There are works who comes from the mind and the souls of its composers, from its vision of the world and the people; there are others who come from the rage and the remembrance, like the two included on this record, a lament and a cry for the AIDS victims. Corigliano, probably the more interesting and complete american composer of the moment, premiered his Symphony No.1 in 1990, comissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and on it he put a first vision of his terror and pain about the women and men victims of such a terrible disease. Structured on four movements, its first one, Apologue: Of Rage and Remembrance, draw itself musically in an almost programmatic way; the falsely joyful Tarantella of the second movement makes way to the Chaconne: Giulio's Song, an unavoidable remembrance of his cello player friend Giulio Sorrentino based on a recording which both maked on his student years. The Epilogue which closes the work, deprive of hope and sad, offer a dark resolution to the score.At the next year after the Symphony's premiere, Corigliano composed his Cantata Of Rage and Remembrance on a William M. Hoffman text -author, also, of his opera The Ghost of Versailles (1991)-, which works as a follow-up as well as close-up. Based on the third movement of the Symphony, its open structure closes with a lethany on the names of the people closed to the composer who died from AIDS, although its final tone is slightly more optimistic than the Symphony's. A score openly expressive and sincere, it offers the peculiarity of allow the chorus players to change the names mentioned on the final lethany for those who they feel closer to themselves, in an excellent way of integration between music and performer.
