Charles Roland Berry: Orchestral Music, Volume One
Charles Roland Berry, born in Boston, Mass., in 1957, studied in California with Peter Racine Fricker and Paul Creston before supporting himself in a variety of jobs in the music world. As a composer, he believes in writing music that audiences might like to hear and musicians enjoy playing; as a result, all three works here have the open-air, open-hearted, even naïve, quality of much American orchestral music, film scores in particular – the kind of ‘Big Country’ sound that one can hear in Copland, Grofe, Harris, Moross and other painters of the wide outdoors.
Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra (Track 1)
Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine (Tracks 2–6)
Polish Wieniawski Philharmonic Orchestra of Lublin (Tracks 7–10)
Joel Eric Suben, conductor (Track 1)
Theodore Kuchar, conductor (Track 2–10)
Listen To This Recording:
- Olympic Mountains Overture
- I Water – Taste: Allegro
- II Earth – Touch: Adagio
- III Fire – Smell: Andante
- IV Spirit – Sight: Allegro
- V Air – Hearing: Vivace
- I Allegro
- II Andante
- III Allegro
- IV Allegro
Olympic Mountains Overture (2003)
Symphony No. 4 (2017)
Symphony No. 5 (2021)
FIRST RECORDINGS
Classical Candor :
‘The present recording seems a good introduction to the man’s work, including as it does one overture and his two latest symphonies.’
—John J. Puccio, Classical Candor
Classical Music Sentinel :
‘Imagine that … orchestral symphonic music composed as recently as 2021 that makes musical sense, and that actually sounds like music, and not a bunch of arbitrary, harmonically disjointed sounds slapped together as a pretense for music. […]
Nothing to do with organized sports, the Olympic Mountains Overture is a highly colorful, tone-poem inspired description of the moods and sounds of the Olympic National Park in Washington State. It incorporates the use of a piano, saxophone, wind machine, and multiple percussion instruments within the orchestral fabric to great effect. […]
All three orchestras present these new works with committed playing throughout.’
—Jean-Yves Duperron, Classical Music Sentinel