Friday Listening: June 10, 2022

• "Letters for the Future" - Time for Three and The Philadelphia Orchestra spark magic with two new concertos for string trio and orchestra by Kevin Puts and Jennifer Higdon. Puts's "Contact" highlights the influence of the pandemic and "an expression of yearning for this fundamental human need."
• "Estonian Premieres" - six works by five renowned Estonian composers, presented by the Estonian Festival Orchestra and Paavo Järvi
• "David Lang: the writings" - Cappella Amsterdam makes a world-premiere recording of Lang's "the writings," inspired by five texts from the Old Testament tied to Jewish holidays that focus on what it means to be human. This is profoundly emotional music guided by Lang's characteristically austere score, which is unpretentious in its beauty.
• "Trios from Contemporary Chicago" - a survey of pieces by five Chicago-based composers: Shawn E. Okpebholo, Augusta Read Thomas, Shulamit Ran, Mischa Zupko, and Stacy Garrop.
• "Reich/Richter" - a spellbinding recount of Steve Reich's piece "Reich/Richter," originally written to accompany Gerhard Richter's film "Moving Picture." "It's droning tones sometimes seem to be pulling apart - like taffy, or like Richter's stretching spaghetti stripes of color." - New York Times
• "John Ireland: Orchestral Works" - Sinfonia of London presents symphonic music by John Ireland, the post-Romantic English composer with a compositional style comparable to Vaughn Williams or Walton
• "Beethoven/Stucky" - a new release from Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, featuring Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony and Steven Stucky's "Silent Spring," a call to action to love and to save nature and the earth.

American composer Ingram Marshall passed away recently. "Authentic Presence" is one of his only purely acoustic works, a beautiful, thought-provoking stream of consciousness.