Seiji Ozawa Hall: a 10th Anniversary Celebration

Augusta Read Thomas’s SPIRIT MUSINGS was performed by the Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center as part of Tanglewood’s 2003 season, and part of it is featured on the new recording, Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood – A 10th Anniversary Celebration. Commissioned by Thomas van Straaten, this work for violin and chamber orchestra has a duration of eleven minutes. Movements II and III are represented here. Of Spirit Musings, Seth Brodsky writes in the All Music Guide, “its opening violin line, spidery and liquid, gradually enlists and entangles the entire ensemble in a volatile venture of expansion and contraction, elastic and intensely lyrical. The work’s sound is also characteristic of Thomas’ music: a swirl of thirds, sixths, and tritones envelopes the ensemble in the most radiant tintinnabulation, betraying Thomas’ devotion to French music (Debussy, Messiaen, Boulez), but also to the great contrapuntalists (Bach and Byrd). But in their “finite infinity,” the concise, intimate breath of her gestures confess great sympathy with Mahler and her favorite poet, Emily Dickinson.” (Tanglewood, TWD-CD1)