WWFM – The Classical Network’s symphony marathon continues!
NOW PLAYING: Symphony No. 4 in B flat major (English Chamber Orchestra/Michael Tilson Thomas)
It was Robert Schumann who memorably described Beethoven’s 4th Symphony as “a Greek maiden between two Norse giants.” While I certainly find that image provocative, I assume he meant it to signify the work’s relative restraint, geniality, and refinement in comparison to the more ambitious, and perhaps even a little uncouth, Symphonies Nos. 3 & 5.
Let’s hear it for the maiden! Please support it by calling 1-888-232-1212, or by donating online at wwfm.org.
I’m feeling a little spacey today, so I suppose it’s only appropriate to remember Henry Brant.
Brant, who died in 2008 at the age of 94, was best known for his experiments with spatial music, in which performers are located not only on stage but also at carefully worked-out positions throughout the hall. The bodies of musicians are frequently distinguished through the playing of music of different characters.
Brant’s “Ice Field” was inspired by an episode from his boyhood when, as a 12 year-old in 1926, he found himself aboard a ship passing cautiously through a field of icebergs in the North Atlantic. Its performance calls for strings, two pianos, two harps and timpani on stage, oboes and bassoons in the organ loft, brass and jazz drummer in the first-tier seats, piccolos and clarinets at one end of the second tier, with pitched percussion at the other end, and additional percussion to the side of the audience on the main floor.
Brant played the organ at the work’s first performance at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, under Michael Tilson Thomas. The piece was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2001.
By coincidence, Tilson Thomas and organist Cameron Carpenter will be reviving the work at Davies Symphony Hall later this week.
Interestingly, Brant also worked as an orchestrator for Hollywood film scores. In particular, his distinctive timbres, frequently bright and shrill, color a number of the classic scores of Alex North. He also worked as an orchestrator on Virgil Thomson’s “The Plow that Broke the Plains” and Aaron Copland’s “The City.”
Here is Brant discussing his concept of spatial music:
And a beautiful spatial work – though on a comparatively modest scale – “On the Nature of Things” (1956), after Lucretius, for some reason posted here in two parts:
So many worthwhile orchestral performances scheduled to take place in and around Mercer County this season. Michael Tilson Thomas conducting Mahler’s 7th at McCarter Theatre Center. Enrique Bátiz in a program featuring Manuel Ponce’s Piano Concerto at the State Theatre in New Brunswick. Cellist Zuill Bailey with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra. Excerpts from Samuel Barber’s “Antony and Cleopatra” performed by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. A Verdi Requiem with the Princeton University Glee Club and Princeton University Orchestra. Niels Wilhelm Gade’s Symphony No. 7 with Sinfonietta Nova. Also, local performances of Howard Hanson’s “Romantic” Symphony (the TCNJ Orchestra) and George Antheil’s “Capital of the World” (the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra).
Read more about it in my orchestral overview in today’s The Times of Trenton.
