American Music

[eschiss1]

hrm. I think "André Previn: An 80th Birthday Celebration", RCA 747250, 2009. (AMC listings)

[semloh]

hrm. I think "André Previn: An 80th Birthday Celebration", RCA 747250, 2009. (AMC listings)

Thanks, Eric! 

[Amphissa]

My apology for disappearing for so long. November is always a very busy month for me, with lots of business travel. That was followed by my father-in-law (our last living parent) having a stroke, which has required some attention (he's recovering as well as can be expected for an 86 year old man).

I'm going to upload some broadcast recordings of music by Jennifer Higdon. For those of you not familiar with this young composer, she spent her childhood in Atlanta, GA and moved to Tennessee in her teens. She began as a self-taught flautist who played in her high school band, but heard almost no classical music until she began college. She studied flute performance at a small college in Kentucky, Bowling Green State University, notable for absolutely nothing, but did play in the university orchestra. It was there she encountered Atlanta Symphony conductor Robert Spano, who was teaching a conducting course.

Her music is neoromantic, a more modern idiom, but mostly tonal, some floating key atonality, but virtually no extended dissonance or angry spikiness. She uses octatonic scales, which many here will remember as a compositional technique introduced by Rimsky-Korsakov in his later work. (Her music sounds nothing like Rimsky-Korsakov, but I hear echoes of Sibelius often.)

Higdon's music is surely the most popular of living American composers, frequently performed by American orchestras and appreciated by the audiences. Her Violin Concerto won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize. Her Percussion Concerto won a Grammy in 2009. My favorite of her works are Blue Cathedral and The Singing Rooms.

A couple of my recordings have some static at the beginning, which clears before long. All are from radio broadcast.

It's good to be back.   

[Ser Amantio di Nicolao]

It's good to be back.   

And welcome back!

Speaking as someone who blows hot and cold on Higdon (I haven't heard much, and really haven't managed to form an opinion of her work yet), thanks for the uploads - they save me having to pay for an education. 

[Amphissa]

Well, I admit that her VC is not one that I listen to much. It has its moments and is virtuosic as all hell, but there's not enough substance to bring me back. The others I find more interesting.

I've never heard the Concerto for Orchestra. If anyone has a broadcast recording, please upload.

[Ser Amantio di Nicolao]

Well, I admit that her VC is not one that I listen to much. It has its moments and is virtuosic as all hell, but there's not enough substance to bring me back. The others I find more interesting.

I've never heard the Concerto for Orchestra. If anyone has a broadcast recording, please upload.

I have the Naxos chamber music release - some I like, some I don't.  It's about fifty-fifty down the middle, as I recall.

I heard her Concerto for Soprano Saxophone played by the Marine Chamber Orchestra a few months back...honestly, it didn't grab me.  Lots of sound and fury, but precious little substance.  Still, at least it's tonal, which is a start...

[eschiss1]

can't bring myself to think that way. if it's nontonal but has ideas and the composer knows what to do with them I often prefer it to something loud and insipid and boring though tonal. But that would be a subject for another subforum and thread I suppose...

[Arbuckle]

Thanks, Shamokin88 for the Ray Luke symphonies, and all the other wonderful American music you so kindly share.

[Dundonnell]

Having spent most of the last two days working my way through the backlog of American Music to be downloaded I can report that the following files seems to have gone missing:

Harl McDonald:       Children's Symphony
                               My Country at War

Eric Stokes:             Symphonies Nos. 5

The McDonald was originally uploaded by Latvian and the Stokes by Arbuckle.

Can they be restored if possible, please

[eschiss1]

According to the catalog of the Carnegie Collection, the movement headings of the Ray Luke first symphony are
Presto -- Adagio -- Scherzo -- Andante. (A suite for orchestra is also in their holdings. One finds elsewhere in score or some other format a bassoon concerto (performed by the Manchester Symphony 2006-October-29) and other works )
Symphony no.2 was recorded (different performance) on Louisville so movement headings are very easy to obtain (see eg Amazon ) - Allegro - Adagio - Allegro moderato.

(LOC preserves the whole concert - correction! a concert 2 days later, a repeat --  of which the 3rd symphony performance seems to have been a part. Not sure about the "movement breakdown" tho'. Luke/Grieg/Liszt; broadcast by the Voice of America. ... that's interesting (to me). )

[eschiss1]

Powell's music (though not his rather horrible and well-documented racial views, so far as I know) was also an influence on Sorabji.

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks, Shamokin, for the the two Powell works. I have the Falletta recording of the Symphony, but didn't realise that it was an edited version, and had never heard of the Overture. The latter could be the soundtrack for an Erroll Flynn movie!

[semloh]

Thanks, Shamokin, for the the two Powell works. I have the Falletta recording of the Symphony, but didn't realise that it was an edited version, and had never heard of the Overture. The latter could be the soundtrack for an Erroll Flynn movie!

Yes, thanks indeed. And, I agree Mark, I had images of a 1940s swashbuckler in new technicolour! I find both works most enjoyable, and from a composer entirely new to me.   

[shamokin88]

The entire catalogue of CRI [Composers Recordings Incorporated] released as LPs in the USA from 1957 until about 1994 was assumed by New World Records. The latter makes custom CDs of each LP - that is, their CD offers exactly the same content as a given LP and is available through them as $12.99 each.

Further particulars may be had at http://www.newworldrecords.org/cri-nwr-2004-03.shtml.

Best to all.

[Holger]

Thanks for the Goeb uploads, shamokin88. My information is that the Concertante No. 2 is played by the American Virtuosi (as the orchestra missing in your performers annotation – I got the piece from somebody else a while ago).