“Last year, California Symphony composer-in-residence Dan Visconti wrote the guitar concerto ‘Living Language,’ commissioned by the symphony and the Library of Congress’ Koussevitzky Music Foundation,” writes Jesse Hamlin in Thursday’s (4/13) San Francisco Chronicle. It featured “a series of ‘crazy cadenzas,’ as Visconti calls them, evoking Middle Eastern instruments, Indian Carnatic instruments and other global sounds…. He went in another direction with his new commission for California Symphony, ‘Tangle Eye,’ a concerto for Israeli cellist Inbal Segev. She joins maestro Donato Cabrera and the orchestra to premiere it May 7…. ‘For the cello concerto, I wanted to pull back and have really simple and clear melodies,’ said Visconti, 35, who is known for bringing the energy and impulse of rock and folk music to his classical pieces…. After writing more experimental concerti, he added, ‘I thought it would be interesting to write a piece that starts in ¾ time and B-flat major.’ … [He] drew inspiration from the famed Alan Lomax folk music archive…. He based the second movement on the folk song ‘Oh Shenandoah.’ … In the final movement, the cellist plays pizzicato passages that summon the sound of blues guitar.’ ”
Posted April 13, 2017
