Michael Gordon: Dystopia

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Best known for his work with ensembles (not least in Bang on a Can), Michael Gordon is no slouch when it comes to translating his high-octane idiom into the orchestral genre…such music demands... — Gramophone Magazine, June 2015 More…

Release Date: 2nd Mar 2015
Catalogue No: CA21105
Label: Cantaloupe
Length: 52 minutes

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Gordon, M: Dystopia (Live)

Work length30:56

Album only

Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra
David Robertson

Gordon, M: Rewriting Beethoven's Seventh Symphony

Work length21:35

$5.00

$6.50

Bamberger Symphoniker
Jonathan Nott

Pt. 1 (Live)

Track length5:46

$1.00

$1.30

Pt. 2 (Live)

Track length7:38

$2.00

$2.60

Pt. 3 (Live)

Track length4:20

$1.00

$1.30

Pt. 4 (Live)

Track length3:51

$1.00

$1.30

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Combining two of Michael Gordon’s most daring large-scale orchestral works, the long-awaited release of Dystopia documents Gordon’s dream of not only stretching the capabilities of the modern symphony, but in his words, of “exploring the grey areas between harmony and dissonance”.

On its own, the music of Dystopia paints a picture of one city’s future - in this case, the city of Los Angeles - that is frenzied, chaotic, dazzling, electric, and ultimately...loud.

Gordon had discovered similar sensibilities in composing Rewriting Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. “Beethoven’s brutish and loud music has always inspired me,”, he explains. “At the time it was written, it was probably the loudest music on the planet”.

Using one element from each of the original movements as a starting point, Gordon crafts a post-modern take on the master’s classical forms that managed both to mesmerize and scandalize the audience at Beethovenfest Bonn, who commissioned the work’s premiere in 2006. “I had tread on hallowed ground - no, I was leading the way into the future. Well, all in a day’s work”, he wrote of the crowd’s reaction in a blog post for the New York Times.

Taken together, both works reimagine the 21st-century symphony as equally reverent of the past (if not also a bit irreverent), while envisioning, as an L A Times review of the Dystopia premiere put it, “a drunken fugue of the future”.

Reviews

June 2015

Best known for his work with ensembles (not least in Bang on a Can), Michael Gordon is no slouch when it comes to translating his high-octane idiom into the orchestral genre…such music demands no half measures in terms of execution, and the playing of both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Bamberg Symphony meets the respective challenges with alacrity

4th March 2015

It’s music that goes on a frantic, often exhilarating, journey, setting off at top speed and only occasionally pausing for breath in moments of sliding, swooping instability...startlingly imaginative textures and scouring dissonances...are strewn through the score: its power is undeniable.

Michael Gordon: Dystopia

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