The American composer Stephen Paulus died in 2014, and this performance of several of his major works makes a fitting memorial. Paulus' most famous single work may be the opera The Postman Always Rings Twice, but he spent many years as composer-in-residence for top American orchestras, and collectively his orchestral music may be more typical of his work. It is accessible, serious, and oriented toward extended tonality, with weighty and long slow movements that may bring to mind an American Shostakovich. Paulus may also ...
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The American composer Stephen Paulus died in 2014, and this performance of several of his major works makes a fitting memorial. Paulus' most famous single work may be the opera The Postman Always Rings Twice, but he spent many years as composer-in-residence for top American orchestras, and collectively his orchestral music may be more typical of his work. It is accessible, serious, and oriented toward extended tonality, with weighty and long slow movements that may bring to mind an American Shostakovich. Paulus may also follow Shostakovich in his use of passages of purely tonal melody that carry extramusical associations. Most of all it is brilliantly colorful, with unusual sonorities exploited in appealing and logical ways. The rare basic combination in the Concerto for string quartet and orchestra (1995) is augmented by a piano in the orchestra, adding a haunting sound especially in the slow movement (track two, a good place to start in sampling), where it is evocative of the subtitle "From Afar."...
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