The website of Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Moravec
New review on Fanfare: “The effect of this music is that rare thing in this day: music that is deeply engaged with the tradition, mining familiar forms and gestures, and yet somehow giving them integrity, authenticity, and personality. I never feel this is a rehash. Moravec strikes me as one who has found a way to look into the resources of the past without becoming reactionary. I continue to eagerly anticipate his future discoveries.” Gil [...] Read more »
From the Washington Post, March 11, 2013: The Left Bank Quartet has distinguished itself by its programming of contemporary music, if not always by the overall quality of its playing. The group’s performance on Sunday afternoon, presented through the Steinway Series of free concerts in the auditorium of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, was a case in point. Two more-commonly heard quartets, by Leos Janacek and Antonin Dvorak, received professional but unremarkable renditions, while a [...] Read more »
The Blizzard Voices Oratorio Society of New York/Kent Tritle, conductor New York Premiere, Carnegie Hall March 5, 2013 On Tuesday evening the Oratorio Society of New York presented a…new work by Paul Moravec, The Blizzard Voices. Mr. Moravec’s oratorio uses texts by the former poet laureate Ted Kooser, based on testimonies from survivors of the sudden storm that brought blinding snowfall [to] the Great Plains on Jan. 12, 1888. Mr. Moravec’s response is that of [...] Read more »
Review of Paul Moravec’s Violin Concerto, March 1, 2013 by David Patrick Stearns, Inquirer Music Critic The Moravec concerto dates from 2010 but arrived at Symphony in C on Friday in revised form, with authoritative soloist Maria Bachmann and a much clearer train of thought as it walks a delicate line between melodiousness and a subterranean thread that gives it long-term continuity. Imagine Delius minus the attention deficit disorder. As in Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. [...] Read more »
Paul Moravec is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer whose works range from orchestral pieces to film scores. On Northern Lights Electric, we hear four works performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project whose origins were inspired by places visited by Moravec. The compositions and performances are as elegant as they are adventurous and sonically rich, and it’s a delight to hear new concert music that showcases the performers as well as the composer. For the complete [...] Read more »
The Arts Fuse reviews Paul Moravec’s new CD (as well as a new CD with works by Thomas Oboe Lee) in a piece entitled: Fuse Classical CD Review: Two New Releases from BMOP/sound — An Indispensable Label for American Composers On Northern Lights Electric, Mr. Moravec gets a strong showing with two major pieces for orchestra (the eponymous work and “Sempre diritto!“) and two concerti, one for clarinet (masterfully performed by David Krakauer) and the [...] Read more »
deceptive cadence from NPR Classical has a review of Paul Moravec’s new album Northern Lights Electric in an article entitled Musical Google Earth: Composer Paul Moravec’s Sense Of Place. Featuring the music from the first movement for Clarinet Concerto, the article concludes “Northern Lights Electric is another terrific album from BMOP Sound, the five-year-old indie record label of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and its conductor Gil Rose. Together they make a strong case for [...] Read more »
WQXR Review: Boston Modern Orchestra Project Charts Path in American Concert Music Q2 Music Album of the Week for January 7, 2013 “Northern Lights Electric, the title track on the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s 24th(!) self-released recording in five years, demonstrates just how finely matched the Project is to the album’s star composer, Paul Moravec. The polished sort of pleaser that could effortlessly raise the curtain on a subscription concert, this is a symphonic poem [...] Read more »
The Art of American Song: An Evening with Carole Farley and Friends September 15, 201;New York Chamber Music Festival at Symphony Space Review by Frank J. Oteri: The Price of Admission Although Moravec originally composed the song cycle Vita Brevis for tenor and piano in 2001, he re-arranged it for voice and piano trio in 2009 and that is how it was presented on Saturday night by Farley with Moravec behind the piano, joined by [...] Read more »
As part of the Twelve in 12 program featuring NOVUS NY with conductor Julian Wachner performing 12 different works by the 12 recent Pulitzer Prize winners in Music Composition at Trinity Wall Street, NYC, Tempest Fantasy was performed on September 6, 2012. The New York Times said of Tempest Fantasy, “This is indeed a well-wrought creation, heavily influenced by Gershwin in its jazz-leaning harmonies and its plain-spoken lyricism but with a voice of its own. [...] Read more »