CURRENT PROJECTS
—"Dazzling" overture. Commissioned by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra for 2012/13.
—Symphony No. 2 "Water". Commissioned by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra for 2012/13.
|
|
 |
| |
 |
Resident Composer of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra |
| |
 |
Supported in part by the Canada Council for the Arts |
| |
|
| Lullaby at Carnegie Hall |
MAY 2012—On May 4 & 5, the ESO led by William Eddins gave the world premiere of my Lullaby. On May 8 they took it to Carnegie Hall in New York. Listen to the live recording archived on WQXR (it starts at about 12:45). What the critics had to say:
"Robert Rival’s concise Lullaby (2012) presupposes a fairly sophisticated baby: Its gentle textures and flowing themes occasionally yield surprising harmonic turns and briskly changing meters."
—Allan Kozinn, New York Times
"Rival’s Lullaby, inspired by the birth of his first child last summer, conjures moods that certainly beckon sleep, although Rival eschews a conventional triple meter like Brahms used, choosing instead a kind of narrative arc suggesting fleeting stages of consciousness drifting away. Those stages are as likely to feel anxiously propulsive as pleasantly soporific, and the effect is engaging."
—William Rankin, Globe & Mail
"Opening the program was Canadian composer Robert Rival's Lullaby. Written for the composer's infant son, it is true to its title, moving in gently rocking rhythms and creating a lulling, atmospheric dream world with slow melodies, subtle string glissandos and soft percussion effects."
—Michael Huebner, Birmingham News (Alabama)
"Things began delicately, serenely with Robert Rival’s Lullaby, a brief, rhythmically rich piece written for his infant son."
—Elizabeth Withey, Edmonton Journal
"...serenely surreal..."
—Lark Clark, CKUA radio on Lullaby
|
|
Articles & Interviews |
MAR. 2012—On the new Articles/Interviews page you can watch a video about my Lullaby, listen to a Radio-Canada interview about the ESO's Young Composers Project (in French), and read recent profile articles, including one by Colin Eatock in SOCAN's Words & Music. As an experiment, I produced an audio podcast, complete with musical examples, on my tone poem Achilles & Scamander. Finally, here's what Richard Todd wrote in the Ottawa Citizen after the premiere of my String Sextet "The Tempest":
"...a sophisticated work in two movements. The first, entitled This rough magic, is brooding and then agitated, the second more affirmative. Together they cast a powerful spell."
|
|