Louis Karchin: Orpheus And Other Vocal Works
Louis Karchin (piano), Dominic Inferrera (baritone), Stephen Gosling (piano), Elizabeth Farnum (soprano), Washington Square Contemporary Music Society Players
Louis Karchin was born in Philadelphia in 1951. His advanced musical training at Eastman and Harvard University included composition studies with Samuel Adler, Joseph Schwantner, Earl Kim, Fred Lerdahl, Arthur Berger and Leon Kirchner. He is a recipient of the Tanglewood Koussevitsky Award, the Bearns Prize from Columbia University, and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts. This new release exemplifies two complementary trends in Louis Karchin's recent vocal output: an ever-increasing comfort with and mastery of large-scale vocal and dramatic forms, powerfully represented here by Orpheus, and a concomitant reawakening of interest in the more intimate medium of voice and piano, illustrated by a choice and varied selection of his latest songs, which run the gamut from the most simple and restrained in texture and gesture to the most intricate, mercurial and virtuosic. Listeners whose taste in American music (particularly vocal) of a more advanced style will greatly appreciate this new release. If Karchin's style can summed up easily, one could say it exhibits the intensity of Kirchner (such as his vocal/chamber work Lily) combined with the spacious, impressionistic colors found in Schwantner's music.
Track Listing
Title | Composer | Performer |
---|---|---|
Memory | Louis Karchin | Dominic Inferrera, baritone, Louis Karchin, piano |
Deux Poèmes de Mallarmé | Louis Karchin | Elizabeth Farnum, soprano, Stephen Gosling, piano |
Carmen de Boheme | Louis Karchin | Elizabeth Farnum, soprano, Stephen Gosling, piano |
To the Sun | Louis Karchin | Elizabeth Farnum, soprano, Stephen Gosling, piano |
Orpheus | Louis Karchin | Dominic Inferrera, baritone, Washington Square Contemporary Music Society Players, Louis Karchin, conductor |
Meditation | Louis Karchin | Dominic Inferrera, baritone, Louis Karchin, piano |
My Children Grew | Louis Karchin | Dominic Inferrera, baritone, Louis Karchin, piano |
Interlude | Louis Karchin | Dominic Inferrera, baritone, Louis Karchin, piano |
Echoes | Louis Karchin | Dominic Inferrera, baritone, Louis Karchin, piano |
Reviews
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"[Louis Karchin's] music combines rigorous compositional design with an appealing lyricism."
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"The music, by turns anguished and mysterious, is quite remarkable..."
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