Catalog

Peteris Plakidis is one of the Latvian composers who from his very first compositions successfully created lyrical vocal works based on the intellectual poetry of the day. His compositions for voice and piano or other instruments do not seem to warrant the description of solo songs in the traditional meaning of the word. They could more accurately be described as "musical poems" and certainly deserve this title. Now a professor at the Latvian State Conservatory, Plakidis' music is performed extensively in Latvia and to some extent in Europe and the U.S. Plakidis was a visiting professor at Southern Illinois University in the early 1990s, founding a chamber ensemble called The Transatlantic Trio that combined musicians from both sides of the Atlantic. The soloist on this recording, Maija Krigena, who is married to Plakidis, appears with the Latvian State Opera.

Although still in his early thirties, the Thai-born composer Narong Prangcharoen has established an international reputation and is recognized as one of Thailand's leading composers. He has received many international prizes, including the Alexander Zemlinsky International Composition Competition Prize. Prangcharoen's earliest composition studies were in Thailand. He later studied at Illinois State University and at the University of Missouri in Kansas City with Chen Yi. This recording contains his better-known works and offers a snapshot of this young composer's gift.

The Phoenix Ensemble is a New York City based, mixed-instrument chamber music group, consisting of a full complement of winds, brass, strings, and percussion. The ensemble is dedicated to the performance and recording of classical music, and to the mission of making the musical arts a more essential and valuable experience in the lives of the general public. Since 1992, through performances, recordings, and residencies in schools and communities, the Phoenix Ensemble has presented hundreds of events designed to inspire a new and diverse audience for classical music. The group has a special interest in encouraging and giving a voice to composers of contemporary music, and creating events where these compos¬ers can present their music to a new audience. The group's 2009 recording of the clarinet quintets of Morton Feldman and Milton Babbitt has won wide critical acclaim. For this recording, the ensemble has selected two works for wind quintet. Arnold Schoenberg's wind quintet, his first strict 12-tone ensemble work, was composed in 1924 and Stockhausen's Zeitmasze was written early in his composing career (1957).

The British composer Peter Dickinson was born at Lytham St. Annes, Lancashire. His sister, Meriel Dickinson, is the mezzo-soprano with whom he had a long performing partnership. He has also been a long time contributor to The Gramophone Magazine. His reviews are signed PD. He went to The Leys School, Cambridge, was Organ Scholar of Queen's College, Cambridge, and then spent three formative years at Juilliard, where he was a pupil of Bernard Wagenaar and a contemporary of Philip Glass and Peter Schickele. During this period he was a critic on the Musical Courier and the Musical Times; taught at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey and became interested in American music of all kinds. He returned to England in 1961 where he held various teaching jobs. In 1974 he became the first professor of music at Keele University, Staffordshire, where he set up the new department along with its Center for American Music. Today he is head of music at the Institute of United States Studies, University of London. He has also written books on the composer Sir Lennox Berkeley, with whom he studied and the British novelty pianist, composer and educator, Billy Mayerl. The two concertos originally appeared on EMI.

All of the works on this recording may be labeled character pieces, a catchall term that covers compositions that are not sonatas, variations, dances, toccatas, fantasies or fugal works. The term originated in the late 1820s and referred almost exclusively to solo piano pieces. Pianist Richard Zimdars performs 20th and 21st century compositions written by composers from Russia, the U.S., Australia, Korea, and Israel. Zimdars, recently retired from a 40-year teaching and performing career, performed and lectured in Europe, Brazil, Canada and the U.S. His extensive discography includes the complete piano music of Roy Harris (on Albany Records) as well as Charles Ives' four violin sonatas and numerous recordings of works by contemporary composers. He was artistic director of the 2011 American Liszt Society Festival and organizer of the American Liszt Society Bicentennial Composition Competition.

As pianist Jose Luis Hernandez says, "This album can bring pure musical enjoyment and also spiritual nourishment to people. The tunes and lyrical texts in these pieces have stood the test of time. Some appear as early as the 8th century, others are more modern. The selections call attention to the many seasons of life — joy, wonder, hope, and grief " A graduate of Texas Christian University, Jose Luis Hernandez pursued post-graduate studies at the Conservatori del Liceu in Barcelona. He has appeared on chamber music festivals around the United States and Puerto Rico and appeared as a concerto soloist with the Fort Worth Chamber Orchestra. He has conducted orchestras in Venezuela and Mexico and is the founder of the music education and orchestral programs Sistema Tulsa and Juventud Sinfónica Tamaulipeca.

Meisha Adderley and Stacey Holliday present a program of music for piano duo by black composers. Spanning a time frame of music written in 1935 by William Grant Still, to works by Dolores White and Hale Smith that date from the late 1960's to the most recent work by Cedric Adderley written in 2010, this recording offers a survey not only of unique compositional voices across 75+ years, but also intriguing repertoire for this ensemble. Meisha Adderley received her D.M.A. from the University of South Carolina and also studied at the University of Sydney Conservatorium of Music and Indiana State University. She serves on the faculty of Capital University Conservatory of Music. Her colleague, Stacey Holliday, also studied at the University of South Carolina as well as Furman University. Formerly on the faculty at Furman University, Ms. Holliday now maintains a large piano studio and is active as a collaborative and solo artist.

Ernest Schelling - child prodigy, virtuoso pianist, composer, conductor, patron and founder of the Children's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic - was one of the most brilliant and enterprising personalities on the American scene in his day. As a pianist, he appeared frequently with every major Orchestra, often as soloist in his own piano and Orchestral works. His Violin Concerto was premiered by Fritz Kreisler and the Boston Symphony under Karl Muck and his "Victory Ball" was a crowd pleaser in its day. Schelling was trained entirely by his father, Dr. Felix Schelling, a physician and musician from St. Gallen in Switzerland. He made his piano debut at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia on March 8, 1880 at the age of four-and-a-half. At the age of seven, he entered the Paris Conservatory, the youngest pupil ever accepted. Here he studied under Georg Mathias, a pupil of Chopin. In 1896, his career changed when he became the only pupil of Ignance Jan Paderewski who enabled him to make the difficult transition from child prodigy to mature artist. The two pianists became life-long friends. He made his London debut on November 25, 1900 and his American debut as an adult on January 24, 1905. The last 17 years of his life attracted the attention of the music world when he created the Children's Concerts of the New York Philharmonic during the 1923-24 season. He was called "the musical godfather of America's younger generation." He conducted 187 of these concerts in New York alone, as well as in other cities from Boston to San Francisco. From 1930 on, they were broadcast live by CBS from coast to coast. In 1939, he was scheduled to inaugurate these concerts in London, but tragically, he died before he ever got there. The music contained on this disc is charming and appealing. Mary Louise Boehm is an authority on Schelling and has studied his music extensively.

For its first commercial recording, the Almeda Trio takes the traditional classical music ensemble of piano, violin and cello on a journey through various styles of more modern inspiration — from Argentinian tango to American jazz -- and even country fiddling. Stops along the way include two works by American composers Paul Schoenfield and Paul Ferguson and a composition by the 20th-Century beloved Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla. Since its debut in 2008, the Almeda Trio (Robert Cassidy, piano, Cara Tweed, violin, Ida Mercer, cello) has performed to enthusiastic audiences throughout the greater Cleveland area and beyond. They serve as the ensemble-in-residence at The Music Settlement in Cleveland and their mission is three-fold -- performance, education and outreach. The ensemble takes its name from the early 20th-century social activist and founder of The Music Settlement, Almeda Adams.

The British composer, author and critic Peter Dickinson was born at Lytham St. Annes, Lancashire on November 15, 1934. His musical personality ranges widely from the three substantial concertos for organ, piano and violin (the first two on Albany TROY360) to the witty Rags, Blues and Parodies collection (TROY369); the Song Cycles (TROY365) show Dickinson responding to major poets such as Auden, e. e. cummings and Dylan Thomas and the vocal works have expanded the picture of his literary interests with settings of Emily Dickinson and the British poet John Heath-Stubbs. If you are a fan of British music that tilts to a more modern sound (similar to Harrison Birtwistle or Peter Maxwell Davies), Dickinson's works will have great appeal to you. Of additional interest is the participation of such important performers as Eric Parkin and the King's Singers. The Unicorns features renowned Swedish soprano Elisabeth Soderstrom in the reissue of the previously hard-to-find Bluebell LP.

This collection of works by Respighi, Martinu and Musorgsky/Ravel is centered around pictures: Boticelli, Francesca, and Hartmann. Given stunning performances by the Long Beach Symphony conducted by Jo Ann Falletta, this is Albany's second release with this fine orchestra and world-class maestra.

All of the pieces on this recording tell a story in one way or another. Some are narrative while others are programmatic or cinematic. Visual imagery, both imaginative and concrete is also part of the fabric of these works. These two elements have been part of several of Raymond Wojcik's works written throughout his creative life and they are brought together here for his second recording with Albany Records. Composer, conductor, and educator Raymond Wojcik received degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and the Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver and has served as conductor of the Garden State Philharmonic and the Brunswick Symphony. David Schiff, composer and writer notes: "At a time of technical gimmicks and stylistic uncertainty, Raymond Wojcik writes music from the heart that speaks directly to an audience in a distinctive voice."

The theme that ties this album together, Pieces and Passages, is a self-circling paradox. A piece of music as a complete, worked-out thought or fragments -- perhaps something broken or incomplete. Passages are the kind sought by travelers and in the case of the music on this recording, wends through America, Peru, Ireland, and China. These dual metaphors guided violinist Scott Conklin's approach to this repertoire as he combined seemingly disparate styles and sentiments into an eclectic but cohesive artistic statement. Conklin regularly appears as a recitalist, soloist, chamber musician, orchestral player and teaching clinician throughout the U.S. and abroad. He is on the faculty of the University of Iowa and a violin teacher at the Preucil School of Music. Pianists Alan Huckleberry and Jason Sifford are his collaborators.

Lieder, so prominent in German and Austrian culture at the end of the 18th century, did not figure prominently in the output of Franz Joseph Haydn. To most of today's musical public, they are of somewhat secondary importance, and not well known. Only in recent years, such internationally acclaimed vocalists as Elly Ameling, Arleen Auger, Anne Sofie von Otter, and now the great American mezzo Victoria Livengood, have begun to include them in their recitals. Haydn wrote his first songbook in 1781, with a second in 1784. These two sets of English canzonettas were created during his stay in London in 1794-95, where he met the English poetess Anne Hunter. Later, two more English songs were added. The canzonettas are marked by a rhapsodic and elegiac flavor, influenced by Herder's emphasis on the folk song.

Volkmar Zimmermann and Kristian Gantriis are both members of the internationally acclaimed Corona Guitar Kvartet and now they have joined forces as an independent ensemble, the Gantriis-Zimmermann Guitar Duo and this recording is the result of their collaboration. The Duo has assembled an enticingly eclectic collection of brief pieces from around the world — Argentine tangos; Danish songs; Spanish dances; and two works of new music. The recording is packed with infectious new sounds from an ageless and age-old instrumental ensemble, and the results are contagious listening experiences that make us as ask for more.

One of the most telling indications of a composer's worth in our glutted musical marketplace is the response of one's fellow music-makers: those who create it as well as those who perform it. And in this regard, Alla Borzova, a Russian-trained composer-pianist from Belarus, is fortunate to claim the global microcosm of New York as her adopted backyard. When a composer of exalted stature praises one's music, the informed public tends to take notice. And well they should, when a modern master like John Corigliano speaks of Borzova's "extraordinary voice" and her "arresting and dynamic" music. David del Tredici finds "genius" (it takes one to know one) and "huge emotional impact" in her work. This engaging CD, preserving some of Alla's finest smaller-scale creations, reveals her sponge-like knack for soaking up far-flung musical influences wherever she goes. Arabic flavors - complete with third-tones, vocal quavers and other idiomatic touches - help to bring out the stark tragedy and outright insanity of her lovelorn Majnun Songs. Her American exposure has left her with a new-found taste for American jazz, as heard in her Pinsk and Blue - an amazing piece for accordion and piano. It is not easy to pin Borzova down stylistically - you'll hear everything from unaffected folk-tunes to cunning and sophisticated tone-rows from her.

Herbert Bielawa earned his degree in piano and composition at the University of Illinois and the University of Southern California. He has been a member of the faculty of Bethany College and San Francisco State University where he founded Pro Music Nova, a contemporary music performing group, and the Electronic Music Studio. Sandra Soderlund is Organist at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley and teaches harpsichord and Organ at Mills College in Oakland, California. She is on the National Council of the American Guild of Organists.

The very nature of this disc is appealingly old-fashioned: a collection of works that reveal the composers' innermost feelings about distinctly American places. For example, Lee McQuillan's Sweet Home Suite is inspired by his hometown, Middletown, Connecticut and its people and geography. A more wistful approach is taken by Christopher Montgomery in the second half of Two Cities: the idea that unless New Orleans is relocated to higher ground, then the city might be completely submerged in the future -- akin to the ancient legend of Atlantis. And the veteran Chicago composer, Helmuth Fuchs, pays homage to the Second City in his Chicago Fantasie Overture.

Violinist Mark Rush offers a contemporary program of music for violin and percussion assisted by the Arizona Percussion Ensemble and percussionist Norman Weinberg. With Michael Daugherty's Lex, based on Superman's most vexing foe, Lou Harrison's innovative concerto mixing "junk" percussion instruments with traditional European one, Craig Walsh's work for violin and percussion based on ecobiological ideas expressed in purely abstract musical ways, and Kevin Puts' work for violin, clarinet and marimba, we have exciting music for a non-traditional combination.

Composer/singer Linda Lister began her compositional career at age 15 writing a new musical version of The Little Match Girl for the University of Utah's Young People's Theatre. Since that time she has found her own tonal, neo-Romantic voice. Her vocal writing reveals a fondness for coloratura, an element not often found in contemporary art song. Her goal is to imbue her compositions with the pathos or humor befitting the text. She enjoys the creative synergy of singing her own music and sharing it with the world. A graduate of Vassar, Eastman and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, she has performed as a soloist with orchestras, with opera theatres across the country and her recordings appear on Albany and Centaur Records. She is on the faculty of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her collaborator, Canadian pianist Amanda Johnston is on the faculty at the University of Mississippi, Musiktheater Bavaria; and the Druid City Opera Workshop.

The Argentine pianist Mirian Conti enjoys a growing reputation as a musician. Stylistically assured in a wide range of repertoire, Ms. Conti is considered a leading exponent of Spanish music; and her rare ability to communicate passion and excitement when playing contemporary scores has won the admiration of many leading American and Argentine composers, including those included on this disc. She began her musical education in Buenos Aires and completed it at Juilliard in New York. Morton Gould's Pieces of China could best be described as an American's impressions of China. They were first performed in Madison Square Garden for an international event. Volumes 1 and 2 of Persichetti's Poems for Piano were composed in 1947 and the third volume in 1981. The titles of each of the sixteen character pieces are drawn from single lines of various poems, each piece reflects the single line of poetry rather than the poem as a whole. These lines are printed in the booklet. It is most interesting to note that David Diamond was so impressed with Mirian Conti's playing when he heard her at Juilliard that he dedicated his Sonatina No. 2 to her. His earlier Sonatina No. 1 was dedicated to the poet Alfred Kreymborg. Poems of the Sea is one of Ernst Bloch's most often performed piano pieces. A very impressionistic piece, the three movements are: "Waves," "Chanty," and "At Sea."

Born in New York, David Chaitkin followed his early experience as a jazz musician with studies at Pomona College and the University of California, Berkeley, where he received its Prix de Paris. His teachers included Luigi Dallapiccola, Seymour Shifrin, Max Deutsch, Andrew Imbrie and Karl Kohn. He has taught at Reed College, New York University and Brooklyn College. Noted for his lyrical and harmonically adventurous music, Chaitkin has composed symphonic as well as a variety of chamber and vocal works. His music has been performed by the BBC Philharmonic, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, the DaCapo Chamber Players and St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble. Recent commissions include a Concerto for Soprano Saxophone and Orchestra, Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano, and a new work for the U.S. Marine Band. As he writes about this release, "The works on this disc share a harmonic language, one which can refresh a long line, allow for the possibility of setting a melody in a number of different contexts, and to extend the possibilities for progression and contrast, balance and rhyme. All of the music reflects my natural desire for clarity of line, harmonic recognition and a sense of phrase."

Richard Thompson, one of today's most artistically aware composers, offers here "two song cycles and six piano preludes, in a contemporary classical vein as well as an arrangement of the Spiritual, Wade in the Water, for jazz quartet." Thompson's work here helps to highlight the natural tendency of today's urban American composers who, not content to write in one style of music, work to remove the presupposed barrier between traditional classical music and contemporary jazz, thereby underscoring their artistic and spiritual kinship. Mr. Thompson, originally from Aberdeen, Scotland, has written compositions that combine European and African-American styles, so that the formal structures of European classical music develop ideas that are essentially jazz in nature. Thompson completed graduate studies in jazz at Rutgers University in New Jersey. While there, he studied jazz piano with Kenny Barron and classical piano with Ted Lettvin. He also holds a jazz diploma from the Berklee College in Boston.

Tyrone Greive writes in his extensive notes for this disc: "Like much other Polish classical music, the music on this recording reflects the basically western orientation of Polish culture in how it frequently sounds similar to one of the more familiar musical styles from Western Europe. Yet, there are moments when the melody, harmony or other musical elements take unexpected and unfamiliar-sounding turns, thus reflecting that Poland is a country where Eastern and Western cultures have traditionally intermingled. Often, works of individual Polish composers reflect the influences of other specific countries, schools and individuals, thus in some way mirroring Poland's cultural exchanges with the rest of Europe at a particular time." Much of this material appears on disc for the first time.

In the grand American tradition initiated by Ives, this collection of piano music by Ethan Wickman balances refreshing individuality with an acute awareness of tradition. Aptly titled, Portals and Passages offers myriad glimpses of correspondent time periods, distant relationships, complementary cultural values, and diverse locales -- earthbound and otherwise. Wickman's compositional style weaves a dynamic network of motivic, rhythmic, and textural contrasts into a unified voice that continually prospects fresh realms of tonal possibility and interest. In Nicholas Phillips, his music finds a measured, solicitous interpreter whose touch renders the most challenging technical passages effortless and those more delicate, sublime.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Quincy Porter was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son and grandson of Yale professors. He too went to Yale where he studied music with Horatio Parker. He also studied in Paris with Vincent D’Indy and in Manhattan and Cleveland with Ernest Bloch. Bloch helped him get a job at the Cleveland Institute of Music where he taught theory and also played the viola in the ambitious de Ribaupierre Quartet. He returned to Paris in 1928, and while he did not study with Nadia Boulanger, he did show her his 1930 Piano Sonata. “For a staid New Englander, this is an unusual climax,” she is supposed to have said. Back in the United States, the staid and bespeckled New Englander moved from Cleveland to upstate New York, teaching music at Vassar College, and then to Boston, where he served as dean and then director of the New England Conservatory – taking time to help found, along with Aaron Copland and several other leading composers, the American Music Center in Manhattan. In 1946, the year his father died, he returned to his alma mater. Until retiring in 1965, at Yale he stayed, first as Battell Professor of Theory at the Music School, then as master of Pierson College – barely enduring the presence of a certain other Yale professor, the internationally celebrated composer, Paul Hindemith; Yankee conservative and German modernist remained professional antagonists until Hindemith went on to Zurich in the early 1950s. It is from his overall loyalty to tradition and his neoclassical esthetic bent that the distinguishing qualities of Quincy Porter’s music derive – its crystalline clarity of line, its balance and lyricism. He could certainly wield contemporary devices; mixed meters, keylessness, flashy rhythmic complexity. But he exulted in and excelled at music’s more private expressiveness, especially the intimacy afforded by small ensembles and song. His contributions to chamber music earned him the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Medal in 1943, and critics rate his ten string quartets among the finest produced in 20th century America. His ability to fashion handsomely controlled, flowing passages as well as volcanic surges of intensity is equally evident in his viola, violin and harpsichord concertos and the Concerto Concertante (winner of the 1954 Pulitzer Prize) – and also in the three orchestral pieces featured on this CD.

Pacific Northwest composers sing not with one voice but with many, as this collection of choral music demonstrates. While five of the six composers represented here have a close connection tot he Northwest, their music is as different as the peaks of the Cascade Mountains. Four of them - Bryan Johanson, Salvador Brotons, Tomas Svoboda and Vijay Singh - all live in Portland, Oregon and make up the composition faculty in the Department of Music at Portland State University. However, their compositional styles range from affirming, tonal sonorities to exuberant folk melodies of Eastern Europe. The Portland State University Chamber Choir was formed in 1975. Its conductor, Bruce Browne, is professor of music and chairs the vocal-choral department there.

Dominick Argento, considered by many to be America's pre-eminent composer of lyric opera, was born in 1927. He studied at Peabody and the Eastman School of Music. He is professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota, where he taught for 40 years. Although Argento's instrumental works have received consistent praise, the great majority of his music is vocal. This emphasis on the human voice is a facet of the powerful dramatic impulse that drives nearly all of his music.

Virginia-born pianist, composer and ethnomusicologist John Powell received most of his primary music training at home, with his sister as his first piano teacher. He subsequently attended the University of Virginia and then traveled to Vienna where he studied piano and composition. He debuted as pianist in Berlin in 1907, and toured Europe extensively before World War I, returning to the United States after the War broke out. He settled in Richmond, performing extensively around the country, especially his own compositions, and eventually moved to an estate near Charlottesville. He was also an amateur astronomer, awarded honorary membership in the Societe Astronomique de France for the discovery of a comet. Powell was a respected composer, his major compositions being a violin concerto, a piano concerto, an orchestral suite, two string quartets, two violin sonatas, two collections of folk-song settings for voice and piano, four piano sonatas, three piano suites, the Rhapsodie Negre for piano and orchestra, and the Symphony in A major. Powell's most important work was probably his methodical collection of rural songs of the South. He finished his Symphony in A major in 1945, but revised it extensively in 1951 and subtitled it Virginia Symphony (actually originally Symphony on Virginian Folk Themes and in the Folk Modes). It is the result of Powell's decades of searching out old melodies still roaming the Virginia countryside - songs that were old when the first Queen Elizabeth was young. Instead of the usual major minor scales we are accustomed to, he based his music on the medieval modes of the old songs. Unfortunately, Powell's extensive collection remains unpublished so that it is almost impossible to identify the sources for the individual melodies within the Symphony. The general style of the work is grandiose, employing the late Romantic Germanic orchestration in which Powell was trained.

Nathaniel Bartlett was born in 1978 in Madison, Wisconsin, and studied at the Eastman School and the Royal Academy of Music in London as well as with renowned marimbist Leigh Howard Stevens. As an integral part of being dedicated to an instrument of our time, he is also dedicated to the music of our time - constantly seeking out composers with whom to collaborate in the creation of new repertoire for the instrument. In particular, Nathaniel Bartlett is interested in the integration of computers and other electronics into live performances, creating a high-definition, multi-dimensional sound environment. As he writes of this CD, "One of my main goals was to create a well-balanced album and not simply a collection of unrelated material. The content of this album, as well as its order, was carefully chosen to form a program with a prelude, interlude and postlude, with two featured works in between. With this in mind, it is my hope that this album can be listened to in its entirety, and that the artistic impact of the album as a whole will be much greater than the sum of the works."

For its second recording on Albany Records, the famed TCU Percussion Orchestra performs seven works written by composers from Texas, the Midwest and Oregon in world premiere recordings. Under the direction of Brian A. West, the ensemble has commissioned and premiered more than 20 works. The TCU Percussion Orchestra has been showcased at the Percussive Arts Society's International Conventions in 2005, 2008 and 2011. Dr. West, an active clinician, composer/arranger, and adjudicator for a variety of percussive events, is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the University of North Texas. He is the Percussion Artistic Director for the International Festival of Winds and Percussion.