Rochberg: Eden, Out of Time & Out of Space

• Main performer: Eliot Fisk
• Time: 62:13
• Release Date: 2000

Review

George Rochberg is one of America's most highly-regarded composers, one of the first to make a decisive break with twelve-tone music and return to a tonal new Romanticism.

The album centers on Eliot Fisk, one of the leading American guitarists. All three works on the disc were written for him.

All three have different musical forces. The solo guitar is represented by Rochberg's American Bouquet, a set of seven compositions based on American popular songs of the golden age that brought us the great standards (plus two of Rochberg's own songs). Fisk's frequent partner, flutist Paula Robison, joins him in Rochberg's bitter Muse of Fire, where the composer confronts the impossibility of adequately portraying the horrors of war in an art form. Six members of the Chamber Society of Lincoln Center take part with Fisk in the guitar concerto Eden: Out of Time and Out of Space, which gives its name to the whole program.

Fisk and his partners are entirely in command of this music. He obeys Rochberg's injunction not to count in American Bouquet, but to get inside the music as if it were his own, resulting in a performance with the sense of spontaneous creation that is found in a fine guitar jazz improvisation. The flute-guitar piece has an uncommonly big sound for such an intimate duo and presents an emotional mood that screams at the end but plays gentle, highly accessible melodies in the middle section. In the concerto, Fisk presents a wistful, nostalgic searching for something that is just out of reach, and similarly elusive of definition. The performances are all highly poetic. There are two different producer/engineer teams on this disc, yet the sound is completely consistent, and always outstanding in all respects. This is a disc to be treasured. ~ Joseph Stevenson, Rovi

Performances

Composer	Title	Time
George Rochberg	Eden: Out of Time & Out of Space, chamber concerto for guitar & ensemble	17:44
George Rochberg	Muse of Fire, for flute	17:45
George Rochberg	American Bouquet, Tin Pan Alley melodies for solo guitar	26:44

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