Frank Corcoran

Put it like that, an emerging composer´s “I” defining its “Ich” and its ” What´s My Worth, heavens!? ” eg.
David Robertson premiered my Concerto For String Orchestra back in 1983. Lloyd Schwartz then, in the Boston Phoenix ( ISSUE DATE November 11 – 17 , 2005 ) described : ” In Mad Sweeney, which was getting its American Premier, Irish composer Frank Corcoran´s wild-man recitation from Seamus heaney´s English rendering of the medieval Irish tale about the mad warrior king and knotty sound world reminded me of Peter Maxwell Davies´s 1969 Eight Songs fro a Mad King . ( This was One Song for a Mad King ) . All the playing , under Richard Pittman, was spectacular.
And in the Croatian VISKI BOJ ( The Battle of Vis ) / Summer in Vis , they premiered my Third String Quartet with : ” How to compose for this medium after Bethoven´s Opus 18 or his great final quartets ? After Brahms ? or debussy´s youthful master-piece ? Ligeti´s or Lutoslawsky´s originality ? Mine is a one-movement argument in motu perpetuo which spreads out from the initial idea for 4 strings. The strictly metred music acts as a foil for the non-synchronized passages…. The opening flourish comes again in a thousand variants. Every imaginable string-colour is painted , from the left-hand pizzicati to high harmonics. Of course this is an Irish quartet. I , its dreamer, am Irish. Whether i wish it or not, this musical vision must come out of the landscape of and the seas which surround my small West European island which , of course, shares important similarities with East European Croatia!”
Or take Lutz Lesle in the Zeitschrift für Neue Musik: ” Für die University of Wisconsin , die 1990 die alt-irische Handschrift BOOK OF KELLS erwarb. komponierte Frank Corcoran seine schlagzeugbunte ” MUSIC FOR THE BOOK OF KELLS”.
Yes, I did. Enjoy reading the 24. September 1999 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ” Dem kleinen König eine Messe – James Joyce läßt rufen: ein Abend mit Frank Corcoran”. Boys !
LA SCALA ( Symphonik : Hans-Dieter Grünefeld ) had already warbled: Enorme Spannungen bilden sich. Doch Corcoran bändigt diese als “Makrokontrapunkte”. in seinen Symphonien brodelt es , doch die Kompositionen zerstäuben sich nicht in Geräusche. Vielmehr messen sich Schlaginstrumente vieler Schlaginstrumente mit der Kraft von Bläserchorälen und dunklen Streicherphrasen in der 2. Symphonie . Eine archaische Welt…. ” Shortly after that , in the Veranstaltungen 2001 at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Mannhein ( – here we go again …. ) , in Professor Ulrich Leyendecker´s kingdom, Studio für neue Musik, my Komponistenporträt Frank Corcoran.