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Album Summary
Menotti, Gian Carlo : Concerto for Violin in A minorMenotti, Gian Carlo : Muero porque no muero, cantataMenotti, Gian Carlo : Llama de Amor Viva, for baritone, chorus & orchestraMenotti, Gian Carlo : For the Death of Orpheus, for tenor, chorus & orchestra- Jennifer Koh (Violin)
- Stephen Roberts (Horn)
- Jamie MacDougall (Tenor)
Notes & Reviews:
"The chorus and orchestra from the festival that Menotti has run for over 40 years respond wholeheartedly under the direction of Richard Hickox... The Violin Concerto opens with an idea, swaying between major and minor... while the more vigorous passages have strong echoes of Prokofiev... It's all expertly written, and attractively played... The three cantatas show where Menotti's real skill lies - in writing gratefully and idiomatically for voices" **** -Martin Cotton BBC Music
Gramophone Classical Music Guide
Gian-Carlo Menotti's lyrical Violin Concerto, one of his most popular instrumental works, is here neatly coupled with premiere recordings of three cantatas written in the last 20 years, products of his active old age in his seventies and eighties. Hickox draws from the Festival Orchestra warmly persuasive readings of works which may be unashamedly eclectic, but are powerfully convincing in such committed performances.
The young American violinist, Jennifer Koh, is the excellent soloist. The first movement with its sequence of flowing melodies could easily seem to meander, but Koh and Hickox give it a clear shape, with each new idea emerging seductively. The slow movement, played with hushed dedication, has a tender poignancy here; an intrusive brass motif leads to the central cadenza, technically demanding but not showy. The vigorous finale features a jaunty main theme and ends with virtuoso fireworks, rounding off a piece that deserves resurrecting in the concert-hall too.
The two Spanish language cantatas were written respectively in 1982 and 1991 for the Catholic University in Washington. Menotti confesses to having lost his religious faith, and perhaps understandably here writes sensuous music closer to Puccini's opera, Suor Angelica, than to any religious model. Julia Melinek is the vibrant soloist in the St Teresa setting, with her marked vibrato well-controlled. Stephen Roberts, the responsive soloist in the St John of the Cross setting, is caught less happily, his voice ill focused.
The Death of Orpheus, to an English text by Menotti himself, is even more dramatic, based on the legend of Orpheus being killed by Thracian women in a bacchanalian frenzy. Orpheus's song emerges as a broad diatonic melody, with choral writing of Delian sensuousness and the tenor's part with Britten-like echoes. Jamie MacDougall is the expressive soloist, with the chorus fresh and incisive in all three cantatas.
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Works Details
Menotti, Gian Carlo : Concerto for Violin in A minor - Performer: Jennifer Koh (Violin)
- Conductor: Richard Hickox
- Ensemble: Spoleto Festival Orchestra
- Notes: Teatro Nuovo, Spoleto, Italy (07/04/2001-07/05/2001)
- Period Time: Modern
- Form: Concerto
- Written: 1952
Menotti, Gian Carlo : Muero porque no muero, cantata - Conductor: Richard Hickox
- Ensemble: Spoleto Festival Orchestra
- Notes: Teatro Nuovo, Spoleto, Italy (07/04/2001-07/05/2001)
- Period Time: Modern
- Form: Cantata/Oratorio
- Written: 1982
Menotti, Gian Carlo : Llama de Amor Viva, for baritone, chorus & orchestra - Performer: Stephen Roberts (Horn)
- Conductor: Richard Hickox
- Ensemble: Spoleto Festival Orchestra
- Notes: Teatro Nuovo, Spoleto, Italy (07/04/2001-07/05/2001)
- Period Time: Modern
- Written: 1991
Menotti, Gian Carlo : For the Death of Orpheus, for tenor, chorus & orchestra - Performer: Jamie MacDougall (Tenor)
- Conductor: Richard Hickox
- Ensemble: Spoleto Festival Orchestra
- Notes: Teatro Nuovo, Spoleto, Italy (07/04/2001-07/05/2001)
- Period Time: Modern
- Written: 1990
