Kenneth Fuchs: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1

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Conductor John Wilson and his colleagues in the Sinfonia of London do a masterful job of bringing these recorded premieres to what I hope will be a wide audience, and I shall greatly be anticipating... — Fanfare, Jan/Feb 2024 More…

Release Date: 14th Jul 2023
Catalogue No: CHSA5296
Label: Chandos
Length: 59 minutes

Presto Recording of the Week

14th July 2023
Gramophone Magazine

October 2023

Editor's Choice
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Critics' Choice 2023

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Fuchs, K: Cloud Slant

Work length19:02

$3.70

$4.55

$5.60

Sinfonia of London
John Wilson

I. Blue Fall

Track length6:33

$1.05

$1.30

$1.60

II. Flood

Track length7:01

$1.60

$1.95

$2.40

III. Cloud Slant

Track length5:28

$1.05

$1.30

$1.60

Fuchs, K: Solitary the Thrush

Work length16:23

Album only

Adam Walker (flute)
Sinfonia of London
John Wilson

Fuchs, K: Pacific Visions

Work length8:24

$1.60

$1.95

$2.40

Sinfonia of London
John Wilson

Fuchs, K: Quiet in the Land

Work length15:25

Album only

Sinfonia of London
John Wilson

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Recording of the Week, John Wilson conducts orchestral works by American composer Kenneth Fuchs

14th July 2023

World premiere recordings of a quartet of orchestral works by Grammy Award-winning composer Kenneth Fuchs from John Wilson and Sinfonia of London.

Grammy-Award-winning Kenneth Fuchs (born 1956) is without doubt one of American music’s leading orchestral composers. His orchestral output has grown and developed to encompass a wide range of genres, from overtures and tone poems to suites and concertos (ten to date, including ones for string quartet, electric guitar, and piano, the last entitled Spiritualist), inspired by a diverse range of subjects, testimony to his wide sympathies and fields of knowledge. His output includes chamber music (including five string quartets), solos and duos, vocal and choral music, and four chamber musicals. Cloud Slant is a virtuoso orchestral concerto based on three of Helen Frankenthaler’s canvasses: Blue Fall (1966), Flood (1967), and Cloud Slant (1968) –not just musical depictions of them but also the composer’s reactions to their artistic sweep and power.

The flute was Fuchs’ first instrument, so it was inevitable that he would compose a flute concerto. However, it was not until 2019 that he set about the task – for the flautist Peg Luke, to whom the concerto is dedicated. As is customary of compositions by this composer, the concerto carries a descriptive title, Solitary the Thrush, a reference to lines from Whitman’s elegy for Abraham Lincoln, 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d'. Commissioned by the Californian Musique Sur La Mer Orchestras, Pacific Visions is scored for string orchestra, and is a single, dynamic movement sub-divided into five sections. Quiet in the Land, a Poem for Orchestra is a revision of a chamber work Fuchs composed in 2003, inspired by the rolling prairie of the Midwestern United States and the ‘immense arching sky’ under which it sits, cast against the impact of the Second Gulf War which had then recently broken out. The orchestral version heard here was composed in 2017 for the Phoenix Symphony. The album was recorded in Surround Sound, and is available as a Hybrid SACD and in Spatial Audio.

Reviews

Jan/Feb 2024

Conductor John Wilson and his colleagues in the Sinfonia of London do a masterful job of bringing these recorded premieres to what I hope will be a wide audience, and I shall greatly be anticipating future releases in this series. Here’s a disc that few music lovers will want to miss.

October 2023

The Sinfonia of London and their conductor were born for this music and they execute it with aplomb.

14th July 2023

Stylistically, Fuchs's music sits very much in the late-twentieth-century American idiom, frequently reminding me of composers such as Alan Hovhaness, David Diamond, Paul Moravec and others, and yet I was also struck by how often this piece ventured beyond its native shores...Constantly alive with movement and intricate invention, and full of dazzling flourishes and imaginative touches of orchestration, it suits Sinfonia of London perfectly.

Offer,Kenneth Fuchs: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1

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Recording of the Week, John Wilson conducts orchestral works by American composer Kenneth Fuchs

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