Munich Philharmonic: Ives / Seeger / Riegger / Ruggles / Rodgers / GershwinBarbara Hannigan (conductor & soprano)
“To tell the story of American composition in the early twentieth century is to circle around an absent center”, writes Alex Ross, music critic at the New Yorker, in his bestseller The Rest is Noise. The containing chapter’s title, “Invisible Men”, alludes to American composers such as Charles Ives, Wallingford Riegger and Carl Ruggles, for whom the road to recognition was an uphill struggle.
“To tell the story of American composition in the early twentieth century is to circle around an absent center”, writes Alex Ross, music critic at the New Yorker, in his bestseller The Rest is Noise. The containing chapter’s title, “Invisible Men”, alludes to American composers such as Charles Ives, Wallingford Riegger and Carl Ruggles, for whom the road to recognition was an uphill struggle.
Barbara Hannigan has made it her mission to bring these “invisible men” back into the limelight. Following extensive research at the Library of Congress, she presents a one-of-its-kind programme that takes a close look at American music from 1900 to 1945: from radical simplicity and radical dissonance to the fusion of classical and popular music that reached its peak on Broadway; a reflection of musical diversity that must remain incomplete by necessity, but, despite this limitation, provides fascinating and surprising insights. Hannigan focuses in particular on the distinctive, edgy voices of resistance that sought their own expression and broke new ground in the process.
Programme
- Charles Ives:
– At the River for voice and piano
– From the Steeples and the Mountains - Ruth Crawford Seeger: Rissolty Rossolty
- Wallingford Riegger: Study in Sonority, Op 7
- Carl Ruggles: Sun-Treader for grand orchestra
- Richard Rodgers: The Carousel Waltz
- George Gershwin: Porgy and Bess – A Symphonic Picture (arranged by Robert Russell Bennett)
