Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra | Joseph Schwantner

Описание: Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra | Joseph Schwantner
Temple University Symphony Orchestra
Wednesday, February 13, 2025
Temple Performing Arts Center
Micheal Barnes - Soloist
José Luis Domínguez - Conductor

The prolific American composer Joseph Schwantner studied music at the Chicago Conservatory and Northwestern University. He is well-known for his dramatic and unique style and as a gifted orchestral colorist. He previously taught at Juilliard, Eastman, and Yale University. Schwantner is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
He has served as composer in residence for the Saint Louis Symphony as part of the Meet the Composer/Orchestra Residencies Program funded by the Exxon Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was also composer-in-residence at Washington and Lee and Illinois Wesleyan Universities, Wolf Trap Performing Arts center, the Cabrillo Music Festival, and the Sonoklect New Music Festival.
One of Joseph Schwantner’s most often performed works is New Morning for the World, a setting of a Martin Luther King, Jr. speech. Schwantner won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for After tones of Infinity. Among his many other awards are first prize in the Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards (for Music of Amber), two ISCM National Composer's Prizes, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, several commissioning grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, and the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Two of his works were nominated for Grammy awards for Best New Classical Composition: Magabunda in 1985 and A Sudden Rainbow in 1987. Soundings, a documentary about Schwantner and his works, was broadcast on the Public Broadcasting Stations.
Schwantner’s music has been influenced by such diverse sources as Balinese gamelan music and Japanese gagaku court music as well as by the music of Debussy, Ravel, and Messiaen. He has received composing commissions from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and others.
Schwantner's Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its 150th anniversary and composed between 1992 and1994. The New York Philharmonic premiered the now very popular work on January 6, 1995 in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center with percussionist Christopher Lamb, for whom it was written, and Leonard Slatkin, conductor. While Schwantner was composing the concerto, his friend and colleague, composer Stephen Albert, passed away; Schwantner dedicated the concerto to Albert, whom he described as "a man of intensity and strong convictions who possessed an indefatigable spirit and a fiercely independent musical vision." In this technically demanding yet engaging work, the soloist is called upon to play many different percussion instruments, some in unusual ways.
The composer wrote the following description: “The Concerto, cast in a three- movement arch-like design, opens with the soloist stationed near the other percussionists. A collaborative relationship develops between the soloist and his percussion colleagues in an expanded ensemble that also includes piano and harp. The soloist, forcefully and propulsively articulates the primary musical materials with a battery of timbaletas [pitched drums], a pair of bongos, amplified marimba, xylophone, and a two-octave set of crotales [small cymbals at various pitches]. The marimba and drums are most prominently featured in this movement.
“Throughout the second movement, In memoriam, a slow, dark-hued elegy, the soloist is placed center-stage, while the other percussionists remain silent. The soloist employs a vibraphone (played both with mallets and with a contrabass bow), a rack of nine Almglocken (pitched Alpine herd bells), a high-octave set of crotales (played with beaters and with a bow), two triangles, two cymbals, a water gong (a tam-tam lowered into a large kettledrum filled with water), a concert bass drum, and a tenor drum. Two principal ideas appear: a pair of recurrent ringing sonorities played on the vibraphone and an insistent ‘heartbeat’ motif articulated on the bass drum.

“The second movement leads directly into the fast and rhythmic third movement, which begins with an improvisatory section for the soloist. While continuing to improvise, the soloist walks back to his initial performance position of the first movement. As in that movement, the amplified marimba is again prominently featured, but here the soloist plays angular and strongly accented gestures in four-mallet block voicings. The final section, drawn from the drum motives of Movement I, proceeds to a high-energy cadenza and conclusion.”