John Corigliano: A Dylan Thomas Trilogy (Naxos Audio CD)

A Dylan Thomas Trilogy (1960, revised 1999)
Author’s Prologue (I)
Fern Hill*
Author’s Prologue (II)
Poem in October†
Poem on his Birthday

Sir Thomas Allen (baritone)
Ty Jackson (boy soprano*)
John Tessier (tenor†)
Nashville Symphony Chorus, (Chorus Director: George Mabry)
Nashville Symphony Orchestra
Leonard Slatkin

WORLD PREMIÈRE RECORDING

“Fern Hill is a blithe poem, yet touched by darkness; time finally holds the poet “green and dying” …Poem in October begins in Thomas’s seafront town: the poet, marking his birthday, climbs to a high hill, wherehe reflects on his youth and mulls his future … Poem on his Birthday distorts the “lamb-white days”of Fern Hill to the grotesqueries of “herons who walk in their shroud”: Poem in October’s sparkling ocean becomes a gull-haunted river Styx … Author’s Prologue – his penultimate work – was a lavish, exultant poem that bellowed with lust and life. It called for music as unusual as it was buoyant. And it offered A Dylan Thomas Trilogy the formal inevitability I always dreamed for it…"
John Corigliano

“Corigliano could have made a comfortable living churning out film scores: his versatility, orchestral wizardry and fluency are undeniable.” BBC Music Magazine

“The Allen baritone is in full, eloquent form, with a ring of mature authority and faultless diction”
The Financial Times