DG to Release Daniel Hope’s First NCCO Album

One week from today Deutsche Grammophon will release the first album that New Century Chamber Orchestra (NCCO) has recorded with its latest Music Director, Daniel Hope. To provide some personal context, my very first CD of this ensemble was recorded when Krista Bennion Feeney was Music Director; and I have at least a few of the albums made with Music Director Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. When it comes to attending performances, Salerno-Sonnenberg is still at the head of my list.

The title of the new album is Music for a New Century; and, as is usually the case, Amazon.com is currently accepting pre-orders for both the CD and MP3 download, which can be processed on the same Web page. When it comes to “truth in advertising,” all four of the compositions on the new release were composed during the current century. The earliest of these is Philip Glass’ third piano concerto, which he completed in 2017. The most recent composition was completed this year, a piece that Jake Heggie entitled simply “Overture.” The other two works are Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “Lament,” scored for solo violin and string orchestra, which was completed in 2019, and Tan Dun’s double concerto for violin, piano, and string orchestra, composed in 2021. NCCO had “skin in the game” of commissioning all four of these compositions; and Heggie’s overture was composed to celebrate the ensemble’s 30th anniversary season.

I have to confess that I have never quite warmed up to that “new” adjective. Both Feeney and Salerno-Sonnenberg were imaginatively eclectic in the programs they prepared, and I was particularly taken with the latter’s decision to begin her tenure by appointing Clarice Assad to serve as featured composer for her first season. On the other hand I was impressed with how Salerno-Sonnenberg was comfortable with being both retrospective and prospective in preparing her programs. On the other hand all four of the Music for a New Century compositions strike me as exuding some degree of nostalgia for the past century with little sense of “new” in the current one.

To be fair, however, the current century is no longer “new.” One hundred years ago from today, the population had experienced all the horrors of its First World War; and, in the United States, people turned to the “Roaring Twenties” to get those horrors out of their collective system. These days pessimism seems to be prevailing more than it ever had in the past, and it is not difficult to find people worrying about whether or not this century will see its Thirties decade. Perhaps novelty is no longer as significant as it used to be!