Lou Harrison has in his catalog a small but not inconsiderable number of works for string orchestra, and outside of the New First Suite of 1995 the three works featured on this Mode release, Lou Harrison for Strings, represents everything Harrison originally conceived in this medium that he did not withdraw from public performance. The Concerto for pipa with string orchestra is performed by the redoubtable Wu Man, for whom it was written in 1997. This is possibly Harrison's finest concerto, with strongly contrasting ...
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Lou Harrison has in his catalog a small but not inconsiderable number of works for string orchestra, and outside of the New First Suite of 1995 the three works featured on this Mode release, Lou Harrison for Strings, represents everything Harrison originally conceived in this medium that he did not withdraw from public performance. The Concerto for pipa with string orchestra is performed by the redoubtable Wu Man, for whom it was written in 1997. This is possibly Harrison's finest concerto, with strongly contrasting sections incorporating some traditional gestures characteristic to the pipa without allowing them to become the focus of the whole work. The Suite No. 2 for strings is a 1948 work written right after the composer suffered a major nervous breakdown -- the chaos of his internal world is confined to the discordant and highly contrapuntal middle movement, whereas the outer movements are more typical. The nine-movement Suite for symphonic strings was compiled in 1960 through combining three...
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