# Roberto Gerhard



## Morimur

Composer's Website: http://www.robertogerhard.com



> For twenty years - first in Barcelona and then in exile in England - Gerhard cultivated, and enormously enriched, a modern tonal idiom with a pronounced Spanish-folkloric orientation that descended on the one hand from Pedrell and Falla, and on the other from such contemporary masters as Bartók and Stravinsky. This was the idiom whose major achievements included the ballets Soirées de Barcelone and Don Quixote, the Violin Concerto and the opera The Duenna.
> 
> Gerhard often said that he stood by the sound of his music: 'in music the sense is in the sound'. Yet dazzling as their scoring is, his last works are in no sense a mere succession of sonic events. Their forms are meticulously organized and several make use of his special development of serialism where a twelve-tone pitch series, governing intervallic relations, interacts with a twelvefold time series governing the music's duration and proportions. -Wikipedia


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## arpeggio

I have recordings of nine of his works. Interesting composer. I am unfamiliar with the samples you provided. Thanks.


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## Morimur

arpeggio said:


> I have recordings of nine of his works. Interesting composer. I am unfamiliar with the samples you provided. Thanks.


Gerhard is a great composer but most here don't seem to care. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother.


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## Guest

Morimur said:


> Gerhard is a great composer but most here don't seem to care. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother.


Have you heard his opera La Duena? I'm hesitant to try his earlier work based on what I've read, but most Gerhard I know is amazing.


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## Morimur

nathanb said:


> Have you heard his opera La Duena? I'm hesitant to try his earlier work based on what I've read, but most Gerhard I know is amazing.


Heard of it but haven't yet listened to it. Not one of his best works from what I've read but yes, most of his later work is top notch.


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## starthrower

Morimur said:


> Gerhard is a great composer but most here don't seem to care. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother.


I heard about him right here from our friend in absentia, someguy. I went to YouTube to give him a listen. I was very impressed, so I picked up the Chandos CDs. But not the opera, because I wasn't aware of that one. I also have a French CD of symphonies 2 & 4. It's very bold and adventurous music. The kind that will scare away a lot of folks here.


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## starthrower

Olivier Charlier, violino --- BBC Symphony Orchestra diretta da Matthias Bamert

A work dating from the early 1940s.


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## Dirge

Roberto GERHARD: *Concerto for Orchestra* (1965)
:: Norman Del Mar/BBC SO [Argo '67?] ~ 22½ minutes

Arnold Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra meets Edgard Varèse's _Arcana_ in 1965 Technicolor. I tend to resist works that beat me over the head with striking effects and sonorities, but Gerhard beats me into submission and wins me over with the onslaught of effects and sonorities that he unleashes in his Concerto for Orchestra. The key is that nothing sounds arbitrary … every effect and sonority somehow seems to be part and parcel of the structure (even when I can't explain how, which is most of the time). The less busy/dense music sometimes has a tense nocturnal atmosphere akin to Bartók's "night music," while the slightly busier/denser music sometimes takes on a mechanical timepiece quality that makes me think ahead to Birtwistle's works of the '70s-I'm thinking especially of _Carmen Arcadiæ Mechanicæ Perpetuum_. The music is constantly morphing as it moves along, however, so those are just passing impressions … like two attractions along Route 66. While solo honors are spread throughout the orchestra in true concerto-for-orchestra fashion, the percussion section manages to stand out (thanks in part to the spotlighting of the recording), even when playing a sort of continuo role. Of the less brazen contributions, I find that of the harp to be strangely alluring/engaging.

This 1967 or so performance under Del Mar is much more fiery and dramatic than the newer one with Bamert and the same orchestra on Chandos. Unfortunately, this Argo recording has never been commercially issued on CD so far as I know; I have a private transfer from LP. Lyrita has licensed and reissued other Argo recordings on CD, so perhaps they'll get around to this one.


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