Harbison, Ruggles & Stucky: Orchestral Works

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With eighteen works in his repertoire all in all, Carl Ruggles (1876-1971) is far from the most productive of American composers. On the contrary, he was one of the most insolent, grating – in personal terms, you understand – and inflexible composers, in his search for a language which was all his own. Ruggles detested all his peers apart from Charles Ivre, his admiration for whom was reciprocated. And coming in at just fifteen minutes, the Sun-Treader of 1932 is by far his longest work! It's an intense moment of orchestral concentration, serious, fiery, brutal and fascinating – and yet its bitterness is so lyrical. The Second Concerto for Orchestra (2004) by Steven Stucky (1949-2016) is much more accessible, and it landed its composer a prestigious Pulitzer Prize, following in the footsteps of such predecessors as Ives, Hanson, Copland, Menotti, Barber, Carter, Adams, Reich and many others of the same stripe. The album closes with the Fourth Symphony by John Harbison (born 1938) – another Pulitzer winner, as it happens – which was written in 2003, in a much more generous style, making it surely easier to get into than Ruggles and even than Stucky, while offering many welcome surprises. For sure, America's recent output deserves much more than the benevolent disdain in which it is held by the intelligentsia of Europe. The National Orchestral Institute of the University of Maryland plays all the pieces here: an ensemble made up of the best students, whose excellent quality is nothing short of stupefying. © SM/Qobuz