Rodney Sharman: Famous Last Words for English horn, piano, and toy piano

Hello oboists and oboe fans! Here is Rodney Sharman's Famous Last Words for English horn, piano, and toy piano from my album VORTEX, out on Orchid Classics.

Program notes: “Famous Last Words” by Rodney Sharman offers a meditation on the symmetry of life, from music of newborn innocence to the gravitas and reflection of a long life, well lived. This adaptation by Sharman uses English horn, piano, and toy piano, collectively conjuring the innocence of childhood, the bloom of youth, the melancholy of memory, and the heartbreak of profound grief. Interspersed with musical lines on their respective instruments, the performers speak an array of moving last words before death, including those of Goethe, Gertrude Stein, Yukio Mishima, and Murray Adaskin. Rodney Sharman writes: “In Romantic music the English horn is conventionally used to portray young love, the pastoral, melancholy, and loss. There is, I think, something to this; more than any other instrument, it evokes (at least to me) imaginary landscapes, shepherds, youth—and youth’s passing."

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Credits:
Benjamin Smith, piano
Audio: Matt Antal
Video production: Stelth Ng / Triple Pointe Media
Title design: Ari Cohen Mann
Producers: Ari Cohen Mann & David Vanbiesbrouck
Page turner: Brooke Collins
Recorded at Wilfrid Laurier University
Outfits by ILA @theilaverse
Label: Orchid Classics

We acknowledge the support of Canada Council for the Arts & Ontario Arts Council.

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