American Composers (The 4th of July is coming!)

[JimL]

Anybody notice how, when PBS broadcast the 4th of July from the Capitol, the fireworks were accompanied by Tchaikovsky's Overture 1812, (the following is to be read in a heavy Russian accent) composed for to commemorate great Americansky victory over Angleesky in War of 1812, nyet?

They also hacked Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue to bits and had the solo part split between TWO pianists!  For shame!

The Muppets from Sesame Street were cool, though.

[Yavar Moradi]

Yeah, Jim, they play that at the Hollywood Bowl (with fireworks) too...

Bleh.

Yavar

[monafam]

I just got some music by Don Gillis.  I like it quite a bit.

[edurban]

I guess this is my debut on the NEW board...and since Americans are my area, I'll make a plug for Horatio Parker.  What Victorian choral piece is more stirring than Hora Novissima?  (Good recording available, too: from Nebraska on Albany records)  And the Northern Ballad..surely he's the American Tchaikovsky??!! (on records Hegyi and Krueger both good, Krueger maybe a little more magical on the descending bass line in the coda.)  And most recently the marvelous scene for baritone and orchestra 'Cahal Mor of the Wine-Red Hand' newly (and excellently) recorded on Albany records by Patrick Mason.  All full of good tunes and red-blooded Romanticism.  Makes you yearn for his opera Mona, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera...  Best, from NYC David K

[Gareth Vaughan]

Re. Damrosch, people might like to know that both the published Full Score and the holograph MS of the Violin Concerto in D minor, [1847] are in the library of the Juilliard School of Music.
I wonder if the scores of those other concertante violin works are among the MSS in Library of Congress.

[Peter1953]

Just posted a new topic on clarinet concertos when I heard on the radio a movement of a clarinet quintet by the American female composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (1939), from the CD "American Clarinet Quintets". A charming piece, certainly worth listening. She even composed a clarinet concerto in 2002-03. But her music doesn't belong to the romantic style, I suppose.