Christopher Rouse, Symphony No. 5
ARTISTS: Nashville Symphony, Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor
COMPOSER: Christopher Rouse
LABEL: Naxos | 8.559852
GRAMMY® NOMINATED IN: BEST CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL COMPOSITION
Few contemporary artists have been as significant as Pulitzer Prize and GRAMMY Award winner Christopher Rouse, whose imaginative approach made him one of the most frequently performed composers during his lifetime. The Concerto for Orchestra is a ‘hyper-concerto’ that gives each player a chance to shine, while the mournful intimacy and passion of Supplica unfolds somewhat like the slow movement of a Bruckner or Mahler symphony. Rouse’s Fifth Symphony fondly recalls Beethoven’s mighty Fifth but blurs the lines between tradition and modernity, transporting the listener from turbulence to serenity. It was described as “brilliant, exciting and at times hauntingly beautiful” in The Dallas Morning News. Champions of new American music, the Nashville Symphony and its music director Giancarlo Guerrero had premiered numerous works and received 13 GRAMMY Awards including two for Best Orchestral Performance. Among their award-winning recordings include works by Michael Daugherty (Metropolis Symphony on 8.559635; Tales of Hemingway on 8.559798), Stephen Paulus (Three Places of Enlightenment on 8.559740), and Jennifer Higdon (All Things Majestic and Viola Concerto on 8.559823)
Performers
Photo: Kurt Heinecke
Nashville Symphony
Nashville Symphony has been an integral part of the Music City sound since 1946. Led by music director Giancarlo Guerrero and president and CEO Alan D. Valentine, the 83-member ensemble performs more than 160 concerts annually, with a focus on contemporary American orchestral music through collaborations with composers including Jennifer Higdon, Terry Riley, Joan Tower, Aaron Jay Kernis, Michael Daugherty, John Harbison, Jonathan Leshnoff, and the late Christopher Rouse.
The orchestra is equally renowned for its commissioning and recording projects with Nashville-based artists including bassist Edgar Meyer, banjoist Béla Fleck, singer-songwriter Ben Folds, electric bassist Victor Wooten, and composer Kip Winger. The Nashville Symphony is one of the most active recording orchestras in the US, with more than 40 releases, the majority on Naxos. Together, these recordings have earned a total of 25 GRAMMY Award nominations and 13 GRAMMY Awards, including two for Best Orchestral Performance. Schermerhorn Symphony Center is home to the Nashville Symphony and widely regarded as one of the finest concert halls in the US.
For more information, visit www.nashvillesymphony.org
Photo: Lukasz Rajchert
Giancarlo Guerrero
Six-time GRAMMY Award-winning conductor Giancarlo Guerrero is music director of the Nashville Symphony and the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic in Poland, as well as principal guest conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon, Portugal.
He has championed contemporary American music through numerous commissions, recordings and performances with the Nashville Symphony, presenting eleven world premieres of works by Jonathan Leshnoff, Michael Daugherty, Terry Riley, and others. As part of this commitment, he helped guide the creation of Nashville Symphony’s Composer Lab & Workshop initiative. In North America, Guerrero has appeared with the orchestras of Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Toronto, and the National Symphony Orchestra. He has developed a strong international profile working with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Brussels Philharmonic, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
An advocate for music education, he works with the Curtis Institute of Music, Colburn School, the National Youth Orchestra (NYO2) in New York, and the Nashville Symphony’s Accelerando program, which provides intensive music education to promising young students from diverse ethnic backgrounds.
For more information, visit www.giancarlo-guerrero.com
Press
"His [Rouse] command of the orchestra was unmatched; even his densest writing was perfectly understandable, complex but not convoluted. The performances and sound are very good; Nashville should certainly be proud of its orchestra."
— Stephen Estep, American Record Guide, November 2020
"…The Nashville Symphony is giving these works the musicians’ collective all. Not just in the Concerto for Orchestra, this is an ensemble of virtuosos, and all of the members play with admirable polish and enthusiasm. Every time this orchestra makes a CD, you can feel how it has resolved to put its best foot forward. Nashville is known for country music, of course, but the Nashville Symphony doesn’t need to play second fiddle to Hank Williams. Its Music Director, Giancarlo Guerrero, has been in that position since 2008, and has built an ensemble that is worth bragging about. Like his orchestra, Guerrero gives these three works his best, and I guess only time will tell if this music has staying power."
— Raymond Tuttle, Fanfare, January 2021
"New music with backbone from a much-missed composer. Christopher Rouse’s blasting, percussive tendency had its origins in the rock music he once taught (innovatively), but his lost Edens recall the mid-20th-century pastoral of a Piston or a Tippett. The appropriately Beethovenian Fifth of 2015, decently served here in its first recording, circles wagons noisily. The elegiac Supplica attempts to haul us back from the abyss."
— David Gutman, Gramophone, December 2020