Stresses in the Peaceable Kingdom - The Choral Music of Richard Wilson

Released in 1999 on Albany Records, Stresses in the Peaceable Kingdom is a recording of the complete choral music of the contemporary American composer Richard Wilson. The album includes ten works, including settings of poems by the poets John Unterecker, John Ashbery, W.H. Auden and Stephen Sandy. 

Richard Wilson is the composer of some ninety works in many genres, including opera. He has received such recognition as an Academy Award in Music (from the American Academy of Arts and Letters), the Hinrichsen Award (from the American Academy of Arts and Letters), the Stoeger Prize (from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center), the Cleveland Arts Prize (from the Women’s City Club of Cleveland), and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Recent commissions have come from the Koussevitzky and Fromm Foundations. His orchestral works have been performed by the San Francisco Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the American Symphony, the Pro-Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, the Orquesta Sinfonica de Colombia, the Residentie Orkest of The Hague, and the Hudson Valley Philharmonic.

Several other CDs containing Mr. Wilson’s music have been released. These include his Symphony No. 1, performed by James Sedares and the New Zealand Symphony, along with the Viola Sonata, Gnomics, and Tribulations (Koch International); A Child’s London (Ongaku); Affirmations, Transfigured Goat, Intercalations and Civilization and Its Discontent (Albany Records); the opera in seven scenes, Æthelred the Unready (Albany Records); and String Quartets Nos. 3 and 4 with Canzona for horn and strings (Albany Records).

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard, Mr. Wilson holds the Mary Conover Mellon Chair in Music at Vassar; he is also Composer-in-Residence with the American Symphony Orchestra, for which he gives pre-concert talks.

PROGRAM
1. In Schrafft's
2. A Dissolve
3. Elegy
4. Soaking
5. Poor Warren
6. Home from the Range
7. Can
8. Light in Spring Poplars
9. Hunter's Moon
10. August 22