Brooklyn Philharmonic, Lukas Foss; Carol Wincenc, flute; Yehudi Menuhin, Edna Michell, violins
Flutist Carol Wincenc has known Lukas Foss since her youth in the 1960s, when he was music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic. When she asked him to write a flute concerto for her in 1985, he was faced with the problem confronted by every composer in this genre: how to create an orchestral texture that would not overwhelm the solo instrument. Recalling that the flute “was a favorite instrument in the Renaissance and Baroque eras... [and] in ancient Greece, where the Olympic Games included flute playing,” he sought the sound he wanted in early music. The work, says Foss, is “an homage to something I love, a handshake across the centuries.”
Salomone Rossi, who lived in Mantua from about 1570 to about 1630, called himself “L'Ebreo,” and set a number of Hebrew texts to music in a collection punningly titled The Songs of Solomon. His madrigals resemble those of his contemporary Monteverdi, but some of his orchestral works point clearly to the trio-sonata form of Baroque chamber music. Lukas Foss's Salomon Rossi Suite, composed in 1975, follows the example of Stravinsky's Monumentum pro Gesualdo di Venosa ad CD annum in recomposing a Renaissance composer's music for modern instruments without romanticizing it.
The first Italian operas, of which Monteverdi's L'Orfeo: favola in musica is the outstanding example, were an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama. Following a different idea of “authenticity” from ours, Renaissance musicians dressed their ancient Greeks in 16th-century Italian raiment. Twentieth century listeners, on the other hand, might be drawn to the sensation of strangeness that a modern observer would surely experience in witnessing a Greek ritual of the 6th century B.C.
With Orpheus, a work composed in 1972 and incorporating elements of pantomime, Lukas Foss sought to evoke that feeling of an unfamiliar time and place, through the use of unusual staging and unconventional instrumental timbres. The result was not a benign trance or a Disney-like pastorale, but a celebration of the awesome power of mousikee, the calling of the muses, a synthesis of Apollonian discipline with the savage power of the Dionysian rite.
In 1983 Foss added an extended violin duet to the piece, creating a new work, Orpheus and Euridice, dedicated to Yehudi Menuhin and Edna Michell. The effect of the new material is to humanize the work, to balance its alienated, otherworldly character with moments of warm-blooded passion, and to heighten the sense of loss at the end.
Lukas Foss: Orchestral Works
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Track Listing
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Renaissance Concerto for Flute and Orchestra: I. Intrada
Lukas Foss
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Renaissance Concerto for Flute and Orchestra: II. Baroque Interlude
Lukas Foss
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Renaissance Concerto for Flute and Orchestra: III. Recitative
Lukas Foss
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Renaissance Concerto for Flute and Orchestra: IV. Jouissance
Lukas Foss
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Salomon Rossi Suite: I. Moderato con moto
Lukas Foss
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Salomon Rossi Suite: II. Allegro
Lukas Foss
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Salomon Rossi Suite: III. Andante
Lukas Foss
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Salomon Rossi Suite: IV. Allegretto sostenuto
Lukas Foss
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Salomon Rossi Suite: V. Lento
Lukas Foss
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Salomon Rossi Suite: VI. Allegro
Lukas Foss
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Orpheus and Euridice
Lukas Foss
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