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Symphony No. 5 (Harbison)

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246:), is lean and concise, full of imaginative sounds and percussion effects, but most of all, extremely responsive to the imagery suggested by the poetry at hand. When Milosz's Orpheus descends into a surreal underworld of endless corridors and elevators, the orchestra descends with him; when Eurydice begins her journey back, we hear a haunting passage full of dissociated, zombie-like string writing. The other movements show a similarly keen responsiveness to text, especially as rendered by last night's fine soloists, Nathan Gunn and Kate Lindsey. 577: 254:
described the piece as "an arresting meditation on grief and the hereafter." At a later performance of the piece, Jeremy Eichler called it "an artful and moving work" and wrote, "The movements based on Glück and Rilke fill out the picture, the latter set with the two vocal lines in vivid canon. No
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Though it was originally conceived as a purely orchestral work, Harbison decided to add vocal parts to the symphony at the suggestion of James Levine. The first two movements are set to the text of
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The vocal writing is sensitive and compelling across all four movements, and Harbison's orchestra, spiked with an electric guitar (played by composer
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called it "an accomplished four-movement work that has extremely prominent roles for baritone and mezzo-soprano." He continued:
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The symphony has received a positive response from music critics. Reviewing the world premiere,
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The work is composed for solo baritone and mezzo-soprano and a large orchestra comprising three
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The symphony has a duration of roughly 35 minutes and is composed in four
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Music commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra
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Index

baritone
mezzo-soprano
orchestra
John Harbison
Boston Symphony Orchestra
James Levine
Boston
Kate Lindsey
Nathan Gunn
Czesław Miłosz
Louise Glück
Sonnets to Orpheus
Rainer Maria Rilke
movements
Czesław Miłosz
Louise Glück
Rainer Maria Rilke
Sonnets to Orpheus
flutes
piccolo
oboes
English horn
clarinets
E-flat clarinet
bass clarinet
bassoons
contrabassoon
horns
trumpets
trombones

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