 The Far Country
Cabrillo Festival Orchestra with Apollo Quartet & Strings, JoAnn Falletta conductor; Atlanta Singers, Kevin Culver conductor Contemporary Classical Recording of the Year 1993 --Creative Loafing, Atlanta "Dream in White on White" (1992) is a musical landscape on the non-chromatic ("white") tones and non-tempered intervals of Pythagorean diatonic tuning. It is a response to the clarity of those sounds, and to the treeless, windswept expanses of western Alaska. "Night Peace" (1977) is based entirely on a single melodic line, which is heard only once, sung by the solo soprano at the end of the piece. This melody was conceived in the luminous stillness of a moonless winter night. "The Far Country of Sleep" (1988) was composed in memory of the late Morton Feldman. Although he was an unrepentant urbanite, Feldman's music is, for me, haunted by the idea of the sublime landscape, imaginary or real. The title of this homage to him is borrowed from a poem by John Haines. It evokes in my mind both the distant dreamscapes of the Arctic and that ultimate wilderness, through which we all must pass. The score is inscribed with a line from Alexander Pope, which Feldman once recited to me: Art after Art goes out, and all is night ... ... Night Peace is what new choral music is all about. --John Schaefer, New Sounds Available here: iTunes HDtracks Comments are closed.
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