In his astute and entertaining program notes for this CD, Robert Carl, attempting to describe the music of Arthur Levering, reluctantly settles on the admittedly inelegant term post-neo-classical. It's not bad for conjuring up an aspect of Levering's music -- it's something like neo-classicism gone completely wild, while being disciplined at its core. Carl also offers a less technical assessment of the music -- "simultaneously natural and surprising," and that is indeed an apt characterization. The music may sometimes seem ...
Read More
In his astute and entertaining program notes for this CD, Robert Carl, attempting to describe the music of Arthur Levering, reluctantly settles on the admittedly inelegant term post-neo-classical. It's not bad for conjuring up an aspect of Levering's music -- it's something like neo-classicism gone completely wild, while being disciplined at its core. Carl also offers a less technical assessment of the music -- "simultaneously natural and surprising," and that is indeed an apt characterization. The music may sometimes seem like it's on the verge of careening into chaos, but it's clear the composer is in complete control of what's going on. Levering describes one of these pieces, Still Raining, Still Dreaming, as an homage to Takemitsu, and in fact many of the works here do resemble Takemitsu, but a hyperkinetic Takemitsu, a heavily caffeinated Takemitsu, a Takemitsu on steroids, a Takemitsu with attention deficit disorder. Not that that's a bad thing; the exquisite precision and the harmonic language...
Read Less
Portions of content provided by Rovi Corporation. © 2024 Rovi Corporation.