The Work Before The Work

]At Columbia, Franklin lived an entirely different musical life than she would at Atlantic, one that was grounded in jazz and the Great American Songbook, revealing a gigantic vocal talent that betrayed potent hints of the tectonic soul shift to come at Atlantic. It takes precious little imagination to conclude that Franklin was as important to American music in the middle-to-late 1960s as singer/pianist Ray Charles was the decade before, the two star ascents crossing in creative eclipse.

This Orange Mountain Music CD presents a new recording by the Basel Sinfonieorchester of Philip Glass Symphony No.1 Low based on the music of David Bowie & Brian Eno. Composed in 1992, Glass took his departure from Bowie & Eno s beautiful melodies in crafting a three-movement 46-minute symphony. This new recording conducted by Glass champion Dennis Russell Davies is a shimmering rendition of the work. Only the second recording of the Symphony, it s been 20 years since the last one, the previous recording was recorded in the studio sectionally whereas this new OMM recording was made live in Basel Switzerland and captures the vitality and evidence of the work as never heard before.

Carlos Chávez is one of Mexico’s most important and prolific 20th-century composers. He championed the symphony form at a time when it was generally neglected by other Latin American composers, and the results are magnificent: when his first symphony Sinfonía de Antígona was premiered in 1933, invoking the best of Mexican tradition in a revived symphonic form, it received a rapturous reception, and led to a burst of inspiration for Chávez, who went on to compose five more symphonies before his death in 1978. He became a master of the symphony, developing and improving his style over the course of his life to great effect; the last movement of his Symphony No.6, a breathtakingly rapid Passacaglia, contains an astonishing 34 variations. This recording also includes his work Sinfonía india, arguably Chávez’s best-known piece, which features his use of indigenous Mexican instruments, played here with extraordinary lyricism and sensitivity.