Varèse - Orchestral Works Volume 2 - Naxos: 8557882 - CD or download

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With Varèse fans still revelling in Riccardo Chailly's groundbreaking 1998 Decca cycle, anybody else approaching this provocative and inflammable music better have something profound to say:... — Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 More…

Release Date: 28th Apr 2008
Catalogue No: 8557882
Label: Naxos
Length: 66 minutes

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Varèse: Amériques

Work length23:56

Album only

Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra
Christopher Lyndon-Gee

Ameriques (1929 revised version by Chou Wen-chung) [1929 Version by Chou Wen-chung]

Track length23:56

Album only

Varèse: Ecuatorial

Work length10:23

$3.00

$3.85

Thomas Bloch
Camerata Silesia, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra
Christopher Lyndon-Gee

Varèse: Nocturnal

Work length9:22

$2.00

$2.60

Elizabeth Watts
Camerata Silesia, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra
Christopher Lyndon-Gee

Varèse: Dance for Burgess

Work length1:38

$1.00

$1.30

Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra
Christopher Lyndon-Gee

Varèse: Tuning up

Work length4:50

$1.00

$1.30

Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra
Christopher Lyndon-Gee

Varèse: Hyperprism

Work length3:46

$1.00

$1.30

Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra
Christopher Lyndon-Gee

Varèse: Un grand sommeil noir

Work length2:57

$1.00

$1.30

Elizabeth Watts, Christopher Lyndon-Gee

Varèse: Density 21.5

Work length4:39

$1.00

$1.30

Maria Grochowska

Varèse: Ionisation

Work length5:21

$1.00

$1.30

Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra
Christopher Lyndon-Gee

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About

The works on this recording span Varèse’s entire career, containing his sole surviving early composition, Un Grand Sommeil Noir, and his last, unfinished work, Nocturnal, brilliantly and seamlessly completed by the composer’s disciple and assistant during the last seventeen years of his life, the composer Chou Wen-Chung. Chiefly, though, the recording features the world première recording of the original version of Amériques, for a massive orchestra of 155 players, recorded immediately following a rare public performance at the Warsaw Philharmonic (only its second since the 1920s) as part of the 2005 Warsaw Autumn Festival.

Reviews

2010

With Varèse fans still revelling in Riccardo Chailly's groundbreaking 1998 Decca cycle, anybody else approaching this provocative and inflammable music better have something profound to say: Christopher Lyndon-Gee and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra don't let the side down. These Polish musicians are well used to the rough-and-tumble of performing the early textural works of Penderecki and Górecki and that visceral rawness, inherent in their own culture, transmutes powerfully to these seminal Varèse scores.
The standout performance for sure is the original 1921 version of Amériques, scored for an orchestra of over 150 musicians and an offstage 'banda'. Lyndon-Gee marshals his charges with a careful ear to balancing this monolithic ensemble: Varèse's emphatically reiterated rhythmic mantras are daintily articulated, but the musicians never sound browbeaten by his attention to detail. The elemental power of the closing moments is feral way beyond the call of duty.
Performances of the trail-blazing percussion ensemble work Ionisation, and other classics like Hyperprism, Densité 21.5 and Ecuatorial, are cut from the same devoted cloth. And the rest of the album is devoted to curios like Dance for Burgess and Tuning Up, reconstructed by Varèse's pupil Chou Wen-Chung and recorded for the first time by Chailly. Tuning Up was conceived for a 1947 film about Carnegie Hall and incorporates Iveslike illusions to Varèse's own and borrowed music, all ricocheting against repeated As. Inevitably he came to blows with the film-makers, but Lyndon- Gee makes one think the by-product of their collaboration might be a minor masterpiece.

October 2008

These Polish musicians are well used to be rough-and-tumble of performing the early textural works of Penderecki and Górecki and the visceral rawness, inherent in their own culture, transmutes powerfully to these seminal Varèse scores.

Varèse - Orchestral Works Volume 2

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