By Allen Gimbel
American Record Guide
01-May-2009

John Corigliano’s Third Symphony (2004), subtitled Circus Maximus,…is an eight-section tone poem lasting 35 minutes. It opens with blaring fanfares (these will recur) and moves through sultry saxophones, Zappa-ish clutter (‘Channel Surfing’), an Ivesian marching band walking down the aisle, and stale bits and pieces of jazz sure to keep students and bored band audiences winking (when they are not nodding off). Two adjacent ‘Night Music’ movements pass the time. Kancheli-esque blasts either awaken or murder snoring offenders. After the noisy climax, a homey but blurry Copland-ish chorale suggests some sort of ‘Prayer’…piece ends with a gunshot pointed toward a seat in the rafters (photo included)…The Gazebo Dances (1972) are arrangements of pieces originally written for piano four hands (and recorded in that form on CRI 659). Affable and appealing (especially the splendid ‘Overture’), they serve to remind us of this composer’s youthful genius…The University of Texas at Austin student players sound great.

By
The Buffalo News
15-Feb-2009

Of “Circus Maximus” composer John Corigliano says “Many of us have become as bemused by the violation and humiliation that flood the 500-plus channels of our television screens as the mobs of imperial Rome, who considered the devouring of human beings by starving lions just another Sunday show.” The Roman allusion came second to Corigliano he says, because his first intention was to write a work “conceived spatially” and wondered “what dramatic premise would justify the encirclement of the audience by musicians?” Putting the audience in the position of encircled gladiators and lions in the ancient Roman Circus Maximus is what he came up with (the piece ends with a decidedly un-Roman gunshot). There’s no question, then, that this hugely eclectic and often violent musical collage from 2004 (everything from reminiscences of Bartok and Varese to Bernstein theater music) would be an entirely different piece if heard in a hall surrounded by a huge wind ensemble than it is here coming from two speakers. You do get an idea of the piece’s hallucinatory strength from the disc—and then some. Corigliano’s 1972 “Gazebo Dances” is almost the exact opposite of the large scale “Circus Maximus,” neo-classic nostalgia as opposed to “Circus’” visionary anger.

By
Infodad.com
05-Feb-2009

++++ Rating

John Corigliano is something of a superstar among modern American composers. Corigliano, who turns 71 on February 16, has found a way to produce music that is uncompromisingly contemporary but still appealing to a wide enough audience so that it gets played repeatedly, in a variety of venues. This is no small accomplishment: even when a modern classical work gets programmed by an adventurous orchestra, it frequently gets only that one performance, or perhaps two, before being returned to the composer’s shelf. The appeal of Corigliano’s music is quite clear in the new recording of his Symphony No. 3, written in 2004 (following by three years his previous symphony, which was for strings alone and which won the Pulitzer Prize for Music). Circus Maximus is Corigliano’s first work written specifically for concert band, and it is highly impressive on multiple levels. It is spatially conceived—the band surrounds the audience—and includes eight sections played without pause. Corigliano fully exploits the unique sounds of which a concert band is capable: the work starts with trumpet and percussion fanfares, includes a saxophone quartet (in the concert hall, placed in the second-tier boxes), and comes across as a mixture of solemnity, social commentary (comparing contemporary American society with that of ancient Rome) and grand noise. In the third section, “Channel Surfing,” music constantly interrupts other music; in the fourth and fifth, both called “Night Music,” we first hear rural nighttime sounds and then hear the hectic noises of an urban area after dark; in the sixth movement, whose title is the same as that of the whole work, a band marches down the aisles while other performers play on stage and around the concert hall. The final two sections are prayerful and then, at the end, noisy (the work’s final sound is a gunshot). Circus Maximus begs to be recorded as an SACD, but the wonderful performance by the University of Texas Wind Ensemble under Jerry Junkin (who commissioned the work and to whom it is dedicated) sounds just grand in CD form. Jazz, hunting calls, circus music, many fanfares – all the elements come together and play against each other as Junkin and his ensemble dissect the work elegantly and put it back together beautifully. It’s quite a sonic experience. And the CD is filled out by Corigliano’s band arrangement of Gazebo Dances, originally a suite for piano four hands (and a work also arranged by the composer for orchestra). This is much simpler and more vivacious music than Circus Maximus, and complements the longer work nicely. The first movement has a Rossinian flavor; the second is a somewhat awkward waltz; the third, marked Adagio, is as expressive as the tempo indication implies; and the finale, a tarantella, is bright and bouncy. This is a top-notch CD that clearly shows why Corigliano is one modern American composer who has gained widespread popularity.

By David Denton
01-Mar-2009

They threw humans to the lions in the Circus Maximus of ancient Rome, now the American composer John Corigliano throws our ears to the mercy of the massed wind groups gathered for his Third Symphony, composed in 2004. You would have to experience it in surround sound to feel the full impact of brass instruments which the composer requires to encircle the listener in the arena. There you smell excitement, murder and anything else the decadent Romans desired. Be prepared for sound shock waves in this sonic spectacular where your speakers will be dancing around the room. Corigliano updates those decadent days to the present time when television brings scenes of ever increasing human depravity, violence and humiliation, his eight sections including Channel Surfing and Night Music. It also pursues Corigliano’s quest to take classics to a wide audience, ditching extremes of modernism. The Gazebo Dances was first composed in 1972 for four-hand piano and later arranged as a suite for orchestra or concert band. It is a fun piece in four movements—Overture, Waltz, Adagio and Tarantella. The University of Texas Wind Ensemble comes from a college with an impressive record of supplying symphony orchestras and military bands with their brass players. They have been captured in the most vivid sound imaginable, the hologram sleeve cover being equally stunning. Give your equipment a treat.