Boosey & Hawkes

Christopher Rouse: Concerto for Orchestra reviewed

(October 2008)

Christopher Rouse is known not only for his masterful orchestral scores but also for adding exciting new concerti to the symphonic repertoire. As a combination of these two strands, his new Concerto for Orchestra was much anticipated. Marin Alsop conducted the premiere at the Cabrillo Festival on 1 August, revealing a work that delivered all the expected virtuosity but intriguingly eschewed the traditional three-movement form. Instead Rouse divides the concerto into two halves, the first alternating through five brief sections — fast, slow, fast, slow, fast — while the second half consists of a slow and a fast section, “each meant to represent a sort of ‘full blossoming’ of the related ideas from their counterparts earlier on… with the final allegro building to a frenzied, almost hysterical, climax”.

“It’s a boisterous, exhilarating concoction, in which fiercely patterned rhythmic explosions alternate with lyrical interludes headed by the strings, and as the title suggests, it’s a display piece for the orchestra members, who dispatched it superbly under Alsop’s taut, fluid leadership.”
San Francisco Chronicle

“Among seven new orchestral works heard during the first weekend of the Cabrillo Festival, one stood head and shoulders above the rest. Christopher Rouse’s Concerto for Orchestra, composed with dazzling virtuosity, gave Marin Alsop’s musicians a showpiece of fierce demands and breathtaking execution… Chattering brass, intoning winds, punctuating and pounding percussion and eerie strings traded their material kaleidoscopically, often at high speed… The work is an orchestral masterpiece and deserves ongoing exposure.”
Metro Active, Silicon Valley

The Concerto for Orchestra travels to Rouse’s home town on 21 November when Alsop conducts the work with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The composer’s 60th birthday season also includes orchestral performances by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Saint Louis Symphony (Der gerettete Alberich), Dallas Symphony Orchestra (Symphony No.2), Singapore Symphony Orchestra (Trombone Concerto), the New York Philharmonic and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (Rapture), and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (Friandises). These lead up to the premiere of Rouse’s new Oboe Concerto on 5 February with Basil Reeves and the Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vänskä.

> Further information on Work: Concerto for Orchestra

Photo: Christian Steiner

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