• Joan Tower
  • Rising (for flute and string orchestra) (2009)

  • Associated Music Publishers Inc (World)

arranged by the composer in 2017

  • str
  • Flute
  • 16 min

Programme Note

Composer Note
I have always been interested in how music can "go up." It is a simple action, but one that can have so many variables: slow or fast tempos, accelerating, slowing down, getting louder or softer — with thick or thin surrounding textures going in the same or opposite directions. For me, it is the context and the feel of the action that matters. A long climb, for example, might signal something important to come (and often hard to deliver on!). A short climb, on the other hand, might be just a hop to another phrase. One can’t, however, just go up. There should be a counteracting action which is either going down or staying the same to provide a tension within the piece. (I think some of our great composers, especially Beethoven, were aware of the power of the interaction of these "actions.")

The main theme in Rising is an ascent motion using different kinds of scales — mostly octatonic or chromatic — and occasionally arpeggios. These upward motions are then put through different filters, packages of time and varying degrees of heat environments which interact with competing static and downward motions.

— Joan Tower

Media

Scores

Score

Reviews

This album from the dependable Boston Modern Orchestra Project, an orchestra devoted to contemporary music, spotlights four terrific concertos with expert soloists.

Tom Huizenga, NPR: The 10 Best Classical Albums of 2023
13th December 2023

At 83, with a career spanning more than 60 years, Tower remains one of the deans of American classical composition, an important pathbreaker in the long struggle of women composers to be accorded the respect and visibility—make that audibility—in our musical life comparable to those of their male peers.

Action and reaction are, as Tower pointed out, dynamic elements common to her music. She sends the flute protagonist through a series of upwardly spiraling scales, mostly chromatic, set against the contrasting static and downward motions of the accompanying strings. Their dialogues are nothing if not inventive: at times scampering and playful, at times pensive and lyrical, each side sparking the other.

Like Tower’s other solidly constructed music, Rising reminds us that tonal harmonic conservatism need not feel stale or reactionary to today’s ears as long as the composer has something personal to express and the surety of craft to express it.

The winning rapid-fire exchanges between soloist and ensemble were expressively designed to show off the virtuosity of the eminent flutist Carol Wincenc, who gave the premiere. The solo duties were taken on this occasion by Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson, the CSO’s splendid principal flute. He made the score’s modest flashes of bravura very much his own, bringing amazing articulation and a wide palette of tonal colors to the score’s lucidly plotted trajectory. In so doing, he earned a rousing ovation that he shared with his string colleagues and the composer.

John von Rhein, Chicago Classical Review
24th May 2022

Discography

Joan Tower: Piano Concerto - Homage to Beethoven

Joan Tower: Piano Concerto - Homage to Beethoven
  • Label
    BMOP Sound
  • Catalogue Number
    1093
  • Conductor
    Gil Rose
  • Ensemble
    Boston Modern Orchestra Project
  • Soloist
    Marc-André Hamelin, piano; Carol Wincenc, flute; Adrian Morejon, bassoon
  • Released
    September 2023

More Info