Catalog

In his notes for this release in an essay entitled Music, Medicine and Elaine Bearer, Steven Ledbetter writes: "Elaine Bearer is a remarkable contemporary example of a composer who has also actively followed the very different career of a medical researcher. Already, at a very early age, she was called upon to choose between two passions, and although one or the other seemed to win out temporarily, both have been continuing realms of activity in a busy life. Music first seemed to have the upper hand. She began composing at the age of six. Music continued to enthrall her during her secondary school years and she attended Carnegie Mellon University as a music major, studying composition with Carlos Surinach and Virgil Thomson. In 1967 she went to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger and upon returning, completed her bachelor's degree at the Manhattan School of Music, where her teachers included Mario Davidovsky. During these years, she also freelanced on the French horn, playing in the American Symphony Orchestra under Stokowski, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the Orchestre de Paris, under Charles Munch. She received her master's degree in musicology from New York University and began work on her doctorate there. Music would seem to have won out. In 1973, she moved to San Francisco and began teaching music and composing. The composing never stopped, but before long she discovered that teaching solfeggio and dictation to freshman was detrimental to her inner ear and turned to biology, the other subject that had always interested her. Following two years at Stanford to get the medical school prerequisites she had bypassed earlier, she proceeded to the University of California, San Francisco, where she earned an M.D. and a Ph.D., completing both degrees in record time. Then followed a year in Geneva, Switzerland where she joined Lelio Orci's Laboratory at the University of Geneva. Upon returning to San Francisco she did a residency in the Department of Pathology while at the same time, was Composer-in-Residence to the university's symphony Orchestra. In 1991, she moved to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where she holds two appointments, as Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music as Assistant Professor of Medical Science, continuing her active life combining music and medicine." These facts alone should make you want to experience this disc. The music is accessible and appealing.

This disc of the percussion music of David Maslanka is appealing on two counts; first it has great sound with good playing, and second, the music itself is terrific. About Montana Music the composer writes: "The work is in three slow movements. They are nocturnal, lunar, inward pieces, dedicated to the spirit of the Earth, which speaks with a particular power in the mountains of my adopted western Montana. The vibraphone is often the center of attention in this music. Its evocative bell-like character may be thought of as a motif for the whole work. Arcadia means a pastoral district of ancient Greece, or any place of rural peace and simplicity. It refers as well, to the mythic land of human origin. The title Arcadia II has a double intent: it is the second piece of mine with the title Arcadia, and it is a musical prayer for the well-being of the Earth. The Concerto uses a traditional concerto form: faster outer movements surrounding a slower middle movement. The first movement arises from the darkness. I remember standing in a New Hampshire meadow on a summer evening. One by one the fireflies lit up until the darkening field was alive with their activity. The tiny opening bell sounds of this movement represent the fireflies. The second movement is a nature meditation. IT comes directly from my walks in Inwood Hill Park in upper Manhattan. The last movement is infused with a spirit of playfulness, light, and simple joy in the glories of nature. The title Crown of Thorns is an obvious reference to Christ's crown of thorns, but the name first came to me as a possible title for a piece from seeing a plant called the "Crown of Thorns" at the New York Botanical Gardens. It is a rambling, thorny desert plant from the Middle East, with small green leaves, and small, very simple and pretty red flowers. The rambling, interweaving, vine-like stems suggested music to me."

All the performances on this disc are world premieres. Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was born and educated in Florence. He studied composition with Ildebrando Pizzetti and was noticed by Alfredo Casella when he was still a young man. He worked as a pianist and freelance composer until 1939. Then, sensing the approaching danger of the Second World War, he fled fascist Italy and settled in Beverly Hills, California, where he lived and worked until his death in 1968. His early music, with its distinctive use of Italian lyricism combined with the techniques of French impressionism, made him a welcome member of the Italian progressive school. He found his greatest sources of inspiration in the Bible, his Jewish heritage and in his native Tuscany. He was a great melodist and continued to compose right up until the end of his life. Towards the end he also composed music for films. His music was performed by Toscanini, Heifetz, Segovia and Piatagorsky.

Robert Freeman, then Director of the Eastman School of Music says in the introduction to this recording: "Ever since the appointment of Howard Hanson as Director of the Eastman School of Music in 1924, Eastman has been on a continuing course to encourage the future of music by American composers. From the earliest years of Dr. Hanson's 40-year directorship, Eastman produced each spring a festival of new works by young Americans, including the first performances of Orchestral works by Copland, Piston, Carter, Thompson and Sessions, for example, together with the initial performances of a great many works by Eastman faculty, graduates and students. Recordings conducted by Hanson, of the music of American composers from his own and earlier generations, helped spread both familiarity with many American composers and the reputation of the Eastman School all over the world. In the meantime, the strength of Eastman's composition program remains unabated under the current faculty. We at Eastman are all very proud of the opening of a new recording series with Albany Records, a firm that continues to make the most notable accomplishments in behalf of music in America." We at Albany are equally proud that Dr. Freeman and the musicians at Eastman are working with Albany Records for this historic new series of recordings made in their lovely recording facilities, in honor of their 75 years of service to American music. You, too, will be pleased with this selection of the music of two Pulitzer Prize winning composers: the late Stephen Albert and Christopher Rouse.

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.

This CD presents a beautifully balanced program of fine American Chamber compositions. From Carter and Fine to Coleman and Ruehr, there is something here to appeal to every taste; beautifully performed and recorded. Metamorphosen is a Chamber Orchestra composed of the country's leading young musicians assembled with the goal of presenting a fresh approach to music making. The Orchestra was founded in October 1993 by Richard Lim and Scott Yoo in their belief that innovation need not come at the expense of substance. Along with performances of the classics from the repertoire, the group commissions new works from emerging composers and premieres at least one new piece each concert. Metamorphosen combines the intimacy of Chamber music with the technical virtuosity of the best of today's young musicians.

Thomas Ludwig's Violin Concerto is a lovely work. There is a reason why a violinist of the caliber of Mark Peskanov is attracted to it. The slow movement is gorgeous and the University of Miami Symphony Orchestra accompanies him as if it were a major Orchestra. It is a live performance, but very well recorded. Thomas Ludwig was born in Detroit, Michigan. He studied first with his father and then entered Juilliard on a full scholarship to study violin. At the age of 20, he was appointed Music Director and Conductor of the New York City Symphony. He studied conducting with Bernstein, von Karajan and Jean Morel. He also studied composition with John Corigliano. Today, he pursues a career as both a composer and conductor. He has served as resident conductor for the American Ballet Theater and Mikhail Baryshnikov at the Metropolitan Opera House and on tour. He has also been Music Director of the Atlanta and Washington Ballet Companies. About Ludwig and his Symphony, The New York Times wrote: "Ludwig is perfectly talented. His Symphony is vividly Orchestrated, possesses tremendous emotional intensity and yet is succinct and skillful in its control of form." Ludwig's music is immediately accessible and should appeal directly to the listener who enjoys romantic American music. Both performances are world premieres.

Leo Sowerby, whose loving sobriquet is "the Handel of Lake Michigan," lived most of his life in Chicago. He composed 550 works in all forms save ballet and opera and was the recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Prix de Rome. His works were premiered by such illustrious musicians and Organizations as Serge Koussevitsky, E. Power Biggs, the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, and the Chicago and Boston Symphony Orchestras. His 122 songs, 21 of which are heard on this disc, composed between 1909 and 1966, straddle a critical transitional period in American art song history. His earliest songs reflect the parlor and sentimental styles that were prevalent in the first decades of this century. His compositional training and his beloved models were from the French school, rather than the more dominant German school that then held sway over American concert and educational life. But by the early 1920s Sowerby's personal and American voice, founded on his prairie roots, was clear in his songs. This unique voice is heard to magnificent effect in the lovely songs contained on this recording.

John Davison (b. 1930) grew up in upper New York State and New York City. He studied music at the Juilliard lower school, Haverford College, Harvard and Eastman. Among his teachers were Randall Thompson, Walter Piston, Bernard Rogers, Howard Hanson and Alan Hovhaness. He has taught at Haverford College since 1959. His musical idiom is rooted in the great Western classic-romantic tradition with Baroque, Renaissance, jazz, modernist and folk elements mixing in at times. His Sonata for Horn and Piano was composed for the bicentennial of Franklin and Marshall College in 1987. It is a big, romantic work. The Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano was composed for the violinist who performs it on this disc, Carol Stein Amado, who gave the work its premiere in the Carnegie Recital Hall in 1976. All the works on this disc are receiving their world premiere recordings. Mr. Davison's music is most pleasing and can be easily enjoyed by anyone who has an interest in twentieth century American music.

As you might have guessed from other Gould releases in our catalog, we at Albany Records are great fans of the music of this wonderful American composer. This recording is a reissue of recordings that originally appeared on EMI in 1990 and was only available for a short time. It is a perfect introduction to his music and shows just why he is such a fine composer. From the American Salute to the American Symphonette No. 2 with its delightful Pavane, there is music here for anyone who enjoys classical music. Kenneth Klein conducts this music beautifully. He understands the Gould idiom perfectly and conveys it with great appeal. This disc has been remastered and sounds terrific and should find a wide audience.

This is an interesting recital. It is good to see the piano music of Shchedrin and the Bulgarian composer Vladigerov beginning to appear on CD. Krassimira Jordan was born in Varna, Bulgaria of Russian and Bulgarian parents. She studied in Sofia, Vienna and Moscow and was a pupil of Stanislav Neuhaus and Emil Gilels. She became a naturalized citizen of Austria and became Professor of Piano at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts from 1979-1989. After her American debut at Carnegie Hall in 1989, she joined the faculty of the Baylor University School of Music as Artist-in-Residence and Professor of Piano. Highly regarded as a teacher, her students come from all parts of the world and have won top prizes at numerous international piano competitions. She is a fine performer and this music suits her temperament perfectly. As a result, this is a most satisfying disc.

The fine American composer, Robert Ward, Pulitzer Prize winner for his opera The Crucible, studied at the Eastman School of Music, The Juilliard School, and the Berkshire Music Center. He has taught at Queens College, Columbia University, Juilliard and Duke University where he held the Mary Duke Biddle Chair in Music. He was the Director of the Third Street Music School Settlement, Assistant tot he President of Juilliard and Executive Vice-President and Managing Editor of Galaxy Music Corporation and Highgate Press before becoming president of the North Carolina School of the Arts in 1967. He retired from Duke University in 1988 and since that time has lectured widely in this country, Europe, the Far East and Latin America. He recently won the Gold Baton of the American Symphony Orchestra League and received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Robert Starer was born in Vienna and received his musical education at the State Academy in Vienna, the Jerusalem Conservatory and Juilliard. He has lived in New York since 1947 and became a United States citizen in 1957. Among his honors are two Guggenheim Fellowships. He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1994. In 1996 he was awarded the achievement award by the Music Teachers National Association "in recognition of his distinguished career in music and outstanding contributions to his profession as composer and educator." The pianist, Gerald Berthiaume, is currently as Associate Professor of Music at Washington State University where he serves as coordinator of keyboard studies. Prior to his appointment there in 1989, he served in a similar position at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. He is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music. This recital of Robert Starer's piano music offers a broad sampling of the music of a wonderful American composer.

Let's take a look at the unfamiliar music contained on this disc. About Tears David Maslanka writes: "Tears is about inner transformation, and about groping towards the voice of praise. As St. Francis and St. Ignatius have it, the proper function of the human race is to sing praise. Tears is about inner breaking, and coming to terms with the pain that hinders the voice of praise; Tears is about the movement toward the heart of love." This is a recent piece from Mr. Maslanka's pen. Dana Wilson completed his Dance of the New World the same month - 500 years later - than Columbus first landed in the New World. He wanted in this piece to pay tribute to the blending of styles and attitudes that has taken place in the Latin American region of this hemisphere where Columbus first landed. Frank Ticheli's Postcard was first performed by the University of Michigan Symphony Band on April 17, 1992. Mr. Ticheli is a graduate of the University of Michigan and now teaches at the University of Southern California where he is Assistant Professor of Music. He is also composer-in-residence with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra.

The Minneapolis Guitar Quartet was founded in 1986. From the beginning, aside from the challenge of learning to play together as a quartet, the musicians dedicated themselves to creating, through commissioning, a larger and more substantial repertoire so that the elegance and power of this medium might be successfully conveyed to a wide audience without excessive reliance on transcription. This recording presents the works of six composers whose creative talents have been focused directly on the quartet medium. The music by Kechley, Bassett, Sekiya, Vandervelde and Hovda was all premiered by the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet. The respective musical styles of these five composers represent some of the variety and wealth of musical expression that has flourished in the late twentieth century. Of the six composers, only Brouwer is a guitarist, familiar with the intricacies of the instrument as well as the guitar quartet medium; ironically his piece is a transcription of his own music. The other composers have had to find their own way - create as they compose. Together, these six are in the vanguard of those helping to create an important body of literature for guitar quartet. This is a most pleasing disc.

With this disc, we proudly welcome the Cleveland Chamber Symphony to the Albany Records family. It is one of the finest ensembles of its kind in America. It is a professional ensemble-in-residence at Cleveland State University whose mission is to present new music along with neglected masterworks from the past. It was founded in 1980 by its Music Director, Edwin London. Minnesota-born Ross Lee Finney, now emeritus professor and Composer-in-Residence at the University of Michigan School of Music, has been a prominent American composer and teacher for more than 55 years. Edwin London is a great champion of the American composer. He was born in Philadelphia and graduated from Oberlin. He began his career playing French horn, jazz and classical. He studied with Philip Greely Clapp at Iowa State. Francis Thorne, a founder of the American Composers Orchestra, left a highly successful career as a Wall Street investment broker in the mid-thirties to become first a jazz pianist and later a composer of concert music. His maternal grandfather was Gustav Kobbe, noted critic and author of the celebrated Kobbe's Opera Book, still in print and widely used. This performance of Thorne's Symphony No. 6 is a live recording of the premiere performance held on March 4, 1996.

This fascinating disc contains 30 of the most popular carols in "impossible" arrangements. Gordon Green writes: "Every year at Christmas time I'm struck by the predictability of most of the Christmas music that crowds the record stores and airwaves. In this collection, I show the Christmas classics in a different light. I take a fresh look at some of the best melodies in circulation." The "fresh look" Green is talking about uses just synthesizers to create the music and catchy and appealing it is.

Arnold Rosner is a prolific American composer whose works exceed 100 in number and steer clear, generally, of both the post-serial avant-garde movement of the late sixties and the minimalist movement that followed it. His treatment of harmony and counterpoint, along with the occasional recourse to an ethnic, Middle Eastern flavor, places his music in the esthetic milieu of Paul Hindemith, Ernest Bloch and Alan Hovhaness. He is currently on the faculty of Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York, where he teaches both standard and ethnic music. Having composed since the age of nine, he received advanced degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo while studying with Leo Smit, Henri Pousseur and Lejaren Hiller, from all of whom, in his own words, "I learned practically nothing." Founded in 1990, the Ad Hoc String Quartet has established itself as one of the Chicago area's leading Chamber ensembles. In September 1993, they gave the world premiere of Rosner's String Quartet No. 3 and in February, 1996, they gave the premiere of his Piano Quintet No. 2, Op. 103.

This is such an unusual album, such an unusual concept filled with such imagination, I will quote the artist, Jeanne Golan, who currently teaches at Bard College to give you an idea of what this disc is about. "As a pianist who performs contemporary music and works directly with composers as colleagues and friends, I have become increasingly intrigued by the issues with which composers contend in the musical expression of their thoughts. In extending this approach to music of different generations, I have been inspired to discover the ways in which composers of traditional repertoire dealt with these same issues and ultimately employed compositional methods that also stretched the boundaries of what was considered possible to create a unique university in each piece. This approach has not only allowed me to view every piece as "contemporary," but has also affected my choices in programming. Searching for works that complement each other has repeatedly revealed kinships between composers and pieces that initially seemed unrelated. I have often found that composers, though from different eras and places, grapple with the same issues, often resolving them in similar ways. The primary issue behind the collection of piano works assembled on this disc is the structuring of time, hence the title Time Tracks. Its repertoire incorporates two extreme approaches to time: one the approach that transcends it, as seen in the works by Beethoven and Curran, the other that specifically defines it both rhythmically and historically, embodied by the works of Granados and Nancarrow. Both Beethoven and Curran are composers reckoning with mortality - Beethoven with his own, Curran with his recently deceased friend, Cornelius Cardew." Ms. Golan has rethought ways to program contemporary music and her ideas certainly work on this new recital disc.

It is good news whenever a major work by Michael Colgrass comes into the catalog and Urban Requiem is a major work, lasting almost a half hour. In 1978, Colgrass won the Pulitzer Prize. His musical style contains strains of jazz, poetic quiet and rich Orchestral colors. This new work, Urban Requiem was commissioned by Gary Green and this Miami Organization. They gave it its world premiere. As they say today, Michael Daugherty is a "hot" composer with his own disc on Argo with Zinman and Baltimore. Motown Metal was premiered by the Detroit Chamber Winds in February 1994. It was inspired by the rhythms of industrial Detroit: city of automobile clamor, the 60s Motown sound and the 90s techno beat. It features instruments made only of metal. The late Swedish-born, German composer Ingolf Dahl (who eventually settled in the United States and taught at USC until his death), originally composed his Hymn and Toccata for piano solo. John Boyd from Indiana State University prepared the current band Orchestration. Clarke McAlister has written a variety of music for solo instruments, Chamber ensembles and concert band. Currently, he is editor-in-chief of Edwin E. Kalmus and Company and Masters Music Publications. He is quite prominent in Florida music circles. The University of Miami Wind Ensemble consists of the finest wind and percussion students at the University of Miami. Its director, Gary Green, is associate professor of music and director of bands at the University.

Tim Page tells Kevin Oldham's tragic story in the notes for this disc. "When I look back upon the mid-eighties and my apprentice years as music critic for The New York Times, it sometimes seems that I did only two things: cover debut concerts and write AIDS obituaries - alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, over and over again...Kevin Oldham was one of my debuts  a handsome, vibrant, self-assured and splendidly virtuosic young pianist who played his first New York recital at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1985. Eight years later, he too would die from AIDS and I would write his obituary. But by then, he had become a composer, one who had fought a desperate battle to leave the world some fresh and lovely music...He died on March 11, 1993. In the case of Kevin Oldham, AIDS ended the life of a gifted composer who was just getting started. We'll never know what he might have created. We regret the music that will never be, and we mourn for Kevin  a brave, funny, smart, articulate and compassionate man. But, through Kevin's own Herculean efforts, something has been saved. You hold the proof in your hands."f

The works recorded on this compact disc represent some of the finest contemporary American works for percussion ensemble. All of the works utilize a large array of instruments and are scored for between eight and twelve players. All the works were commissioned and premiered by the University of Oklahoma Percussion Ensemble; thus we have David Maslanka's Crown of Thorns in a performance by the group that first commissioned it. Blake Wilkins' Twilight Offering Music is one of the most distinctive pieces in the ever-growing body of American works for large percussion ensemble. With a duration of 27 minutes it is by far one of the longest and most expansive compositions for the medium and this alone secures its singularity. Compendium in a way is the opposite of Twilight Offering Music in that it lasts only 11 minutes and as the name implies distills into a brief period of time many of Wilkins' ideas about coherent Organic structures, disparate closed-ended processes, virtuosic playing and new worlds of sound. Michael Hennagin was a professor at the University of Oklahoma from 1972 until he retired in 1992 to devote himself full time to composition. He has composed in all mediums including film, television and stage. Dan Welcher was born in Rochester, New York. He is one of the most popular composers of his generation. Currently he has composed over 60 compositions.

Like a book, this CD is divided thematically into four parts: Music of the Great Poets, Our Sacred Heritage, Holocaust Suite and Music of the People. The composers represented range from the young American, Eric Whitacre to the old - Norwegian Alfred Jansen. Situated in Coral Gables, the University of Miami is the most comprehensive private research university in the southeastern United States. Its School of Music ranks among the most innovative in the nation. While building on the classical tradition, the School incorporates a contemporary approach to learning and creatively responds to the changing needs of the world of music. The Chorale is one of nine choral ensembles in the School of Music and it was founded in 1993. It has quickly established itself as one of Florida's leading collegiate choral ensembles. The voices of the chorale are chosen from across the campus, drawing both music majors and majors outside the School of Music. Note that Peter McGrath helped with the engineering of this recording.

This disc is a most interesting family portrait. Aaron is the grandfather. He was born in Siberia, educated partly in Switzerland, and spent all of his creative life in China, where he was fascinated by the music and the culture. He was largely self-taught as a composer and his music represents largely a fusion of Chinese elements - scales, colors, legend - with western instruments and forms. While he lived in China, he supported himself as a bookman and for 15 years was the head of the Shanghai Municipal Library. In 1947, he came to the United States. Long associated with the Portland Youth Philharmonic, Jacob is Aaron's son. He studied with Ernst Toch, Bernard Rogers and Aaron Copland. Today he is a most respected man in the field of classical music, recognized across the nation for the work he had done with young people. Many of his Orchestral students play with the best Orchestras in the country and abroad. David, the son of Jacob, is a composer who was educated at Harvard. He was a timpani player who wanted to conduct. He studied with his father and then at Aspen with Morel and Blomstedt. He also studied at Tanglewood with Schuller, Bernstein and Ozawa. Today, he spends most of his time composing. Daniel is his brother and he is a violist who graduated from Juilliard. He has been principal violist for the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the American Composers Orchestra. Today he is the violist of the American String Quartet. All of the music on this disc has either been composed or arranged for him. So here we have a wonderful portrait of a very remarkable family in music.

William Kraft was appointed to the Dorothy and Sherrill C. Corwin Chair in Music Composition at the University of California at Santa Barbara in September, 1991, in recognition of his long and distinguished career as a composer, conductor and teacher. He served as percussionist and timpanist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1955-1981 and he was the Orchestra's first composer-in-residence. He also served as regular guest conductor and was assistant conductor for three seasons. His music has been performed by every major American Orchestra and he has won numerous awards. Established in 1969 by music director Richard Pittman, the Boston Musica Viva is one of the oldest, most distinguished new music ensembles in the United States. With rare exceptions, a new work is premiered at each one of their concerts, usually from an American composer. Jane Manning has long been established internationally as a leading exponent of contemporary music, with more than 300 premieres to her credit. Her extensive discography includes works by Messiaen, Schoenberg and Ligeti, with conductors such as Boulez and Rattle. It is a pleasure for Albany Records to bring you such a distinguished group of performers giving us Mr. Kraft's music. All the works recorded here are world premieres.

Lola Odiaga, the Peruvian harpsichordist and fortepianist, studied piano at the Juilliard School of Music in New York and at the Hochschule fur Musik in Hamburg, and harpsichord at Yale University. She holds degrees from the Juilliard School and Yale University and studied with Edward Steuermann and Ralph Kirkpatrick. She has taught at the National Conservatory of Music in her native Lima, Wellesley College, the Hartt College of Music, the Yale University School of Music and Boston University School of the Arts. Since 1983, she has only been performing on the fortepiano. The fortepiano used in this recording is a copy of an Anton Walter instrument dated c. 1790, built by Rodney Regier of Freeport, Maine. It has a compass of just over five octaves and - as was the case with the fortepianos of the period - in many ways resembles the harpsichord more than the modern piano. It has a wooden rather than a metal frame and is strung at a lower tension with lighter gauge strings. These features of its construction are directly related to a clear and distinct tone throughout its range.

This is a live recording of the world premiere performance of this work that took place in April, 1996 and as such there is some noise and a few rough spots, but this is music of the highest order that is well worth hearing. Mr. Maslanka calls his new composition Mass, a setting of the Latin Ordinary including Hymn to Sophia, Holy Wisdom by Richard Beale. This is a very serious piece of music in a vein similar to Britten's War Requiem. Maslanka writes: "Almost from the start of my thinking about the Mass, I was moved to include the female creative or the Holy Mother, an image that has arisen in many forms in my meditative life. I asked my friend Richard Beale to consider the problem. His marvelous and almost instantaneous response was "Hymn to Sophia, Holy Wisdom," a set of seven poems on the Holy Mother theme, that I have used in my setting of the Mass as preludes to the Latin texts." As you can see from the forces listed that are needed to perform this Mass, it is a huge work. The recording itself captures beautifully the sheer magnitude of the sound of this music.

Here is a disc that makes a fine introduction to the music of an American composer whose name is most likely unfamiliar to you. Fisher Tull is as American as apple pie. He was born in Waco, Texas and died in Huntsville, Texas. After a brief sojourn with a traveling dance band, he entered the University of North Texas and earned three degrees; B. Mus. In music education, M. Mus. In music theory and a Ph.D. in composition having studied with Samuel Adler. He joined the music faculty at Sam Houston State University in 1957 and was appointed Chair of the Department in 1965, a position he held for 17 years. Most of his music is generally conservative and fairly traditional by contemporary standards, maintaining a clear tonal center spiced by carefully controlled dissonances. His Symphonic Treatise for Orchestra was conceived as a celebration for the 100-year alliance between the City of Waco and Baylor University and the silver anniversary of the Waco Symphony Orchestra. The Overture for a Legacy was commissioned by the Houston Symphony Orchestra and first performed on the Stokowski Legacy Series of concerts. The Capriccio was commissioned by the Houston Chamber Symphony and was first heard during the 1966-67 season. The Trumpet Concerto No. 1 received its first complete performance with James Austin, trumpet and Lawrence Foster conducting the Houston Symphony. "Doc" Severinsen later commissioned a Second Trumpet Concerto from Fisher Tull in 1974. This disc will be enjoyed by anyone who finds mainstream American music appealing.

Edward MacDowell was the first American composer of stature who incorporated native elements into his music and depicted, in Romantic colors, the landscape of America. He composed two Orchestral suites, both in five movements, both structured fast-slow-fast-slow-fast, with each movement being a self-contained, miniature tone poem. The first suite was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on September 24, 1891 and in keeping with the spirit of many of his works it evokes pictures of the outdoors - In a haunted forest, Summer Idyll, In October, The Shepherdess' Song and Forest Spirits. His use of native elements is especially evident in his second suite for Orchestra, which was also premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1895. Subtitled Indian Suite, all of the themes are derived from native American Indian melodies. It may also be significant that Dvorak's New York Symphony had appeared two years earlier. MacDowell composed his Sea Pieces in 1885 for solo piano. On this disc, receiving their premiere performance in a version Orchestrated by Charles Johnson, we have six of the eight pieces presented for Orchestra. Charles Johnson graduated with degrees in music from UCLA. From 1967 to 1978, he was on the faculty of Sam Houston State University where he taught music history and theory and conducted the Orchestra. Since 1973, he has pursued a dual career as a conductor and violist. This is the first digital recording of this lovely, romantic music by one of America's finest composers.

Albany Records is proud to present the first disc ever devoted to the music of the great American composer, Edgar Stillman Kelley. Kelley grew up among the pioneers from New England and New York who founded Sparta, Wisconsin. He was a direct descendant of the Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford. Sparta was no ordinary frontier village. Its Yankee settlers were lovers of music and literature and as a boy Kelley took every opportunity to steep himself in both. His mother was a writer and musician and his father was a writer and newspaper editor. While drawn to both writing and painting, Kelley decided early on to become a composer. He studied at home first with a young tutor from Germany, who had just arrived from Leipzig, and then in Chicago, where he remained for two years. He then went to Germany, where he studied with the best teachers of the day and was exposed to the music of Wagner, Liszt, Berlioz and Chopin. In 1880, he returned to America and San Francisco, where he took a job as an Organist. He composed all the time. He married a singer, who helped him promote his music. He also taught at Western College in Oxford, Ohio. He went to New York where he became a friend of Victor Herbert and even taught a semester at Yale, where he conducted the New Haven Symphony. The history of music in America is filled with musicians like Edgar Stillman Kelley. Like so many of his American contemporaries, Kelley professed to be nothing more than entertaining. He succeeds so very well as this disc devoted to his music proves. An edition of the piano music of Edgar Stillman Kelley, edited by Brian Kovach has recently been published by Mel Bay Publications.

Leo Sowerby's piano compositions span the composer's entire creative life. His very first composition, written in 1905 at the early age of ten, was a piece now lost entitled The Dawn of Day. His last important piece with piano is the Dialog for Organ and Piano, written within a year of the composer's death in 1968. Sowerby was a born pianist and in his early years he frequently performed his own music and the works of other composers as well. As he grew older, he appeared less frequently in public as a pianist and finally gave it up all together. The Organ became his primary instrument and he divided his time between composing, teaching and his work as a church musician. Dating from 1916 to 1929, the selections on this compact disc are products of the composer's youthful maturity. All these works were composed when Sowerby was in his twenties, except for the Florida Suite, which he composed when he was 34.

There is a fact in American music that can no longer be overlooked. There are a great number of composers over 65 who are very important and who are routinely overlooked by the major labels. This is shameful. In the fifties the music of Benjamin Lees, relatively speaking, was everywhere; the concert hall, RCA Victor, Turnabout, Louisville. So, when you have a magnificent pianist, Ian Hobson, performing the music of an equally magnificent composer, Benjamin Lees, you have an important disc. The Piano Sonata No. 4 was commissioned by the Ford Foundation for Gary Graffman and given its world premiere in Norfolk, Virginia. The Fantasy Variations are dedicated to Emanuel Ax who gave them their world premiere on February 1, 1984 at the Kaufmann Concert Hall in New York City. Mirrors, in six sections was composed for Ian Hobson. The first four sections were premiered by Mr. Hobson in Orchestra Hall in Chicago. Since that premiere in 1992, Mr. Lees has added two more sections. Since the work is open ended, there is no telling how many sections it will ultimately have. Here we have a disc that will really appeal to all lovers of contemporary American piano music: no - in fact, contemporary music in general.