Robert Chumbley: Music for Voice, Piano and Orchestra
Robert Chumbley, born in Miami in 1954, has had a multifaceted career, as concert pianist, conductor (he was Music Director for the Atlanta Ballet and Cleveland Opera), academic and composer. His music, though audibly contemporary, maintains a healthy relationship with tradition: his Permutations for piano and orchestra ‘follows Liszt’s use of melodic transformation and Prokofiev’s pianistic acrobatics’; Brahmsiana II for solo piano emerges from the deeply felt sound-world of late Brahms; and the combination of the lyrical and the brittle in Chumbley’s Five Bagatelles reconciles the modernist past with the more open-minded present. The Letter approaches Beethoven from an unusual angle – as a vulnerable human being: it sets an English translation of the impassioned love-letter he wrote in July 1812 to his ‘Unsterbliche Geliebte’ (‘Immortal Beloved’) as a dramatic cantata for baritone and orchestra.
Ricardo Herrera, baritone
Sinfonia Varsovia
Sinfonia da Camera
Ian Hobson, piano and conductor
Listen To This Recording:
- Permutations for piano and orchestra (2023)* (16:25)
Brahmsiana II for solo piano (2011) (16:09)
- Intermezzo No. 1: ♩ = 80 (4:24)
- Intermezzo No. 2: ♩ = 60 (7:06)
- Intermezzo No. 3: ♩ = 72 (4:39)
Five Bagatelles for solo piano (2018) (11:19)
- No. 1: ♩ = 56 (2:43)
- No. 2: ♩ = 66 (2:26)
- No. 3: ♩ = 120 (2:01)
- No. 4: ♩ = 72 (2:00)
- No. 5: ♩ = 52 (2:09)
The Letter for baritone and orchestra (2014)* ** (21:40)
- I. 6 July, in the morning (9:34)
- II. Monday evening, 6 July (5:30)
- III. Good morning, on 7 July (6:36)
*First Recordings
**Live
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.