The Westchester Philharmonic, Paul Lustig Dunkel; Ursula Oppens, piano; Robert Taub, piano
In the half-century since the publication of "Arnold Schoenberg in the United States," Roger Sessions’s hope for a new communality in Schoenbergian models of phrasing, line, and form has hardly come to fruition. Still, the Sessions/Schoenberg ideal of compositional craft has persistently resurfaced in a broad range of American musical idioms—as the pairing of Sessions’ own and Francis Thorne's piano concertos on this disc amply demonstrate.
The two works provide an object lesson in the way shared principles of phrasing, line, and form may pervade works of differing style and temperament. Francis Thorne's Third Piano Concerto—with its expansive forms, extroverted neoclassical quirks, flirtation with jazz, and, in its concluding passages, overtly burlesque gestures—offers a marked contrast to the compression and gestural economy of the Sessions work. But the musical utterances of both compositions unfold in extended, continuous spans, sustained by the techniques of expansion and development detailed in Schoenberg's little American textbook.
Francis Thorne/Roger Sessions: Piano Concertos
| MP3/320 | $9.99 | |
| FLAC | $9.99 | |
| WAV | $9.99 | |
| CD | $15.99 |
Track Listing
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Concerto for Piano and Orchestra: I. Tranquillo
Roger Sessions
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Concerto for Piano and Orchestra: II. Adagio
Roger Sessions
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Concerto for Piano and Orchestra: III. Allegro
Roger Sessions
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Piano Concerto No. 3: I. Allegro spiritoso
Francis Thorne
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Piano Concerto No. 3: II. Adagietto cantabile
Francis Thorne
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Piano Concerto No. 3: III. Presto con zesto
Francis Thorne
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