Scott Robbins, composer

Orientale / After Orientale

orchestra (2222/4220/timp+2 pc/strings)

10:00

Cesar Cui's Orientale is a piece I've always liked, so I decided it deserved to be orchestrated--and in an obviously late-19th-century style (like a Debussy Nocturne or something by Rismky-Korsakov) . Then, I decided to write a musical "response" to Cui's Orientale-that's After Orientale, wherein I rewrote Cui's original, changing all the pitches (but not the rhythms). What resulted was something rather cool, and that still sounds like Oriental music imagined by a non-Oriental musician.