Washington Post, July 19, 2004: Difference between revisions
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<center><h3> Elvis Costello the classicist: His aim is true </h3></center> | <center><h3> Elvis Costello the classicist: His aim is true </h3></center> | ||
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Rock legend Elvis Costello has been flirting avidly with classical music in recent years, collaborating with Anne Sofie von Otter and the Brodsky Quartet to striking effect. Now he's pulled a much bigger rabbit out of his seemingly bottomless hat: ''Il Sogno'', an hour-long ballet score for symphony orchestra. | Rock legend Elvis Costello has been flirting avidly with classical music in recent years, collaborating with Anne Sofie von Otter and the Brodsky Quartet to striking effect. Now he's pulled a much bigger rabbit out of his seemingly bottomless hat: ''Il Sogno'', an hour-long ballet score for symphony orchestra. | ||
Based on Shakespeare's ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'', ''Il Sogno'' was composed in 2000 for | Based on Shakespeare's ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'', ''Il Sogno'' was composed in 2000 for Aterballetto, an Italian dance troupe, and received its North American premiere on [[Concert 2004-07-17 New York|Saturday]] at Avery Fisher Hall as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. (A recording will be released by DGG in September.) Not only did Costello write it without assistance, he orchestrated it as well, and though the Brooklyn Philharmonic, conducted by Brad Lubman, was conspicuously underrehearsed, the performance was decent enough to leave no doubt that Costello knows what he's doing. The scoring isn't perfect — the middle register is cluttered and thick-sounding at times, and the vibraphone is used to sugary excess — but it's perfectly competent. | ||
That alone made my jaw drop. Even Duke Ellington relied on professional orchestrators when writing for symphony orchestra, while Paul McCartney hired so many collaborators to help him produce the embarrassingly bloated ''Standing Stone'' that I described it at the time of its 1997 premiere as "the first as-told-to symphony." What's more, ''Il Sogno'' (''The Dream'' in Italian), though it rambles a bit, is more than just a long string of songlike cameos placed end to end: Costello has channeled his thematic material into simple, formal structures that he uses in the disciplined manner of a bona fide classical composer. | That alone made my jaw drop. Even Duke Ellington relied on professional orchestrators when writing for symphony orchestra, while Paul McCartney hired so many collaborators to help him produce the embarrassingly bloated ''Standing Stone'' that I described it at the time of its 1997 premiere as "the first as-told-to symphony." What's more, ''Il Sogno'' (''The Dream'' in Italian), though it rambles a bit, is more than just a long string of songlike cameos placed end to end: Costello has channeled his thematic material into simple, formal structures that he uses in the disciplined manner of a bona fide classical composer. |
Latest revision as of 06:23, 22 March 2021
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