Music of HARRISON/UNG/MCPHEE
Lou Harrison Suite for Symphonic Strings
Chinary Ung Inner Voices
Colin McPhee Tabuh-Tabuhan
American Composers
Dennis Russell Davies, conductor
Tabuh-Tabuhan
Peter Basquin, piano
Christopher Oldfather, piano
Colin McPhee once explained in a program note, "was written after I had already spent four years in Bali engaged in musical research and is largely inspired, especially in its orchestration, by the various methods I had learned of Balinese gamelan technique."
Lou Harrison, a composer of astonishing prolificacy and variety, has written a great many works based upon Indonesian and Korean music, sometimes utilizing the American Gamelan, sometimes employing Western instruments, and sometimes making various combinations of the two types .
While "Inner Voices" contains no specific Cambodian music, listeners will immediately recognize the Asian voice. Inner Voices was commissioned by The Philadelphia Orchestra and premiered in 1986 under Dennis Russell Davies. Chinary Ung represents a new generation of composers for whom multiculturalism is not self-conscious, who not only don't need to defend their practices, nor even find them particularly worthy of attention.
