Henry Cowell: Works for Orchestra

Henry Cowell: Works for Orchestra

Henry Cowell: Works for Orchestra
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CD Details

Composer: Henry Cowell
Conductor: Jorge Mester
Conductor: Robert Whitney
Orchestra: Louisville Orchestra
Edition: Music CD
Format: Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2003-03-11
Music Label: First Edition
Soundtracks:
  1. Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 3 for orchestra, HC 660
  2. Ongaku, suite for orchestra, HC 846: 1. Gagaku
  3. Ongaku, suite for orchestra, HC 846: 2. Sankyoku
  4. Symphony No. 11: Seven Rituals of Music, for orchestra and additional percussion, HC 790: 1. Andantino
  5. Symphony No. 11: Seven Rituals of Music, for orchestra and additional percussion, HC 790: 2. Allegro
  6. Symphony No. 11: Seven Rituals of Music, for orchestra and additional percussion, HC 790: 3. Lento
  7. Symphony No. 11: Seven Rituals of Music, for orchestra and additional percussion, HC 790: 4. Presto
  8. Symphony No. 11: Seven Rituals of Music, for orchestra and additional percussion, HC 790: 5. Adagio
  9. Symphony No. 11: Seven Rituals of Music, for orchestra and additional percussion, HC 790: 6. Vivace
  10. Symphony No. 11: Seven Rituals of Music, for orchestra and additional percussion, HC 790: 7. Andante
  11. Symphony No. 15 ('Thesis'), HC 887: 1st Movement: 1. Largo
  12. Symphony No. 15 ('Thesis'), HC 887: 1st Movement: 2. Andante
  13. Symphony No. 15 ('Thesis'), HC 887: 1st Movement: 3. Presto
  14. Symphony No. 15 ('Thesis'), HC 887: 1st Movement: 4. Allegretto
  15. Symphony No. 15 ('Thesis'), HC 887: 1st Movement: Part 1. 5. Allegro
  16. Symphony No. 15 ('Thesis'), HC 887: 1st Movement: Part 2. 5. Recapitulation
  17. Symphony No. 15 ('Thesis'), HC 887: 2nd Movement: 1. Moderato

Music reviews of Henry Cowell: Works for Orchestra

Music Review: Cowell more original here than I expected - a good introduction to the orchestral composer
Rating: 4 Stars

I find myself enjoying this disc much more than I expected.

The compositions featured here date between 1954 (Hymn and Fuguing Tune #3 and 11th Symphony) and 1961 ("Thesis"-Symphony No. 15). By then Cowell, the erstwhile trailblazing experimenter in piano sounds, wasn't so much of an innovator any more, often writing music that was tritely smacking of the American barn-style or sentimental prairie lyricism - and nowhere is this more in evidence than in his Hymn and Fuguing Tunes. Ives did it better, and Ives' early and more consonant, hymnal style is not what I prefer from this composer anyway. But I am glad to see that Cowell was more original and interesting than that, as a precursor of World Music East-West crossover, but not only.

The 11th Symphony "Seven Rituals of Music" was the first Cowell composition recorded by the Louisville Orchestra, and the usually highly informative production info given by First Edition Music's liner notes is false here: the 1959 date attributed by them both to recording and original LP release in fact pertains to Ongaku. The 11th Symphony was recorded in 1954 and came out on LOU 545-2, the second LP ever released on the Orchestra's own label, the famous Louisville First Edition Records, part of an initial subscription of twelve. It was paired with Tcherepnin's Suite (now reissued on First Edition Music's Tcherepnin collection, see Alexander Tcherepnin) and Wagenaar's Concert Oerture. Actually the Symphony had been recorded by the Columbia team under a joint agreement and also been released as Columbia ML 5039 with Creston's Invocation & Dance and Ibert's Louivsille Concerto (the latter reissued on Français Moderne).

Then came Ongaku, in 1959, published with Benjamin Lees' Second Symphony on Lou 595. "Thesis (Symphony No. 15) followed in 1961 and came out a year later on Lou 622 with Rodolfo Halffter's La Madruaga del Panadero. Finally, Hymn & Fuguing Tune #3 was recorded in 1968 and came out on Louisville LS-682 with Robert Starer's Mutabiliti, Charles Koechlin Five Chorales in Medieval Modes; the LP also had Cowell's Hymn and Fuguing Tune #2, incomprehensibly and frustratingly not reissued here with its companion. Surely, at 63:26, the CD would have contained it.

The other Cowell composition recorded by the Louisville Orchestra and missing from this CD reissue is the Sinfonietta, recorded in 1968 and released on L-681 with Carlos Surinach's Melorhythmic Dramas (the latter now available on Carlos Surinach: Melorhythmic Dramas; Symphonic Variations; Feria Magica Overture; Sinfonietta Flamenca) and the second Hymn and Fuguing Tune

I find Ongaku (1957) fascinating in its (to my ears) Japanese genuineness. It doesn't sound like a Puccini-like, mock Japan deformed through the thick lenses of occidental glasses, but like authentic Japanese Court music. The first movement is stately and serene, the second more animated and lyrical, dreamy at times. Both, as Cowell puts it, are strange sounding, but only superficially so, and the result is quite haunting.

The 11th Symphony is also quite original. The "Seven Rituals of Music" are in fact Ritual musics to accompany "the life of man from birth to death". It starts with "music for a child asleep" and ends with "music of the ritual of death". The second movement is especially striking and original, a "ritual of work" scored for percussion ensemble, later joined by brass fanfares, maybe the "prophetic hint of war" the composer refers to in his explanatory notes. Unexpected percussion sounds and colors are also much at the fore in the fourth movement, "music for the ritual of dance and play", in the midst of boisterous American festive music. Otherwise the music is often delicate and eerily mysterious, as in the third movement, "a song for the ritual of love, with the premonition of magic" and even more the fifth movement, "ritual of magic and the mystical imagination".

Thesis is also remarkable for its formal freedom (five short movements followed by a recapitulation of them in a sixth one and a sonata-form last movement based on an extension of the primary motiv uniting the whole) and for some of its orchestral effects: try the "carpet" of violin glissandos which open the second movement - as contemporary as anything written by Penderecki or Karel Husa in those years or later - over which a deep, tonal, recitative-like melody on bass strings develops, or again in the fourth movement the violins playing harmonics over bass pizzicato, turning into flutes against bassoon staccato. These are fine examples of what was so original with the young Cowell, what made his approach to "modernism" so unique and relevant: that he was both traditional in his adherence to tonality and folk-inspired melodic invention, and entirely innovative in his experimentation of unheard piano sounds.

This is an excellent introduction to Cowell the orchestral composer.
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