Listen: Themes and Dreams
11th December 2015
"The Dream" by Rousseau (1910)
"Hope is a waking dream."
— Aristotle
CONCERT WORKS
Bright Sheng
China Dreams (1995)
China Dreams was inspired by composer Bright Sheng's longing for China, his home country. The movements represent his dream of China as expressed through lyrical, percussive, and insistent themes.
Colors of Crimson (2004)
Colors of Crimson is an expression of one of the most pivotal qualities that serves as an underlying theme in our lives: love. This piece is a reconstruction of a love song Sheng wrote as a teenager.
Avner Dorman
Memory Games (2011)
Memory Games builds upon repetitive themes that call out towards and are layered upon one another, reminiscent of the childhood game, Simon.
John Corigliano
Fancy on a Bach Air (1996) & Fantasia on an Ostinato (1986)
Fancy on a Bach Air and Fantasia on an Ostinato are both dream-like, atmospheric pieces that evoke the essence of fantasy as imagined through Corigilano's orchestrations.
The Red Violin Concerto: Chaconne for violin and orchestra (1997)
Woven through Corigiliano's Chaconne is a theme inviting the listener into the history of a timeless instrument: the violin.
Aaron Jay Kernis
Before Sleep and Dreams (1990)
Before Sleep and Dreams is a beautiful, ethereal work honoring an experience shared by all beings: slumber.
Musica Celestis (1990)
Musica Celestis is a melodic string-orchestra transcription of a solemn adagio.
Seven Deadly Sequences (1990)
In this fifteen-minute, work Rodriguez musically captures each of the seven deadly sins to represent the forbidden desires that tempt our lives.
Brian Elias
Five Songs to Poems by Irina Ratushinskaya (1989)
Five Songs to Poems by Irina Ratushinskaya set the themes from one woman's passionate and tortured life.
John Harbison
Symphony No. 2 (1987)
Through Harbison's Symphony No. 2 the light cycle from dawn to dusk is thematically represented.
Helen Grime
Night Songs (2012)
A tinge of melancholy can be heard in Night Songs where a miniature world of hushed and dream-like ideas is created.
Missy Mazzoli
Magic with Everday Objects (2007)
Magic with Everyday Objects is another wild, alluring representation of the insomniac in all of us.
Tarik O'Regan
Threshold of Night (2006)
Highlighting a dream for peace and understanding, Threshold of Night was, "written for Advent, [and] aims to highlight the yearning that all societies have, in their time of need, for guidance from beyond their community." It highlights a dream for peace and understanding. — Tarik O'Regan
Yehudi Wyner
Dances of Atonement (1976) & Memorial Music (1971)
Dances of Atonement and Memorial Music explore the themes of repentance and loss.
Eric Whitacre
Sleep My Child (2008)
Sleep My Child is an ethereal piece in which the singers were intended to portray angels. The piece demonstrates the theme of hope, which we all seek through dreaming.
— This playlist was contributed by Tammy Moore.