FUCHS Piano Concerto, ‘Spiritualist’
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Kenneth Fuchs
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: American Classics
Magazine Review Date: AW18
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 77
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 8 559824
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Piano Concerto, ‘Spiritualist’ |
Kenneth Fuchs, Composer
Jeffrey Biegel, Piano JoAnn Falletta, Conductor Kenneth Fuchs, Composer London Symphony Orchestra |
Poems of Life |
Kenneth Fuchs, Composer
Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, Countertenor Christine Pendrill, Cor anglais JoAnn Falletta, Conductor Kenneth Fuchs, Composer London Symphony Orchestra Tim Hugh, Cello |
Glacier (Electric Guitar Concerto) |
Kenneth Fuchs, Composer
DJ Sparr, Electric guitar JoAnn Falletta, Conductor Kenneth Fuchs, Composer London Symphony Orchestra |
Rush (Alto Saxophone Concerto) |
Kenneth Fuchs, Composer
JoAnn Falletta, Conductor Kenneth Fuchs, Composer London Symphony Orchestra Timothy McAllister, Alto saxophone |
Author: Guy Rickards
So is their playing in the three concertos, too, their experience of Fuchs’s style from four previous albums (recorded between 2004 and 2014; this newcomer was set down in August 2017) showing. The concertos are all very different in format, with only that for piano, Spiritualist (2016) – named after the first of three paintings by Helen Frankenthaler – using the regular fast-slow-fast template. The Piano Concerto is a deftly constructed set of responses to Frankenthaler’s paintings (Silent Wish, which inspired the central movement, adorns the booklet cover), but I do not think it communicates quite the depth of artistic debt to the painter about which Fuchs writes eloquently in the booklet, despite the virtuoso advocacy of Jeffrey Biegel (for whom it was written).
Glacier (2015) is a suite in five picturesque movements for electric guitar inspired by Montana’s national parks, while Rush is a rather Bernsteinian diptych for alto saxophone with a punchy, roof-raising final passacaglia. Both soloists are exemplary. Naxos’s sound is terrific.
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