Various Artists - Symphonies Nos 1-7 & 14 [CD]

This CD includes three symphonies by Gloria Coates (she has composed 15) written at different stages of her career. The symphonies are performed by three different orchestras, and recorded at different times, which makes this CD an excellent overview of Coates's work and of performance practices. The earliest work on this CD is Coates's symphony no. 1, "Music on Open Strings", a short four-movement work composed in 1972-1973. The recording dates from 1980 and features the Siegerland Orchestra. The work is scored for strings and tympani. This work requires special tuning for the orchestra, as the initial movements are played on open strings (with the exception of the glissandos) tuned to the pentatonic scale (equivalent to the five black keys on the piano). In the third movement, the orchestra gradually retunes to the diatonic scale. There is one of Haydn's symphonies in which, as a joke, Haydn has the orchestra retune midway through a movement. But Coates music is highly serious. This short work is perhaps Coates at her most accessible. Coates Symphony No. 7 is a lengthy, complex three-movement work that dates from 1990 and is "dedicated to those who brought down The Wall in PEACE." It is performed by the Barvarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in a recording that dates from 1997. The three movement in the work commemorate in various ways the passage of time. The movements involve repetitions of highly rhythmic themes and glissandos which work inexorably to large climactic moments of great intensity and rigor.The final work on this CD is Coates's three movement Symphony No. 14, the "Symphony in Microtones" composed in 2001-2002. The work was recorded in 2003 by the Munich Chamber Orchestra. This is Coates's most American symphony, as the first two movements incorporate music of two early American composers, Supply Belcher (1750 - 1836) and William Billings (1746- 1800). The third movement is a tribute to Coates's teacher, Otto Luening (1990 - 1996). In this work the orchestra plays in two sections, a quarter-tone apart, resulting in great discordance. Hymnal and melodic material arises, mid to end of each movement, from the discordance and swirling glissandos and then fade away. Charles Ives, of course, was the great American composer who used quarter-tones, discordance, and the incorporation of hymns and popular material to large effect in his music. Coates's use of these techniques is chiseled and austere, in contrast to Ives's overflowing optimism and verve.