This is the studio recording of composer Geoffrey Gordon's Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, after the Thomas Mann novel, Doktor Faustus, featuring cellist Toke Moldrup, conductor Lan Shui, and the Copenhagen Philharmonic (which commissioned the work in 2014).

Horn soloist Ben Goldscheider premieres composer Geoffrey Gordon's new chamber work, THORN, at Conway Hall, London, in a performance from 3 February 2019. Callum Smart (violin) and Richard Uttley (piano), of the Ashwell Trio, are also featured.

This work is inspired, in part, by a relic said to be a thorn from Jesus's crown, kept at Stonyhurst College, in Clitheroe, Lancashire, for the last 200 years. The thorn, enshrined in a glass case, has Mary Queen of Scots' pearls entwined around it. The Crown of Thorns is said to have been seized from Constantinople, the imperial capital of the Roman Empire, in the Fourth Crusade - around AD 1200 - and was later sold to King Louis IX of France while he was in Venice. King Louis kept the religious relic in the specially-built Saint Chapel and thorns were broken off from the crown and given to people who married into the family as gifts. The thorn at Stonyhurst College - a 400-year-old Jesuit boarding school - was said to have been given to Mary Queen of Scots when she married into the French royal family. Mary then took it with her to Holyrood, in Edinburgh, and following her execution in 1587, it was passed from her loyal servant, Thomas Percy, to his daughter, Elizabeth Woodruff, who then gave it to her confessor - a Jesuit priest - in 1600. The Jesuits brought it with them to the college and it has been kept there ever since. In deference to the date of the thorn arriving at Stonyhurst, this work quotes, Why art thou so heavy, o my soul? of 17th c. English composer, Orlando Gibbons (1583 – 1625).

This work was originally funded by the Britten Sinfonia.

This is the studio recording, on the Signum label, of Geoffrey Gordon's double concerto, Saint Blue, commissioned for the English String Orchestra and soloists Simon Desbruslais and Clare Hammond, through funds provided by Arts Council England. Inspired by the works of Russian visual artist and visionary, Wassily Kandinsky, Saint Blue (scored for trumpet, piano and strings) is divided into two contrasting sections, with the second essentially embedded in the first—a kind of sonic exploration of the sacred and profane—in a fairly straight-forward A-B-A design. The first section is a reaction to Kandinsky’s 1911 All Saints I (part of the Stadtische Galerie’s permanent collection in Munich), and features the soloists and full string orchestra in a shared expression of this colorful masterpiece. The contrasting B section draws the orchestra’s principal double bass into a trio with the trumpet and piano soloists, creating a kind of extended, jazz-infused cadenza, after Kandinsky’s In Blue (1925; part of the Kunstsammlung Museum’s collection in Dusseldorf). An animated return to the tutti string orchestra and some (evolved) thematic music from All Saints I, concludes Saint Blue.

"Geoffrey Gordon’s Saint Blue, inspired by two Kandinsky paintings ('All Saints 1' and 'In Blue', well worth a web search), is by far the best work on this engaging disc; a taut and exhilarating single movement concerto, wonderfully played by soloists Simon Desbruslais and Clare Hammond."

–Chris Achenbach

Classical Ear (UK): 30 April 2018

"Geoffrey Gordon's Saint Blue is inspired by two Kandinsky paintings, All Saints I and In Blue and constructed as 'a sonic exploration of the sacred and profane,' with the trumpet deployed first as an instrument of heavenly summons, then as the bluesy soul of jazz in this complex, richly-satisfying work."

-Kate Wakeling

BBC Music Magazine: January 2018

This is a live performance of Geoffrey Gordon's new work for string orchestra, Gotham News, after the painting of the same name by Dutch artist Willem de Kooning (1955), with the Radom Chamber Orchestra and conductor Szymon Morus, Krzysztof Penderecki Concert Hall, Radom, Poland - 29 November 2019.

Gotham News was commissioned by the Merz Foundation as part of the Mario Merz Prize in Music Composition awarded to Mr. Gordon in 2017, and was premiered in Sicily, with the WADI Ensemble and conductor Willy Merz, in a performance at the Chiesa di Santa Caterina, in Bellini Plaza, Palermo, Italy, on 13 October 2018.

This is a live performance of the Postlude from composer Geoffrey Gordon's Interiors of a Courtyard, for mandolin and guitar, featuring the Rosetta Contemporary Ensemble, one of Japan's premiere new music groups. Takaaki Shibata, mandolin and Kosuke Hashizume, guitar, are featured in a performance from 25 August, 2018, at the Gohki Endo Museum of Art, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan.

Listen to the entire Interiors of a Courtyard, from a recording in Naples with Fabio Gallucci, mandolin & Antonio Pilato, guitar, here:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFB7AD9DEFDE41169

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group gives the world premiere performance of Geoffrey Gordon's Harmonie - an Jenny, a setting of a text by Karl Marx, as part of the Wilde Lieder Marx.Music Project. Scored for soprano and solo cello, Harmonie is a setting of an early romantic text by the political thinker and theorist, dedicated to his love, Jenny, from Buch der Lieder 1836, featuring soprano Elizabeth Atherton and cellist Ulrich Heinen, given on 1st September 2018, in Marx's hometown of Trier, Germany. Recording courtesy of German Radio SWR2. A studio recording of this work is available on the Coviello label. http://covielloclassics.de/en/Katalog/cov-91914-wilde-lieder-marx-music/

TEXT:

Harmonie (an Jenny)

Kennst Du das süsse Zauberbild,

Wo Seelen in einander fliessen,

In einem Hauche sich ergiessen,

Melodisch voll und freundlich mild?

Sie glühen auf in einer Purpurrose,

Und bergen sich verschämt im weichen Moose.

Und walle weit durch Flur und Land,

Das Zauberbild wirst Du nicht finden,

Kein Talisman vermag's zu binden,

Und keine Sonne je es fand.

Es ist in ihrem Scheine nicht entsprossen,

Hat keine Erdennahrung je genossen.

Drum bleibt es ewig prangend stehn,

Ob schwingt die Zeit den raschen Flügel,

Apollo fast der Rosse Zügel,

Und Welten stumm im Nichts vergehn.

In sich hat's eine Kraft sich selbst erzeuget,

Die keine Welt, die selbst kein Gott ihm beuget.

Es ähnelt wohl dem Zytherklang,

Gespielt auf einer ew'gen Leier,

In stetem Glühen, steter Feier,

In hohem, sehnsuchtsvollem Drang.

O! horch den Saiten, die in Dir erschallen,

Zu suchen wird Dein Fuß nicht weiterwallen.

Karl Marx (1836)

This is the sixth song from Geoffrey Gordon's song cycle, Sonnets from Neruda, setting six sonnets from Cien sonetos de amor (100 Love Sonnets) for mezzo soprano, baritone and piano, in a performance at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna, featuring mezzo soprano Natalia Kawalek, baritone Tobias Greenhalgh and pianist Marcin Koziel, 16 March 2018.

Soneto 81

Ya eres mía. Reposa con tu sueño en mi sueño.

Amor, dolor, trabajos, deben dormir ahora.

Gira la noche sobre sus invisibles ruedas

y junto a mí eres pura como el ámbar dormido.

Ninguna más, amor, dormirá con mis sueños.

Irás, iremos juntos por las aguas del tiempo.

Ninguna viajará por la sombra conmigo,

sólo tú, siempreviva, siempre sol, siempre luna.

Ya tus manos abrieron los puños delicados

y dejaron caer suaves signos sin rumbo,

tus ojos se cerraron como dos alas grises,

mientras yo sigo el agua que llevas y me lleva:

la noche, el mundo, el viento devanan su destino,

y ya no soy sin ti sino sólo tu sueño.

And now you’re mine. Rest with your dream in my dream.

Love and pain and work must sleep now.

The night turns on its invisible wheels,

and beside me you are pure as sleeping amber.

No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams.

You will go, we will go together, through the waters of time.

No one else will travel through the shadows with me,

only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon.

Your hands have already opened their delicate fists

and let their soft drifting signs fall away,

your eyes have closed like two gray wings,

while I follow the water that you carry and that carries me away:

the night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny,

and already without you I am only your dream.

*************

This is the fourth song from Geoffrey Gordon's song cycle, Sonnets from Neruda, setting six sonnets from Cien sonetos de amor (100 Love Sonnets) for mezzo soprano, baritone and piano, in a performance at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna, featuring mezzo soprano Natalia Kawalek and pianist Marcin Koziel, 16 March 2018.

Soneto 66

No te quiero sino porque te quiero

y de quererte a no quererte llego

y de esperarte cuando no te espero

pasa mi corazón del frío al fuego.

Te quiero sólo porque a ti te quiero,

te odio sin fin, y odiándote te ruego,

y la medida de mi amor viajero

es no verte y amarte como un ciego.

Tal vez consumirá la luz de Enero,

su rayo cruel, mi corazón entero,

robándome la llave del sosiego.

En esta historia sólo yo me muero

y moriré de amor porque te quiero,

porque te quiero, amor, a sangre y fuego.

I do not love you except because I love you

and I go from loving to not loving you,

from waiting to not waiting for you

so my heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it is you the one I love,

I hate you endlessly, and hating you I beg you,

and the measure of my changing love for you

that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe the January light will consume

with its cruel ray, my whole heart,

stealing from my the key to true calm.

In this tale, only I die

and I will die of love because I love you,

because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

This is the fifth song from Geoffrey Gordon's song cycle, Sonnets from Neruda, setting six sonnets from Cien sonetos de amor (100 Love Sonnets) for mezzo soprano, baritone and piano, in a performance at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna, featuring baritone Tobias Greenhalgh and pianist Marcin Koziel, 16 March 2018.

Soneto 79

De noche, amada, amarra tu corazón al mío

y que ellos en el sueño derroten las tinieblas

como un doble tambor combatiendo en el bosque

contra el espeso muro de las hojas mojadas.

Nocturna travesía, brasa negra del sueño

interceptando el hilo de las uvas terrestres

con la puntualidad de un tren descabellado

que sombra y piedras frías sin cesar arrastrara.

Por eso, amor, amárrame el movimiento puro,

a la tenacidad que en tu pecho golpea

con las alas de un cisne sumergido,

para que a las preguntas estrelladas del cielo

responda nuestro sueño con una sola llave,

con una sola puerta cerrada por la sombra.

Tie your heart at night to mine, love,

and both will defeat the darkness

like twin drums beating in the forest

against the heavy wall of wet leaves.

Night crossing, black coal of dream

that cuts the thread of earthly orbs

with the punctuality of a headlong train

that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.

Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement,

to the grip on life that beats in your breast,

with the wings of a submerged swan,

So that our dream might reply

to the sky's questioning stars

with one key, one door closed to shadow.

This is the first song from Geoffrey Gordon's song cycle, Sonnets from Neruda, setting six sonnets from Cien sonetos de amor (100 Love Sonnets) for mezzo soprano, baritone and piano, in a performance at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna, featuring mezzo soprano Natalia Kawalek and pianist Marcin Koziel, 16 March 2018.

Soneto 2

Amor, cuántos caminos hasta llegar a un beso,

qué soledad errante hasta tu compañía!

Siguen los trenes solos rodando con la lluvia.

En Taltal no amanece aún la primavera.

Pero tú y yo, amor mío, estamos juntos,

juntos desde la ropa a las raíces,

juntos de otoño, de agua, de caderas,

hasta ser sólo tú, sólo yo juntos.

Pensar que costó tantas piedras que lleva el río,

la desembocadura del agua de Boroa,

pensar que separados por trenes y naciones

tú y yo teníamos que simplemente amarnos,

con todos confundidos, con hombres y mujeres,

con la tierra que implanta y educa los claveles.

Love, how many roads to reach a kiss

what wandering loneliness until your company!

Follow the train tracks alone running with the rain.

In Taltal there is neither daybreak nor spring.

But you and I, my love, we are together,

together from our clothes down to our roots

together in the autumn, in water, in hips,

until it becomes only you, only me together.

To think that it took many stones carried by the river,

the river mouth of Boroa

To think that trains and nations separate us

You and I had only to love one another:

with all the confusions, with men and women,

with the land that sows and makes bloom the carnations.