Towards a 21st century orchestral canon

March 27, 2015 7:17 AM

In December, grad student and occasional NYT music writer Will Robin asked on Twitter, "What are the best large-scale orchestral works of this century?" He Storified the responses, with links for listening, and then on Tuesday, streamed the result: Symphomania, a 24-hour marathon of sixty 21st-century orchestral works by sixty different composers, on Q2 Music at WQXR in New York. Starting tonight at midnight, WQXR is repeating the stream.

Will Robin on Twitter: @seatedovation

Someone noted that 20.5 hours of the marathon is available for sale on Google Play

PDF of the liner notes to the CD release of Andrew Norman's "Play," the piece that first impressed Robin and sparked him to ask for more

posted by mediareport (7 comments total)

Excellent
C. Montgomery Burns
posted by y2karl at 7:51 AM on March 27, 2015

[this is great]

My local musical sphere has been almost entirely chamber-sized-or-smaller choral composers, so I've been completely blanked on modern orchestral works. Really excited to dig into these.
posted by dorque at 7:57 AM on March 27, 2015

I'm a music obsessive - but it makes me sad that in 201x, I have such a limited interaction with symphony orchestras. A lot has happened in music - one part of which is the collapse of the money. No matter how much musicians are supposed to live off the pure joy of entertaining others, keeping a symphony orchestra going takes money.

So I'm all for this idea. I'm particularly interested to hear "Play".
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 8:23 AM on March 27, 2015

I have so much love for the Q2 music stream in general. I actually sort of like their app's push notifications, which included one about this. They also did, I think, a weekend of nothing but lady composers programing. Maybe it was only 24 hours.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 10:02 AM on March 27, 2015

This is FANTASTIC!! Pleased and unsurprised to see Become Ocean on the list; I am biased bc I sing with the Seattle Symphony but I love that piece. I am eager to listen to everything on this list.
posted by KathrynT at 10:54 AM on March 27, 2015

Meant to link the full playlist, with times. Loved ...Concertante... by György Kurtág this morning.

KathrynT, the music director of the Seattle Symphony, Ludovic Morlot, shows up before the Elliot Carter (around 1pm) to discuss the state of the modern orchestra. I only caught a bit of the first stream on Tuesday so didn't realize there are guests like Alex Ross and various representatives from regional orchestras talking between some of the pieces.
posted by mediareport at 4:17 AM on March 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

I started building a Spotify playlist version, but it's not even half ready yet. I've made it collaborative, so if somebody wants to add a few tracks, you'd be more than welcome.
posted by dst at 10:28 AM on March 31, 2015