and Beethoven. Shapero was one of many composers throughout the mid-20th century promoted by the Louisville Orchestra, who commissioned Credo for Orchestra.
Premiered at the 1957 Brandeis Festival of the Arts, On Green Mountain fuses a Monteverdi chaconne with a jazz ensemble, an interpretation of Gunther Schuller’s “Third Stream” vision. The latest work on this disc, Partita in C for Piano and Small Orchestra (1960), features pianist Vivian Choi in a palindrome-filled exploration of classical forms.
About BMOP/sound
BMOP/sound, BMOP’s independent record label, was created in 2008 to provide a platform for BMOP’s extensive archive of music, as well as to provide widespread, top-quality, permanent access to both classics of the 20th century and the music of today’s most innovative composers.
BMOP/sound has garnered praise from the national and international press. It is the recipient of a 2020 Grammy Award for Tobias Picker: Fantastic Mr. Fox as well as eight Grammy Award nominations, and its releases have appeared on the year-end “Best of” lists of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, National Public Radio, Time Out New York, American Record Guide, DownBeat, WBUR, NewMusicBox, and others. Admired, praised, and sought after by artists, presenters, critics, and audiophiles, BMOP and BMOP/sound are uniquely positioned to redefine the new music concert and recording experience. Launched in 2019, BMOP's digital radio station, BMOP/radio, streams BMOP/sound's entire catalog and airs special programming. BMOPsound.org.
James Blachly, Conductor
Sarah Brailey, Soprano & Dashon Burton, Bass-Baritone
Experiential Orchestra and Chorus
Downloads and CDs available for press upon request.
More information: www.chandos.net | www.jamesblachly.com | www.sarahbrailey.com | www.dashonburton.com | www.experientialorchestra.com
New York, NY – Chandos Records will release the world premiere recording of composer Dame Ethel Smyth’s 1930 masterwork, The Prison, on August 7, 2020. The recording is conducted by James Blachly with his Experiential Orchestra and Chorus, featuring soprano Sarah Brailey and bass-baritone Dashon Burton as soloists. Appropriately given Smyth’s role in the Suffragette movement in England, the August release date coincides with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote in the United States. The recording, by Grammy-Award winning producers Blanton Alspaugh and Soundmirror, took place in February 2019. The album is recorded in Surround Sound and available as a Hybrid CD.
The Prison is a 64-minute symphony in two parts, “Close on Freedom” and “The Deliverance.” Sometimes called an oratorio or a cantata, it is similar in scale and scope to the vocal symphonies of Mahler. On the title page, Smyth quotes the last words of Greek philosopher Plotinus, “I am striving to release that which is divine within us, and merge it in the universally divine.” The text for the work, drawn from a philosophical work by Henry Bennet Brewster, describes the writing of a man in a solitary cell and his reflections on his past life and his preparations for death. But the text is poetic and reflective, with layers of meaning and metaphor. Thus the “prison” is both an actual jail, and a philosophical representation of the “shackles of self,” as Brewster describes them. This was Smyth’s last work and her only symphony – she was 72 when she completed it in 1930. She stopped composing shortly after, due to advancing deafness.
Composer Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) struggled her entire career to have her music judged on its merits, rather than on the basis of her gender. She left home at age 17 (against the wishes of her military father) in order to compose music in Leipzig. In the company of Clara Schumann and her teacher Heinrich von Herzogenberg, she met and won the admiration of composers such as Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Dvorak, and Grieg, and became the first woman to have an opera performed at The Metropolitan Opera in New York, in 1903. (The second was not until Kaaija Saariaho's L'amour de loin in 2016).
Conductor James Blachly’s work on The Prison began in 2016 when he conducted excerpts of the piece. He is the editor for the new critical Schirmer/MusicSales edition of The Prison that not only made this recording possible, but paves the way for a resurrection of the work. Blachly says, “There are so many reasons to be inspired by Ethel Smyth – the way she lived, all of her ‘firsts’ as a woman composer, the way she held strong against the powerful pressures of society that would not accept her work, her strength of identity and her openness of her sexuality, her political activism, and more. But for me, it was the experience of conducting this piece for the first time that led me to understand – in a flash at the downbeat of the first rehearsal – that I was conducting the work of a true master, and that I was in the process of encountering a nearly completely neglected masterpiece. The moment I heard that first note in the rehearsal hall, I got shivers up and down my spine, and my life has not been the same since.”
Soprano Sarah Brailey, who has been hailed by The New York Times for her “radiant, liquid tone,” “exquisitely phrased,” and “sweetly dazzling singing,” sings the role of “The Soul” on this recording. She says, “Smyth is an inspiration as a composer, an activist, and a woman. It has been such an honor to help bring this incredible piece to the world. I hope listeners enjoy discovering it as much as we have.” Brailey enjoys a career filled with projects as diverse as soloing in Handel’s Messiah with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, performing with Kanye West and Roomful of Teeth at the Hollywood Bowl, and recording cello and vocal soundscapes for the 2018 Fog x FLO Fujiko Nakaya public art installation in Boston’s Emerald Necklace park system.
Bass-Baritone Dashon Burton, who sings the role of “The Prisoner,” says, “This piece is an immortal dedication to those who fight for freedom. Working with James, Sarah, and all the amazing musicians on this album has been a dream, and I hope it awakens all our spirits as much as it has awakened mine.” Burton is a frequent guest with the major orchestras of the United States, Europe, and Japan. He sings recitals throughout the U.S., including a program based on works from his album Songs and Struggles of Redemption; We Shall Overcome, singled out by The New York Times as “profoundly moving…a beautiful and lovable disc.” He is an original member of the Grammy-winning groundbreaking vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth.
Ralph Couzens, Managing Director Chandos Records, says, “Championing the works of lesser known or neglected British composers and bringing their music to a wider public is an intrinsic part of the ethos of Chandos Records. We are delighted to be releasing this extraordinary recording, and very grateful to James Blachly and his team for resurrecting such a significant score with such a convincing and idiomatic performance.”
More about The Prison
The Prison is at once a unique expression for Smyth, and also a summary of her previous compositional life, including a Leipzig-inspired organ prelude that opens the second half of the piece, dedicated to Brewster in 1884 and now beautifully orchestrated. The instrumentation and use of two soloists would seem to be a nod to the Brahms Requiem, and given her devotion to Brahms’s music (which Tchaikovsky chided her for in letters to her), this would resonate as a motivation for her final large-scale composition. But the music itself reveals other influences, including a dark Wagnerian orchestration palette, Straussian soaring melodies over rich harmonies in the orchestra, and references to her composition teacher von Herzogenberg’s fugue on a birdsong.
Ultimately, however, such references fail to capture the nature of the music. Featured in the second half of the work is a melody called the “Seikolos fragment,” which had been re-discovered in 1922, and was considered the oldest surviving complete melody. What is clear in exploring the symphony is that it is the work of a master composer at the end of her life. Written in 1930 and premiered in 1931 as she increasingly lost her hearing, it also reveals a new, deeply personal musical language.
More about Dame Ethel Smyth
Smyth faced significant discrimination as a female composer throughout her 50+ year career, with critics saying her music was “too feminine,” or “too masculine,” or “a remarkable achievement – for a woman.” Brahms reportedly approved of her music, but did not at first believe it had been written by a woman. Her support was strongest from prominent conductor-advocates. Bruno Walter conducted The Wreckers at Covent Garden in 1910, and Sir Thomas Beecham conducted a retrospective of her works at Royal Albert Hall in 1934. Donald Tovey was also a champion of her music, and Hermann Levi advocated for her music for decades. Smyth later became central to the Suffragette movement in England, writing the March of the Women. Her gender politics and sexuality were cause for attacks by critics, and she even went to prison for throwing a stone through an MP’s window.
About James Blachly
James Blachly is a conductor dedicated to artistic excellence and broader accessibility. He currently serves as Music Director of the Johnstown Symphony Orchestra (PA) and Music Director of New York City-based Experiential Orchestra. Dedicated to finding new ways of empowering audiences, he is also in demand as a speaker on Listening as Leadership, bringing his expertise as a conductor and passion for music to Fortune 500 companies, schools, and other organizations.
Blachly’s innovative programming aims to increase audience engagement and empower audiences. With the Johnstown Symphony, he conducted the orchestra in a former steel mill in a concert that was featured on Katie Couric’s America Inside Out, and in three seasons the orchestras has increased season ticket sales by 43%; with the Experiential Orchestra, he has invited audiences to dance to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, sit within the orchestra at Lincoln Center, and engage with Symphonie fantastique and Petrushka with circus choreography in an ongoing collaboration with The Muse in Brooklyn. A strong supporter of composers of our time, Blachly has commissioned and premiered more than 50 works from composers such as Jessie Montgomery, Courtney Bryan, Kirsten Vollness, Viet Cuong, Michi Wiancko, Kate Copeland Ettinger, Patrick Castillo, Brad and Doug Balliett, and many others. In recent seasons, he has collaborated with soloists Julia Bullock, Andrés Cárdenes, Michael Chioldi, Karen Kim, Andrew Yee, Owen Dalby, Janna Baty, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and more. He was the only conductor from the U.S. invited to participate in the 1st Annual Young Conductor’s Showcase as a part of El Sistema’s 40th Anniversary celebration, and is the co-founder of Make Music NOLA, an El Sistema-inspired program in New Orleans now in its 9th year.
About the Experiential Orchestra and Chorus
Founded by James Blachly, the New York City-based Experiential Orchestra and Chorus (EXO) takes as its mission to create new experiences of sound. In addition to giving its signature concerts at Lincoln Center, it prepares innovative programs which have invited audiences to dance to Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps and Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, welcomed them to sit and lie down inside the Orchestra itself, surrounded them with thirty-six oboes and bassoons in performances of music by Lully and Rameau, and performed Symphonie fantastique and Pétrouchka with original circus choreography by The Muse in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Both the Orchestra and Chorus are made up of top freelancers, many of whom are soloists in their own right, or are drawn from prestigious chamber ensembles. Through venue-specific programming, commissions, and collaborations, EXO is re-imagining ways to inspire audience members to fall more deeply in love with the sound of a symphony orchestra and chorus.
2 comments:
I came upon this quite late, but it is definitely a case of better late than never. Any new recording of Shapero is exciting news to me, but I don't monitor recording sites consistently enough to catch all of them, and so didn't know about this one.
Thanks.
You're welcome! I've got a Google Alert on set on "Harold Shapero", so I hear about these things separately from any press releases; I did get a PR from BMOP about this.
Post a Comment