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8.559656
ZWILICH, E.T.: Millennium Fantasy / Images / Peanuts Gallery (Biegel, Gainsford, H.L. Williams, Florida State University Symphony, Jimenez)
Among America’s most admired, awarded and frequently performed composers, Ellen Taafe Zwilich, who celebrated her 70th birthday in 2009, remains young at heart. Performed here by virtuoso pianist Jeffrey Biegel for whom it was written, Millennium Fantasy is based on a folksong that Zwilich’s grandmother sang to her as a child.
Images drew its inspiration from a number of paintings held at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., including the Alice Bailly self-portrait reproduced on the cover of this disc. Zwilich, herself featured in Charles M. Schulz’s famous Peanuts® comic strip, returned the favor with a delightful series of musical portraits of Schroeder, Linus, Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Lucy, Peppermint Patty and Marcie.
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8.559630
PISTON, W.: String Quartets Nos. 1, 3 and 5 (Harlem Quartet)
Much lauded in his lifetime, Walter Piston is remembered chiefly today for his eight Symphonies, the two Violin Concertos ( 8.559003) and the popular ballet, The Incredible Flutist ( 8.559160). This recording presents three of the five string quartets, which range from from the lithe neo-Classicism of the First Quartet and the rhythmic trenchancy and intense melodic writing of
the Third Quartet to the forceful yet accessible Fifth. This is the Naxos début of the Harlem Quartet, an ensemble comprising First-Place Laureates of the Sphinx Competition for young Black and Latino string players. More of Piston’s chamber music is available on 8.559071.
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8.559664
HARRIS, R.: Piano Music (Complete) (Burleson)
Many of Roy Harris’s piano pieces were inspired by his wife, the pianist Johana Harris, and demonstrate his wide-ranging musical influences, from Medieval chant and Baroque counterpoint to 20th-century French composers (he studied with Nadia Boulanger) and American and Irish folk music.
His love of polytonal sonorities, spacious virtuosity, rhapsodic improvisational passages and intimate moods—a heady brew of diverse ingredients!—gives his piano music a fascinating quality, as if one were experiencing spontaneously evolving soundscapes teeming with vitality. Harris’s Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4 (8.559227), 5 & 6 (8.559609) and 7 & 9 (8.559050) are also available.
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8.559666
COATES, G.: String Quartet No. 9 / Solo Violin Sonata / Lyric Suite (Kreutzer Quartet, Chadwick)
The Munich-based American composer Gloria Coates is best known as a symphonist, though she has also composed nine string quartets as well as vocal and chamber music. Her String Quartet No. 9 opens with unworldly sonorities, glissandos, micro-tonalities and other unusual colours which develop by means of a mirror canon.
In contrast, the Sonata for Violin Solo sets immense technical demands, particularly in its use of multiple stops beneath the lyrical fragments. Taking its subtitles from phrases within Emily Dickinson poems, her Lyric Suite for Piano Trio is a captivating mix of melodic gestures and spectral harmonies.
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8.559652
GALLAGHER, J.: Orchestral Music - Diversions Overture / Berceuse / Sinfonietta / Symphony in 1 Movement, "Threnody" (London Symphony, Falletta)
Jack Gallagher’s Symphony in One Movement: Threnody has been acclaimed by in Tune magazine as ‘enormously inventing’ and by Österreichische Musikzeitschrift as ‘a one-movement symphony of great colorfulness’. The warm, lyrical Berceuse was heralded by The Washington Post as ‘a treat’ and ‘a lovely melodic and accessible work’.
The spirited Diversions Overture and Sinfonietta for String Orchestra, in five-movement arch form, complete this survey of Gallagher’s music for orchestra recorded by the London Symphony under the direction of JoAnn Falletta.
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8.559248
SOUSA, J.P.: Music for Wind Band, Vol. 8 (Royal Artillery Band, Brion)
John Philip Sousa personified the comparative innocence and brash energy of America around the turn of the 20th Century. Alongside the march that made him famous and later sparked a world-wide dance craze, The Washington Post, this disc includes excerpts from one of the earliest musicals to achieve Broadway success, El Capitan.
With its origins reaching as far back as 1557, The Royal Artillery Band is one of the largest symphonic wind bands in the British Army. Keith Brion is a specialist in Sousa’s period style and has published many performing editions of The March King’s music.
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8.559660
MELTZER, H.: Brion / 2 Songs from Silas Marner / Sindbad / Exiles (Cygnus Ensemble, Baker, Farnum, Hesselink, Shirley-Quirk, Peabody Trio, Lalli)
The works on this disc are representative of Harold Meltzer’s unique sensibility, profound imagination and inquisitive musical mind, quickened both by the things of the world and by a wide range of music, including the works of Franco Donatoni and the Stravinsky of Agon.
Brion was praised by the 2009 Pulitzer Prize jury as ‘a graceful, sensual and contemplative experience’, the ‘inexorable emotional power’ of Two Songs from Silas Marner impressed The New York Times, The Oxford Times described Sindbad as ‘a startling and deeply interesting modern work’, while The Boston Globe declared that ‘Exiles goes immediately onto this year’s must-hear-again list.’
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8.669031
SALERNI, P.: Tony Caruso's Final Broadcast (E. Fennell, P. Fennell, Risley, Tupay, Monocacy Chamber Orchestra, Jung-Ho Pak)
Paul Salerni’s award-winning opera with a libretto by Dana Gioia takes place in a classical music radio station on the last night of its operations. Its last program, ‘Opera Lover’, is hosted by Antonio Caruso, who remembers his early dreams of artistic fame as the ‘second Caruso’ and is visited by three ghosts—his dead mother, Maria Callas, and a mysterious woman.
Praised for his ‘resplendent vocalism’ (American Record Guide) and his ‘lusciously sweet voice, with its ringing, perfectly-tuned high notes’ (Opera Now), the young tenor Eric Fennell sings the title role.
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