Frank Corcoran

April 4 2015.  NDR  KULTUR  “Prisma  Musik”    20.05  –  22.00

Frank Corcoran’s radio analysis of two focal Mozart symphonies , Nr. 29

in A Major and the “Jupiter”.

22.05  Frank Corcoran’s  4.  Symphony  (   1997  Irish N.S.O., Conducted by Colman Pearce )

Cur Deus homo ? Cur homo soffert ? Cur creator egoismus ? Cur Deus Sadista ? Cur lacrimae German Wings ?  Cur vetus carmen ? Cur ?

Nearly five months up here. Now I fly . South. Kindly German Wings. Over those waiting Alps.   ( – kindly ?  )

Good CELLO CONCERTO Premiere with the Irish N S O / Kenneth Macmillan, and my giant soloist , Martin Johnston. Mighty. 13.3.2015.

Good   QUASI UNA STORIA  Premiere  in NYC with the North South Consonance String Orchestra , great Max Lifchitz. He also mighty.  15.2.2015.

Unleashed then rightly  , my new  six Cello – Piano Duets .  –   Short miracles.  Refined miniature Irish Slow Airs  – ” ar an sean-nos ”  –  each an explosive miracle. Never Kitsch, never  neo- Romantic, never-never minimal  or  – istic, never neo- Bartok.  Yes, beautiful Corcoran

March 13 2015

Premiered in Dublin  .  National Symphony Orchestra  / Kenneth Macmillan . Soloist :  Martin Johnson.

See on www.cmc.ie  :

Martin Johnson , Fergal Caulfield on  Frank Corcoran’s new CELLO CONCERTO.

Frank Corcoran on  his new CELLO CONCERTO.

Hear More On ” Sound Cloud ” .

1.  West Berlin 1981.

After my  Berliner Kuenstler Programm 1980  (  “Symphonies Of Symphonies Of Wind ”  =  my  first symphony  )  ; the  Symphony Nr. 2 ,  ( I counterpoint :   ” SOLI ” and ” TUTTI ” ) ,  I became a guest professor at the  Hochschule der Musik where , a few very short years earlier  Boris Blacher had taught me :  a sense of musical  responsibility ; beware all new-born music Fascists;  for Gawd’s sake keep a door open  for:

form in music , hearable shape  .

2. Stuttgart  1982  : Oh Hoelderlin ! Sweet airs and wines above that boiling  Kesseltal ”  !  Beware the post-war terror and infallible ” we only, ahem, know  – contemporary composition, choirs and tin.-whistles  and quintets and bagpipes, it all !”

3. Hamburg 1983 till  quasi yesterday. Coming from the South, I had just  tripped across the Hamburg  Musikhochschule’s  main portal ( No. There was no one to greet me , to welcome me, I felt instantly  a  local-Hamburg  tollabawns’  ignorance of any saving grace known to Western man . They had justly perfected what ?  The snarl. The rictus. Clear your  Hanseatic Liberal Throat indeed ….  )  . Here was musicality , creativity, plasticity, humanity, normality….   not understood. I gasped. I reeled. I screeched : ” This can not be true ! ”

TO  BE  CONTINUED

I quote some horrors and some beauts.

1. “What you see is what you hear ”   ( HEAR HEAR HOYKES !   )

2. ” A way of spoken ( ! )  Language and music which  is not oppressing ( ! ) Others  ( ? ! )  ”

3.  “So that the music and the words can be equivalently ( ! )  incorporated …. to include ( ? ) the perspective ( ! ) of the audience  in a creative way ( OUCH ! ! ! )  ”

4.Heiner Goebbels ( ! ) :  “I was never interested in the music only ;  I was Always interested in the musical PROCESS. ”          (   …     ?     )

I am sitting between two flying stools, kindly and awe-filled North Atlantic storms a mere  11.500 metres under my aeroplane seat and a night sleep back from New York to all too airy Hamburg -but soon will be my March flight to Dublin, the Cello Concerto’s  premiere.
(  Corcoran’s newly premiered NYC work for 13 Strings , ” QUASI UNA STORIA” , was quite different only  one movement, fifty shades of burnished brown and Guarnieri polish, this lone composer’s colour nuances all bowed and plucked . )
The Dublin ( Yes, March 13 2015   ) concerto pits violent sound- masses ( Certainly I  remember Dvorak and Lutoslawsky )  ,   our cello’s High Line against ( too ? ) vast orchestral forces.  In the violent Scherzo   timpani ( – all five ) try to overcome  the soloist’s High Song.
So how shall solo cello sing and shout or scream or whisper,  woo me positively, hymn me, its creator ?
I built four dolmens in sound. Four orchestral movements.  Then the orchestra ;  well, how  screech / sing / sigh / sob / proclaim ,dreaman incantation ? The High Romantic Concerto since Paganin is a muster, well-thrashed. Very well. Struggle on, agon, sacred syllable, motif, phrase, quasi quotations, all the building stones of my Corcoran Scale Seven.

Edition Ferrimontana      (  EF 3885 )  :

Frank Corcoran’s  new S A T B  publication:

FOUR  LAST  WORDS  FROM  THE  CROSS”      ( 2015. ca. 4′ .  )

1. Eli,Eli, Lama Shabachthani ?   2.  Sitio  .  3.  Tetelestai.  4.  Father, into Thy hands….

Frankfurt Radio         Frank Corcoran Composer Portrait :

Hr2 – Kultur     March 5 2015.       21.30  –  22.30

” Aus dem Tintenfass des Himmels  /  Trinken Baeume  /  Sich satt    “.