Charles Wuorinen, Vol. 3
Charles Wuorinen has always been comfortable in a range of genres, embracing the traditional forms of opera, symphony, or string quartet as readily as he accepts the challenge unusual combinations that have become a second norm since Pierrot Lunaire more than a century ago. Nor has any particular focus dominated any period of his nearly sixty-year career: his eight symphonies span more than fifty years, his piano concertos forty. He has written everything from piano bagatelles to ballets, a Mass setting, eight symphonies, and three operas. This album features the latest and most traditionally structured of Wuorinen’s four piano sonatas—“sonata” being a term the composer has used on a number of occasions otherwise—as well as two vocal works setting poetry of two of our greatest modernist poets, John Ashbery and James Tate.
Charles Wuorinen has always been comfortable in a range of genres, embracing the traditional forms of opera, symphony, or string quartet as readily as he accepts the challenge unusual combinations that have become a second norm since Pierrot Lunaire more than a century ago. Nor has any particular focus dominated any period of his nearly sixty-year career: his eight symphonies span more than fifty years, his piano concertos forty. He has written everything from piano bagatelles to ballets, a Mass setting, eight symphonies, and three operas. This album features the latest and most traditionally structured of Wuorinen’s four piano sonatas—“sonata” being a term the composer has used on a number of occasions otherwise—as well as two vocal works setting poetry of two of our greatest modernist poets, John Ashbery and James Tate.
Description
Charles Wuorinen has always been comfortable in a range of genres, embracing the traditional forms of opera, symphony, or string quartet as readily as he accepts the challenge unusual combinations that have become a second norm since Pierrot Lunaire more than a century ago. Nor has any particular focus dominated any period of his nearly sixty-year career: his eight symphonies span more than fifty years, his piano concertos forty. He has written everything from piano bagatelles to ballets, a Mass setting, eight symphonies, and three operas. This album features the latest and most traditionally structured of Wuorinen’s four piano sonatas—“sonata” being a term the composer has used on a number of occasions otherwise—as well as two vocal works setting poetry of two of our greatest modernist poets, John Ashbery and James Tate.
