Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Announces American Dreams Album, out May 3

Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Announces American Dreams Album, out May 3

Louis Langrée’s Final Commercial Album Release as CSO Music Director will be released on all Streaming Platforms

CINCINNATI, OH (April 10, 2024)— The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO) announced the release of its newest recording, American Dreams, conducted by Music Director Louis Langrée. American Dreams features live performances from Langrée’s final two seasons and was specially curated and released to celebrate his finale season as the Orchestra’s Music Director. This digital-only release includes Night Creature by Edward K. “Duke” Ellington (trans. David Berger) featuring pianist Courtney Bryan, An American in Paris by George Gershwin (ed. Mark Clague) and Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Suite from On the Waterfront.

“Ellington, Gershwin and Bernstein are in my pantheon of great 20^th century American composers,” reflects Langrée. “Each piece on the album is an American tone poem and each is emblematic of the quintessential American music identity. They marry, juxtapose, infuse and weave together different musical ideas, styles and cultures to create a new language. These three masterpieces written by Ellington, Bernstein and Gershwin are stunning examples of the heart of the American Dream.”

American Dreams extends the Orchestra’s prolific recording legacy, which includes more than 200 commercial recordings that have sold over 10 million copies worldwide. Previously, Langrée has recorded three albums with the CSO, earning two Grammy nominations for Best Orchestral Performance. Langrée and the Orchestra released two singles in 2023: David Lang’s man made featuring So Percussion and Christopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 6, which the Orchestra commissioned for its 125^th anniversary season. Transatlantic (released in 2019) featured the first recording of Mark Clague’s critical edition of George Gershwin’s An American in Paris, which stripped the score of Campbell-Watson’s distortion of Gershwin’s original work.

“For instance, Campbell-Watson rearranged Gershwin’s original clear orchestration and distorted his crisp texture by adding heavy percussion or slurs. Campbell-Watson also softened Gershwin’s intended dissonances,” remarks Langrée. “This critical edition also reinstates the Ragtime style, which was predominant in the 1920s.”

CREDITS

Released on the CSO’s Fanfare Cincinnati label and distributed by Naxos of America. Night Creature and An American in Paris were recorded live on May 12 and 13, 2023 at Cincinnati Music Hall and Symphonic Suite from On the Waterfront was recorded live on October 13 and 14, 2023 at Cincinnati Music Hall.

The recording producer and engineer is Dirk Sobotka and the recording, mixing and mastering engineer is Mark Donahue. The album’s immersive producer is Dirk Sobotka and the immersive mixer is Mark Donahue. Art direction is by Tyler Secor and the album artwork is by Tom Ralston.

LOUIS LANGRÉE

In the 2023-24 season, Louis Langrée celebrates his final season with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, where he has been Music Director since 2013, and he continues as Director of Théâtre national de l’Opéra-Comique in Paris, an appointment that began in November 2021. Langrée ended his 20-year tenure as Music Director of the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center in the summer of 2023. Two of his Cincinnati recordings were Grammy nominated for Best Orchestral Performance: Transatlantic, with works by Varèse, Gershwin and Stravinsky; and Concertos for Orchestra, featuring world premieres by Sebastian Currier, Thierry Escaich and Zhou Tian. On stage, his Pelléas et Mélisande trilogy contrasted settings by Fauré, Debussy and Schoenberg. A multi-season Beethoven [R]evolution cycle paired the symphonies with world premieres, as well as recreation of the legendary 1808 Akademie. During the Covid pandemic, Langrée was a catalyst for the Orchestra’s return to the stage in the fall of 2020 with a series of digitally streamed concerts.

Between the start of his tenure and the conclusion of the CSO’s 2023–24 season, Langrée and the CSO will have commissioned 45 works for orchestra, 20 fanfares for solo instrument, and he will have conducted 31 premieres from a wide range of composers, including Julia Adolphe, Daníel Bjarnason, Anthony Davis, Jennifer Higdon, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Kinds of Kings, David Lang, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, André Previn, Caroline Shaw and Julia Wolfe, as well as the world premiere of Christopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 6, Rouse’s final opus.

He has guest conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, NHK Symphony, Orchestre National de France and Leipzig Gewandhaus, as well as Orchestre des Champs-Elysées and Freiburg Baroque. He frequently conducts at the leading opera houses, including more than 50 performances at The Metropolitan Opera, and engagements with Vienna Staatsoper, Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Lyric Opera of Chicago and Bavarian Staatsoper, and at festivals including Glyndebourne, Aix-en-Provence, BBC Proms, Edinburgh and Hong Kong Arts.

A native of Alsace, France, he is a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and Officier des Arts et des Lettres, and he is an Honorary Member of the Confrérie Saint-Étienne d’Alsace, an Alsatian wine-makers’ brotherhood dating to the 14th century.

CINCINNATI SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO) is considered one of America’s finest and most versatile ensembles. Louis Langrée concludes his tenure with the Orchestra at the end of the 2023-24 season; subsequently, he has been appointed Music Director Laureate through the 2027-28 season. The CSO’s distinguished roster of past music directors includes Leopold Stokowski, Eugène Ysaÿe, Fritz Reiner, Max Rudolf, Jesús López Cobos and Paavo Järvi. Matthias Pintscher is the Orchestra’s Creative Partner, and previous artistic partners have included Lang Lang, Philip Glass, Branford Marsalis and Jennifer Higdon. The Orchestra also performs as the Cincinnati Pops, founded by Erich Kunzel in 1977 and currently led by John Morris Russell with Damon Gupton serving as Principal Guest Conductor. The CSO further elevates the city’s vibrant arts scene by serving as the official orchestra for the Cincinnati May Festival, Cincinnati Opera and Cincinnati Ballet.

The CSO has long championed the composers and music of its time and has given historic American premieres of works by Claude Debussy, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Maurice Ravel, Béla Bartók, William Grant Still and other prominent composers. It has also commissioned many works that ultimately became mainstays of the classical repertoire, including Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. The Orchestra continues to actively commission new work, amplifying new voices from a diverse array of backgrounds, most recently with the Fanfare Project, a series of solo instrument works written for CSO musicians to mark a moment in time during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Deeply committed to inclusion, relevance, and enhancing and expanding opportunities for the children of Greater Cincinnati, the Orchestra works to bring music education, in its many different forms, to as broad a public as possible. These efforts include two youth orchestras, the Nouveau program, Sound Discoveries, Musicians in Schools, the CSO Brass Institute, and one of the longest-running Young People’s Concerts series in the U.S., which was launched more than 100 years ago.

In 2020, the CSO was one of the first American orchestras to create a Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer position; in 2022, the CSO became the first American orchestra to endow the position to ensure the absorption of best DE&I practices into every facet of the organization in perpetuity. Started in 2007, the Nouveau Program was formed to support increased participation in classical music by African American and Latine student musicians and to provide equitable opportunities for music study and performance. Since its creation, the program has nurtured more than 80 students. The CSO is also an incubator for and partner to Equity Arc, a consortium of American orchestras, professional musicians and educators established to address the lack of racial equity in the classical music field by aligning resources and collaborating to strengthen the trajectory of classical instrumentalists of color at all stages of their pre-careers.

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The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra gratefully acknowledges support from:
American Dreams was generously supported by Paul and Anna Isaacs.

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