Roger Sessions: Symphonies 1, 2, and 3 (2007)

It's been said that Roger Sessions continued where Schoenberg left off or, better yet, he wrote what Schoenberg never composed. You may easily recognize in this CD the same densely contrapuntal language that characterized Schoenberg's orchestral music. He was often referred to as a “difficult” composer. Nicholas Kenyon, reviewing the premiere of the ninth symphony for the New Yorker observed that it was a “tough, dense score and, as with so much of Sessions’s music, difficult to like at first hearing. But, something compels one to listen and to listen hard…. The most striking aspect of the music is its constant state of flux, its perturbed restlessness.”

Tracklist

Symphony No. 1:
I. Giusto
II. Largo
III. Allegro Vivace

Japan Philharmonic Orchestra,
Akeo Wantanabe, conductor

Symphony No. 2:
I. Molto agitato - Tranquillo e misterioso
II. Allegretto capriccioso
III. Adagio tranquillo ed espressivo
IV. Allegramente

New York Philharmonic,
Dimitri Mitropoulos, conductor

Symphony No. 3:
I. Allegro grazioso e con fuoco
II. Allegro, un poco ruvido
III. Andante sostenuto e con affetto
IV. Allegro con fuoco

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra,
Igor Buketoff, conductor

New World Records: NWCR573

© 1990 Composers Recordings, Inc.
© 2007 Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc.