Rorem: Our Town

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The playing of the chamber orchestra is alert, the small chorus produces pleasingly blended tone, and the cast – led by the flexible tenor Matthew DiBattista as the narrating Stage Manager –... — BBC Music Magazine, December 2017, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 14th Jul 2017
Catalogue No: NW80790
Label: New World
Length: 2 hours 3 minutes

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Rorem: Our Town

Work length2:03:11

$30.00

$42.00

Matthew DiBattista, Brendan Buckley, Stanley Wilson, Donald Wilkinson, Rachele Schmiege, Glorivy Arroyo, Margot Rood, Graham Wright, Krista River, Stefan Barner, David Kravitz, Jonas Budris, Jason Connell, Angela Gooch
Monadnock Music
Gil Rose

Opening

Track length2:36

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"The Earth Turns, Just a Simple Turn"

Track length5:17

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"See What I Mean?"

Track length2:35

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"Why, Hello, George Gibbs"

Track length4:39

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"What a Lot of Beans"

Track length3:27

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"Thank You, Emily. Thank You, Mrs. Webb"

Track length5:48

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"It's Evening Now in Grover's Corners"

Track length4:07

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"Oh George, Can You Come Down a Minute?"

Track length4:41

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"Can You Get Home Safe, Louella?"

Track length4:18

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"Emily! Are You Still There?"

Track length4:02

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"Well, Friends, Three Years Have Gone By"

Track length3:26

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"Well, Mother, You're Losing Your Chick Today"

Track length2:36

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"Morning, Everybody! Only Five More Hours to Live"

Track length2:55

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"Well, George, How are You?"

Track length4:26

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"Thank You, Thank You. I Have Another Question Here"

Track length3:05

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"Emily, Can I Carry Your Books Home for You?"

Track length3:35

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"Hello There, George. Howdy, Emily"

Track length2:05

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"These Are So Expensive"

Track length5:13

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"And Now We'll Get On With the Wedding"

Track length12:37

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"This Time Nine Years Have Gone By, Friends"

Track length6:48

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"We're All Coming Up Here"

Track length3:57

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"Hello"

Track length4:56

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"Little Cooler Than it Was"

Track length1:17

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"One Can Go Back Again . . . Into Living"

Track length3:51

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"Look! There's the Church Where I Got Married!"

Track length3:53

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"Coming! Morning, Mama. Morning, Papa"

Track length6:06

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"Seen Enough?"

Track length5:13

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"Were You Happy, Emily?"

Track length3:17

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"Most Everyone's Asleep in Grover's Corners"

Track length2:25

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About
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About

This is the world-premiere recording of Ned Rorem's (b. 1923) acclaimed setting of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, one of the best-known plays of the 20th century and a staple of every US household.

Intended from the start to be a chamber opera, the orchestration is small, and the scoring is light and transparent throughout, consistent with a work best suited to young voices. Rorem moves in and out of speech and utilises more elevated recitative (parlando) than in his previous theatrical works. He manifests Wilder's 'emotional shyness' with abrupt stylistic cross-cutting between Americana (Thomsonian faux-Protestant hymns, plush sustained cinematic strings, Copland-esque woodwind solos, Ivesian collages), transatlantic modernism (the tartly-scored 'sting' chords, jagged, off-kilter ostinatos in close-canon, denatured melodic fragments in place of memorable tunes), and Gallic lyricism (rapturous string obbligatos, sudden snatches of emotionally-vibrant melody, Debussy-esque orchestration). Everywhere in the music there is a sort of cool, self-contained regretfulness, the regret so central to the play's initial impetus, a regret so intense as to border on dread, that perfectly underpins and undercuts the sentimentality of the portraits.

Rorem believes that Satie's Socrate may be 'the greatest of all operas.' Certainly, he exploits in his score for Our Town the same kind of baroque cantata textures and effects as Satie did in his 1920 masterpiece. But the Rorem and McClatchy Our Town also contains in the propulsive, off-kilter ostinati percolating uneasily beneath the Nantucket matter-of-factness of its musical surfaces and its stubborn unwillingness to wear its heart on its sleeve, an astonishing undercurrent of unanticipated, and highly effective dramaturgical fury.

Reviews

December 2017

The playing of the chamber orchestra is alert, the small chorus produces pleasingly blended tone, and the cast – led by the flexible tenor Matthew DiBattista as the narrating Stage Manager – deliver words and pitches with clarity and accuracy…[Rood’s] instinctive musicality, pure tone and radiant upper register are reminiscent of the young Dawn Upshaw.

November 2017

Only in the third act, with an aria for the central female character, Emily, placed just minutes before the end of the drama, does Rorem’s full lyrical gift get free rein…Margot Rood delivers it with ease, with both sweetness and regret…as her romantic partner, tenor Brendan Buckley sings with a light, pliant voice that works well with Rood’s more assertive instrument.

Rorem: Our Town

2 CDs

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