John Corigliano is one of America’s most distinguished composers whose music, as Leonard Slatkin writes, ‘belongs to the world’. Corigliano originally conceived his setting of Bob Dylan songs Mr Tambourine Man for voice and piano, then orchestrated it (this version can be heard on 8559331) and some years later transcribed it for chamber forces. The performance heard here is the first recording of this final version. The cycle traces a dramatic journey, from exuberance to premonition, and finally to a vision of the victory of ideas. It is coupled with Vincent Ho’s Gryphon Realms, a virtuosic and mystical work for piano trio, coursing with serpent-like motifs and primal energy.

John Corigliano is ‘one of the most widely praised and highly regarded American composers of his generation’ (Fanfare). His scores, now numbering over one hundred, have won the Pulitzer Prize, the Grawemeyer Award, five Grammy Awards, an Academy Award for The Red Violin, and have been performed and recorded by many of the most prominent orchestras, soloists, and chamber musicians in the world.

The version of Corigliano’s Mr Tambourine Man for soprano and full symphony orchestra is on 8559331; Fanfare wrote that ‘Soprano Hila Plitmann seems to render the songs with just the qualities the composer was seeking, while the Buffalo Philharmonic realises the extraordinarily varied orchestrations brilliantly.’

Vincent Ho’s music has been called ‘brilliant and compelling’ by The New York Times. He has won multiple awards including five Juno Awards nominations. Corigliano has called Ho’s Arctic Symphony ‘a beautiful work that evokes the Far North in a very special way.’