Sinfonia Of London, John Wilson, Adam Walker – Kenneth Fuchs: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1 (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Sinfonia Of London, John Wilson, Adam Walker – Kenneth Fuchs: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:16 minutes | 947 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

The Grammy-Award-winning Kenneth Fuchs (born 1956) is without doubt one of American music’s leading orchestral composers. His orchestral output has grown and developed to encompass a wide range of genres, from overtures and tone poems to suites and concertos (ten to date, including ones for string quartet, electric guitar, and piano, the last entitled Spiritualist), inspired by a diverse range of subjects, testimony to his wide sympathies and fields of knowledge. His output includes chamber music (including five string quartets), solos and duos, vocal and choral music, and four chamber musicals. Cloud Slant is a virtuoso orchestral concerto based on three canvasses by Helen Frankenthaler: Blue Fall (1966), Flood (1967), and Cloud Slant (1968) – not just musical depictions of them but also the composer’s reactions to their artistic sweep and power. The flute was Fuchs’ first instrument, so it was inevitable that he would compose a flute concerto. However, it was not until 2019 that he set about the task – for the flautist Peg Luke, to whom the concerto is dedicated. As is customary of compositions by this composer, the concerto carries a descriptive title, Solitary the Thrush, a reference to lines from Whitman’s elegy for Abraham Lincoln, ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’. Commissioned by the Californian Musique Sur La Mer Orchestras, Pacific Visions is scored for string orchestra, and is a single, dynamic movement sub-divided into five sections. Quiet in the Land, a Poem for Orchestra, is a revision of a chamber work which Fuchs composed in 2003, inspired by the rolling prairie of the Midwestern United States and the ‘immense arching sky’ under which it sits, cast against the impact of the Second Gulf War which had then recently broken out. The orchestral version heard here was composed in 2017 for the Phoenix Symphony.

The music of Kenneth Fuchs has been championed by conductor JoAnn Falletta, who does it proud, but it is now being programmed by orchestras in various countries and earning attention from other conductors. The Sinfonia of London and conductor John Wilson have been better known for film scores, but Wilson seems to have a real affinity for Fuchs’ well-crafted pieces, and the results here are excellent. Fuchs’ music is rooted in the past and is tonal, but it couldn’t be called neo-Romantic; the listener’s attention is drawn toward the detailed orchestral shadings rather than to melody. He is influenced by Copland, Britten, and, in the flute concerto Solitary the Thrush, Vaughan Williams (the title is from Walt Whitman, whom Vaughan Williams also loved). That work has a different structure from that of The Lark Ascending, but it is attractive enough that it could become a modern substitute for audiences that have heard the Vaughan Williams work too often. It may be the most immediately appealing thing on the program, but the orchestral works are also absorbing. Consider Cloud Slant, whose three movements were inspired by paintings of Helen Frankenthaler (although they are emotional impressions rather than programmatic depictions). Classes exploring the relationship between music and art (or just enthusiasts interested in the same) might check these out. In general, Fuchs seems a composer likely to be heard more often on both sides of the Atlantic in the coming years, and this release made classical best-seller lists in the summer of 2023. – James Manheim

Tracklist:
1-01. Sinfonia Of London – Cloud Slant: I. Blue Fall (06:33)
1-02. Sinfonia Of London – Cloud Slant: II. Flood (07:01)
1-03. Sinfonia Of London – Cloud Slant: III. Cloud Slant (05:28)
1-04. Adam Walker – Solitary the Thrush (16:23)
1-05. Sinfonia Of London – Pacific Visions (08:24)
1-06. Sinfonia Of London – Quiet in the Land (15:25)

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