Exposed on the Cliffs of the Heart

Track Listings

1. Exposed on the Cliffs of the Heart

2. Ariadne's Crown

3. Toccata

4. Rendezvous With Hyakutake

5. The Rapture of Beta Lyrae

Exposed on the Cliffs of the Heart, Music, Terry Winter Owens, Francisco Monteiro

Average customer rating:

Exposed on the cliffs of the heart

Classic Terry

Music for the Ear and the Mind

Sure...the music is beautiful...

Journeys Through Space: Piano Works by Terry Winter Owens

Exposed on the Cliffs of the Heart

ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Classical | Indie Music | Stores | Music
General | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B0000505DN
Release Date: 2000-09-27

Tracks:

Exposed on the Cliffs of the Heart
Ariadne's Crown
Toccata
Rendezvous With Hyakutake
The Rapture of Beta Lyrae

Customer Reviews:

Exposed on the cliffs of the heart.......2006-11-07

This music requires that I open my heart to hear it. I haven't done this yet, but I'm aware of the need, and expect a very sensitive reward.

Classic Terry.......2005-02-05

I've been following the music of Terry Winter Owens since 1996. There's a certain unifying resonance and sparkle to all of it that I've heard, a free evolution of ringing sounds more akin to gamelan music and, interestingly enough, to Cage than to traditional counterpoint, but with a solidly Western, post-Romantic harmonic pallette. She dances a dangerous dance, out on the outer edges of Uptown and Downtown and West and East, exploring her own end of the landscape at right angles to all of that.

Monteiro's performances are remarkable not only because they are virtuoso acts, but because he makes the virtuousity seem so effortless and lets the subtlety and drama of Owens's scores come through.

Music for the Ear and the Mind.......2001-04-21

As with most things special, the appearance of something rare and fine appeals to a more refined sensibility. This very much happens to be the case with this exquisitely recorded and beautifully performed collection piano works by the well-known composer Terry Winter Owens.

As virtuosically performed by the Portuguese pianist Francisco Monteiro, these works shimmer with a sparkle and radiance that illuminate for us an ethereal style of piano composition not often heard or recorded. Unlike many contemporary or avant-garde works that give the impression of being studies in distress, these newly recorded works of Terry Winter Owens are New Music that appeals to both the ear and the mind and bear relistening for their sheer atmospheric power.

A more perfect marriage of talents between composer and performer, as exemplified in this fine recording, would indeed be hard to find.

Sure...the music is beautiful..........2001-04-17

....but what kind of ... are you smoking to get "a soundscape of icy brittleness in the piano's higher registers, a geography frozen in time, as if by falling snow?"

However, "the figurative, vibrant sounds of a sparkling body of gases" about sums it up! Plop plop fizz fizz anyone?

Journeys Through Space: Piano Works by Terry Winter Owens.......2001-04-06

Words cannot be more than shadows of sound, and yet this beautifully-performed new CD easily inspired this listener to want to share some words with you who listen but also read. Monteiro seems to be just perfect in rendering the power and magic of these exquisite pieces, whose titles and conception conjure a rich variety of impressions. Here are just three examples.

In Ariadne's Crown, the astronomical reference is anything but extraneous. A cyclic and echo-like sound environment is realized, generated by the interweaving of two pianos -- Gemini voices that seem to occupy a fixed domain in space, like grouped stars in a constellation. Paradoxically, this music directs one's attention inwardly as if to mimic the outward journey in sound.

In Toccata, we experience an intensely atmospheric work that opens delicately with a recurring water-droplet-like motif. While its phraseology is seemingly cyclical and echoic, the piece gradually shifts its focus, becoming more clearly deliberate in its intensity. Then, returning to a more meditative mood, the work seems to survey a soundscape of icy brittleness in the piano's higher registers, a geography frozen in time, as if by falling snow, and animated now and then by occasional gusts and rushes of swirling and punctuating notes as if to suggest the tenuousness and changing nature of physical phenomena.

Finally, in Rendezvous With Hyakutake, terrestrial sounds pay tribute to an aberrant celestial body. Actually, it is as if the depicted rendezvous between planet and comet were being viewed from a great distance. And yet, in the hush of a universal silence, we hear the figurative, vibrant sounds of a sparkling body of gases hurtling through incalculable time and distance. In effect, we hear the comet's voice as an imagined soliloquy in space -- insistent and exotic.

Indeed, this is music that has power and suggestiveness, an experience worth having.

Music Track: