Composer: John Corigliano
Performer: Philip Edward Fisher
Orchestra: Albany Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: David Alan Miller
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Naxos
Catalogue: 8559930
Release: 2023
Size: 290 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Piano Concerto
01. I. Molto Allegro
02. II. Scherzo
03. III. Appassionato
04. IV. Allegro
05. Fantasia on an Ostinato
06. Prelude for Paul
Etude Fantasy
07. No. 1, For the Left Hand Alone
08. No. 2, Legato
09. No. 3, Fifths to Thirds
10. No. 4, Ornaments
11. No. 5, Melody
Winging It – Improvisations for piano
12. I. September 28, 2007
13. II. January 3, 2008
14. III. June 7, 2008
John Corigliano’s music has been commissioned, performed, and recorded by some of the most prominent orchestras, soloists, and chamber musicians in the world. He is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, five GRAMMY Awards, the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, and an Oscar. The Piano Concerto ranges in expression between lyricism and atonality and is extremely virtuosic and theatrical, while the competition piece Fantasia on an Ostinato investigates the performer’s imagination and musicality through minimalist techniques. The devilish discipline of etude Fantasy contrasts with the improvisatory origins of Winging It, while Prelude for Paul echoes the soul of Rachmaninov.
John Corigliano, an indifferent pianist himself, composed little piano music; all of it, including the Piano Concerto of 1968, fits on a single CD. The solo piano works were very nicely recorded some years ago by Ursula Oppens, but the Piano Concerto, highly eclectic in spirit (it includes everything from serialist passages to those that sound like Ravel, and it suggested as well as anything else of the time the way the winds were blowing), belongs with the rest and is included here in a crisp performance by pianist Philip Edward Fisher and the Albany Symphony Orchestra under conductor David Alan Miller. The solo pieces are more in the nature of experiments than major Corigliano works, but several have the combination of rigor and general appearance that is this important composer’s trademark. Probably the most popular of them is the Fantasia on an Ostinato, in which the slow movement material of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92, gradually coalesces out of the titular ostinato over 13 minutes (part of the piece is aleatoric). The pieces are in a variety of idioms, but all have the quality of responding intelligently to the circumstances of their composition. Prelude for Paul was written for biotech CEO Paul Sekhri, who has a passage from Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, tattooed on his arm; the work quotes that passage. Corigliano fans will want this release.