Description:

This is an album of contemporary works by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and its principal conductor, Morlot, in which they excel. The album features the third movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 "Resurrection" and many other musical works up to the present day, quotes from texts by French social anthropologist Lévi-Strauss, and a collage of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s name, among others, in Berio's "Sinfonia," which features the Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth. The ensemble's varied vocal expression paints a colorful picture of this difficult piece. Boulez's "Notations" is a collection of pieces for piano composed in 1945 and recomposed into an orchestral work in 1978. Five of the twelve pieces (I-IV, VII) were completed, but the first four arrangements are performed here. All of them are small pieces of 2 to 4 minutes in length (the original is 1 to 2 minutes), but they make lavish use of the huge four-wind orchestra and show the orchestration that expands the essence of the works to the fullest extent. La Valse" is recorded after these two works of strong character, and again Morlot draws strong contrasts from the orchestra, concluding with a dizzying array of colors.