GLORIA COATES AMERICAN CLASSICS Born in 1942 in Buenos Aires, Jorge Rotter Studied There, in Berlin and in Cologne, with Stockhausen, Kagel, Pousseur and Others

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Jorge Rotter GLORIA COATES AMERICAN CLASSICS Born in 1942 in Buenos Aires, Jorge Rotter studied there, in Berlin and in Cologne, with Stockhausen, Kagel, Pousseur and others. From 1968 to 1976 he was Principal Conductor of the Rosario Symphony Orchestra in Symphonies Nos. 1, 7 and 14 Argentina, and from 1976 to 1987 of the Siegerland Orchestra. In 1986 he became Principal Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra in Buenos Aires. Since 1987 he has served as professor of conducting at the Salzburg Mozarteum, and continues an active career as a guest conductor in Argentina and abroad. GLORIA COATES Symphony No. 14 (Symphony in Microtones) (2001-2) 22:35 1 Lamentation: Homage to Supply Belcher (1750-1836) 7:57 Symphonies Nos. 1, 7 and 14 Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra 2 Jargon: Homage to William Billings (1746-1800) 7:15 3 The Lonesome Ones: Homage to Otto Luening (1900-1996) 7:22 Siegerland Orchestra • Rotter Founded in Munich in 1949 under Eugen Jochum, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra quickly won an international reputation, collaborating with leading conductors and contemporary composers, the latter notably Raymond Curfs, Timpani Munich Chamber Orchestra • Poppen under the Musica Viva programme. Jochum was succeeded by Rafael Kubelik, who held the position of Principal Munich Chamber Orchestra • Christoph Poppen Conductor until 1979, to be followed by Colin Davis until 1992. In 1993 Lorin Maazel became Principal Conductor. Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra • Henzold Under successive conductors the repertoire of the orchestra has been widened, as well as under many other Commissioned by the Munich Chamber Orchestra distinguished guest conductors. In addition to its broadcasts the orchestra gives regular concerts in Munich and elsewhere, and has participated in numerous festivals and recordings. Symphony No. 1 (Music on Open Strings) (1972-3) 16:04 Dedicated to the memory of Alexander Tcherepnin (1899-1977) Olaf Henzold 4 Theme and Transformation 5:17 The conductor Olaf Henzold was born in Leipzig and studied at the Dresden Musikhochschule with Hartmut 5 Scherzo 2:32 Haenchen and in Prague with Václav Neumann. As a student he directed the Dresden Studio for New Music, 6 Scordatura (tuning while playing) 3:40 winning first prize in the Parma International Toscanini Competition in 1987 and a Mendelssohn scholarship in the 7 Refracted Mirror Canon for 14 Lines 4:36 same year. He went on to conduct all major orchestras in the German Democratic Republic. His subsequent career has seen him as Kapellmeister at the Leipzig Opera, and Music Director of the Lucerne Theatre and Principal Siegerland Orchestra • Jorge Rotter Conductor of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra. From 1998 to 2001 he was General Music Director of the Saarland State Theatre and Principal Conductor of the Saarbrücken Saarland State Orchestra. Since 2001 he has been Principal Conductor of the Norwegian Opera in Oslo. His career has brought many international guest engagements throughout Europe and South America and as far afield as Japan. Symphony No. 7 (1990) 27:09 Dedicated to those who brought down The Wall in PEACE 8 Whirligig of Time 9:15 9 Glass of Time 6:37 0 Corridors of Time 11:18 Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra • Olaf Henzold Commissioned by South German Radio Stuttgart 8.559289 5 6 8.559289 559289 bk Coates US 2/14/06 10:33 AM Page 2

Gloria Coates (b. 1938) Munich Chamber Orchestra Symphonies Nos. 1, 7 and 14 dissonance, punctuated by pizzicatos, is appropriate to original pitches and gradually retune them, while Coates’s source material, which is itself the earliest playing, to the conventional tuning. The finale, titled Founded in 1950 under Christoph Stepp, followed in 1956 by Hans Stadlmair, the Munich Chamber Orchestra has, Gloria Coates: Cataclysmic Classicist from under you; little, wavy glissandos that make you American instance of unrelieved dissonance: Billings’s Refracted Mirror Canon for Fourteen Lines, starts with since 1995, been under the artistic direction of Christoph Poppen, balancing its classical programmes with attention think there’s something wrong with your ears, or your song Jargon. Early Boston critics had complained that the conventional tuning and begins a canonic process of to contemporary composers. Awards to the orchestra include the Music Prize of the city of Munich, the European Gloria Coates has cornered audio equipment; fast sweeping glissandos that create a Billings’s music was too consonant, and so the old upward and downward glissandos at different tempos, Culture Award, the Award of the German Music Publishers and the Cannes International Classical Award in January the market on a certain kind tumult of energy - but all of them worked out within tanner-turned-composer wrote a response in complete leading at last to stasis and ending, like so many of 2002, as well as the Award of the Christoph and Stephan Kaske Foundation in July 2002. At the heart of its activity is of liminal perception in the some clear structure and often gradual process. (though diatonic) dissonances: Coates’s movements, at the point of maximum intensity. a subscription concert series in the Munich Herkulessaal, with tours to major musical centres in Europe and America, realm of acoustic music. And often that process is symphonic. Having now Coates’s Seventh Symphony, from 1990-91, is one as well as to Ukraine, Japan, and Central Asia. The orchestra has collaborated with many leading conductors and There is always something written fourteen symphonies, Coates is the most prolific Let horrid jargon split the air, of her most ambitious works, bringing her concepts to soloists, appeared in important international festivals and released a number of acclaimed recordings. slowly going on in her music, woman symphonist who ever lived. (Second, if you are And rive the nerves asunder; bear on a full orchestra with brass and percussion. The and it often turns out to be not keeping track, was the obscure Julia Perry of Kentucky, Let hateful discord greet the ear first movement goes through a canonic process of what you think. Her 1924-1979, who wrote twelve.) Fourteen puts her way As terrible as thunder! increasingly wide glissandos, punctuated by a simple paradigms are few, but they ahead of Beethoven, Bruckner, Dvoﬁák, and others, on a bass drum motive which, toward the end, recurs every Christoph Poppen are varied in ingenious ways. par with Roy Harris, and only one step away from Coates quotes the hymn once through in its original five beats. The second, a little more conventional by One of them, which can be heard on this disc, is the Shostakovich. By virtue of both quantity and form, then illustrates the lyrics more vividly than Coates’s standards, derives most of its material from a Born in 1956 in Münster, Christoph Poppen has drawn attention through his creative artistry and his comprehensive homespun tune, or chorale, emerging from a wavery, immediately-recognizable personality, Coates should be Billings by playing it in quarter-tone dissonances. chromatic melody heard first in canon, building up commitment to contemporary music. As an artistic director he exemplifies perceptive programming and innovative indistinct texture, like a castle emerging from mists one of the best-known figures in contemporary music. Movement three, The Lonesome Ones, reprises a textures that erupt in repetitive flurries of 32 notes ideas; as a soloist and conductor persuasive conveyance of musical vision. Since Christoph Poppen assumed the blown away by the wind. Another is a broad sonority As a very American figure, however, living since 1969 melody from Coates’s Symphony No. 5, a tritone line (demi-semiquavers) in the various instruments, a grand artistic direction of the Munich Chamber Orchestra in 1995, he has done much to change the profile of the orchestra slowly going out of tune, or else coming into tune. as an expatriate in Germany (where composing women heard over and over in parallel quarter-tones, giving noise indeed. The final movement is an experience in by his contrasting programming of classical and contemporary works. In August 2006 he becomes Music Director Coates’s reliance on simple processes involving motion are particularly unencouraged), she is always the way to a texture of increasingly wide glissandos moving converging glissandos, with the low strings coming of the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra. A frequent guest conductor, he has appeared internationally with makes her music somehow turbulent and stable at once. archetypal outsider. at different rates of speed in each string section. from their bottom note, the high strings gliding down orchestras such as the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin German Symphony Orchestra, the Hanover NDR Put any thirty seconds of this disc into a motion picture This new Symphony No. 14 (2002) is an especial For many years, Coates’s Symphony No. 1 (1972-3) from a high register, and the percussion marking off Radio Philharmonic, Dresden Staatskapelle, Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, Detroit Symphony, Indianapolis soundtrack, and it would be associated with something homage to Gloria Coates’s native land, based as it is on remained her best-known and most widely-played work. time as the orchestra writhes and thickens. Symphony Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic and Singapore Symphony Orchestra. cataclysmic - the overthrow of an empire, massive early American hymns by two of New England’s first It was originally called “Music on Open Strings” (as she If the score is easily described, the sound is destruction by alien hordes, a town destroyed by an composers, Supply Belcher (1752-1836, known in his had not decided to call her large works symphonies until indescribable. That’s the paradox of Coates’s music; she erupting volcano. And yet there’s little personal emotion lifetime as “the Handel of Maine”) and William Billings the first few were completed), and the instruments all is so economic with her materials that although her in Coates’s music, it’s just huge, grand, beyond human (1746-1800). Scored for string orchestra and timpani, play in scordatura, that is with each section tuned to an notation appears quite simple, the effect of the Siegerland Orchestra (Philharmonie Südwestfalen) scale, and immanently transformative. the work is typically outlandish, not only its glissandos, unconventional set of pitches. In the first movement, all glissandos and other devices in tempo canons creates For despite her brave new sound-world, Coates is but for its use of quartertones (Coates provides a strings are tuned to a Chinese scale (once given to her sound masses in perpetual motion like we’ve never Emerging from an orchestra academy established in the small German town of Hilchenbach in 1946, the Siegerland- something of a classicist among modern composers. She subtitle: “Symphony in Microtones”). Throughout, the by her teacher Alexander Tcherepnin) containing only B heard before. It is far from being “horrid jargon”, Orchester was founded in 1958, quickly gaining a high reputation as a serious cultural embassador for the region. loves symmetry, palindromes, mirrors, and above all, strings are divided into two sections, half tuned a flat, C, D flat, F, and G, which allows the orchestra to because the processes are so transparent. But it is music Later referred to as the Südwestfälische Philharmonie, the orchestra gained the status of an official musical institution canons. Looking at her scores, it is often possible to quarter-tone lower than the other half. This is less play (and gradually transform) an original tune based on that, in its intensity, could “rive the nerves asunder”. of the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia in 1992. Between 1997 and 2002 the orchestra joined forces quickly tell where a piece is going; given the first three evident in the first movement, which begins with a bang the scale. The melody can then be played on open Old Billings would be astonished at what he started. with the Philharmonisches Orchester Südwestfalen, under whose name it performed. In 2002, as the Philharmonie pages of one of her symphonies, one could often but immediately turns soft, gliding endlessly through a strings, but lest you fear that the string orchestra will Südwestfalen, the orchestra again became a separate entity. Since then it has become known for its many regional, plausibly write the next seven. But the music never hilly landscape of carefully calibrated glissandos. From have nothing to do with their left hands, there are Kyle Gann national and international performances. The orchestra performs a repertoire characterized by a wide range of musical sounds that predictable, because her sonic devices have these emerge Belcher’s Lamentation in quite audible glissandos, wide vibratos, and taps on the body of the styles with a serious commitment to performing and commissioning new works by composers of our time. a mysterious muddying effect. Chief of these is the half-notes against Coates’s default metre of 5/4. The instrument called for. Kyle Gann, a composer, has been music critic for the glissando. It has been a lifelong preoccupation. As early lamentation fades back into the glissandos, and the The second movement begins with these same Village Voice (New York) since 1986, and teaches at as 1962, still a student, she baffled her teachers by movement ends with ethereal yearning on a low C and a pitches and moves from rhythmic pizzicato motives Bard College. His books include The Music of Conlon writing a string quartet entirely in glissandos. Since then very high B. toward upwards glissandos. During the course of the Nancarrow, American Music in the Twentieth Century, she has written thousands more: slow, long glissandos, The second movement, Jargon: Homage to William third movement, however, the strings begin with their and Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice. that make you feel as if the earth is starting to fall away Billings, brings the quarter-tones to life. The fierce 8.559289 2 3 8.559289 4 8.559289 559289 bk Coates US 2/14/06 10:33 AM Page 2

8.559289 1-3 Symphony No. 14 (2001-2)* 22:35 LRACOATES: GLORIA & AMERICAN CLASSICS

Raymond Curfs, Timpani

2006 Naxos Rights International Ltd. • Made in USA Munich Chamber Orchestra • Christoph Poppen Despite her brave new sound-world, 4-7 Symphony No. 1 (Music on Open Strings) Gloria Coates is something of a classicist (1972-3)** 16:04 among modern composers. Having now Siegerland Orchestra • Jorge Rotter written fourteen symphonies, three of 8-0 Symphony No. 7 (1990)† 27:09 which are included on this recording, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra • Olaf Henzold she is the most prolific woman symphonist who has ever lived. Her most WORLD PREMIERE RECORDING recent, Symphony No. 14, a homage to her native America, is typically Symphonies Nos. 1, 7 and 14 * World Première Recording experimental in its use of glissandos and † Recording of the world première concert performance * Recorded live at the Herkulessaal der Residenz, Munich, quarter-tones. Symphony No. 1 begins Germany, on October 23rd, 2003 • Commissioned by the Munich with the strings tuned to a Chinese scale, Symphonies Nos. 1, 7 and 14 Chamber Orchestra • Recording Supervisor: Ulrich Kraus which by the end of the third movement ** A West German Radio Production • Recorded at the Bruder have been retuned to conventional Busch Theater, Hilchenbach, Germany, on April 23rd, 1980 Western tonality. Scored for full Recording Supervisor: Helmut Buettner orchestra with brass and percussion, the Publisher: Edition Pro Nova, Sonoton, Munich Seventh Symphony is one of Coates’ most † Commissioned by South German Radio Stuttgart Recorded live at the Herkulessaal der Residenz, Munich, Germany, ambitious works. on February 21st, 1997 • Recording Supervisor: Michael Kempff ADD Bavarian Radio Recording • Musica Viva Concert Munich Booklet notes in English A full track list can be found on the last page of the booklet.

GLORIA COATES: DDD Engineers: H. Cavalli and Ulrich Kraus Booklet notes: Kyle Gann www.naxos.com 8.559289 8.559289 Photograph of Gloria Coates by Simon Leigh (www.simonleigh.com) Cover painting: Rainbow Folding in Foliage (oil on canvas, 1991) by Gloria Coates NAXOS