Catalog

The 15th century poet Francois Villon, between scrapes with the law in Paris, wrote lyrics both poignant and bawdy. At the end of the 19th century, novelist R.H. Russell sentimentalized his career in a plot that borrowed the king-for-a-day motif, thus allowing Villon to defeat France's enemies and win the hand of an aristocratic lady, all in under 24 hours. Adapted as a play in 1901, by New York writer Justin McCarthy, If I Were King served as a star vehicle for E.H. Southern in a Broadway stage production. In 1923, Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart were at the very start of their careers. They devised a musical version of the McCarthy play for a Manhattan girl's school and then looked for a more prestigious venue for their collaboration. Broadway backers turned down the young artists, but liked their idea, "borrowed" it from Rodgers and Hart and commissioned the more established Rudolf Friml to fashion a professional musical from the plot. Friml's Rose Marie was then enjoying great success in New York. Born in what is today the Czech Republic in 1897, Friml enrolled at age 14 in the Prague Conservatory (which was headed by Dvorak) and completed the six-year course in three years. He toured Europe and the United States as accompanist for violinist Jan Kubelik and made a piano debut in this country onstage at Carnegie Hall in 1904. Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphony premiered his Piano Concerto two seasons later, with the composer at the piano. Friml's true calling was as a composer of songs. In 1912, he was called in by Arthur Hammerstein to complete the music for a new work which Victor Herbert had abandoned, owing to a run-in with a temperamental soprano. The resulting operetta, The Firefly, was his first Broadway success, and would be followed by many others. Friml continued to live in America for much of the 20th century long after his sentimental musical style was considered old fashioned. As late as 1969, he was celebrated by Ogden Nash on the occasion of his 90th birthday in a couplet which ended: "I trust your conclusion and mine are similar: It would be a happier world if it were Frimler."

Composer Luke Dahn says that this recording has been a true collaboration from start to finish, with every piece being written especially for pianist Viktor Valkov, who provided input at each step of the compositional process. Dahn's compositions are heard throughout the United States and abroad performed by noted new music ensembles such as the Moscow Conservatory Studio for New Music, the League of Composers Chamber Players, and others. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including the J.D. Robb International Composition Competition in 2014. He studied at the University of Iowa and Western Michigan University and is now on the faculty at the University of Utah. Viktor Valkov was the winner of the 2015 Astral Artists National Auditions and gold medalist at the 2012 New Orleans International Piano Competition. He has performed as a recitalist, orchestral soloist, and chamber musician. He is on the faculty at the University of Utah.

JoDee Davis wanted to expand the repertoire for the trombone with this recording and commissioned four composers for new works (Victoria Bond, Jennifer Higdon, Paul Rudy, and Kevin Cerovich). Then she rounded out the recording with trios for three trombones. Davis is on the faculty at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory and performs with the Trilogy Brass Trio and the Kansas City Symphony. She was principal trombone of the Spokane Symphony and second trombone of the Santa Fe Opera. She has presented recitals and master classes through the United States and at the Musik Staatliche Hochschule für Musik Trossingen. She is a graduate of Indiana University and the University of Northern Iowa. This is her second recording for Albany Records. Her collaborators on this recording include pianist Dan Velicer and trombonists Davin Bennett and Daniel Marion.

New York-born Sylvia Glickman earned bachelor's and master's degrees in performance from the Juilliard School where she was a piano student and received a Licentiate in Performance from the Royal Academy of Music. Her performance and composition awards include the Loeb Memorial Prize from Juilliard, a Fulbright Scholarship, the Hecht Prize in Composition from the Royal Academy and a Solo Recitalist Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her music, for keyboard, voice, chamber groups, orchestra and chorus, has been performed throughout the United States, in Europe and in Israel. Carved in Courage commemorates the fortitude of the Danish people who helped to save Denmark's Jews from the Nazis. Am I a Murderer? is a cantata for voice and chamber ensemble. The singer speaks and sings the text written by Frank Fox, translator of the diary of Calel Perechodnik, a Polish Jewish policeman. Perechodnik was promised by the Nazis that his family would be saved if he helped to round up Jews for deportation. He assisted the Germans, but lost his family. His diary was found after he committed suicide. The Walls are Quiet Now reflects emotions evoked by the sight of a memorial wall outside the Grnnwald S-bahn station in Berlin, Germany. This wall honors the memory of the Jews of the city, transported from that station to concentration camps.

The six works on this disc were composed over a 57-year span from 1958 to 2015. They present a series of snapshots of composer Harvey Sollberger's compositional concerns through the medium of the flute. In the 35 compositions that feature the flute, these six can be thought of as the plums, but are not the only ones by any means. Harvey Sollberger, now 80 years old, has had a distinguished career as a composer, flutist, and conductor. He co-founded the Group for Contemporary Music, the first contemporary music ensemble in residence at an American university. His music has been performed throughout the world, his discography now tops 150 commercial releases and he has taught at Columbia, the Manhattan School of Music, the Indiana University School of Music and the University of California, San Diego. The IWO Flute Quartet, named after its members' home states of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, was formed in 2011 by four leading Pacific Northwest flutists. Each member (Sydney Carlson, Leonard Garrison, Jennifer Rhyne, and Paul Taub) advocates for contemporary music and enjoys significant careers as performers and educators.

Michael Horvit is Professor of Composition and Theory at the University of Houston Moores School of Music. For 25 years he served as music director at Congregation Emanu El in Houston. During his studies at Yale University, Tanglewood, Harvard University and Boston University, Horvit's teachers were Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, Walter Piston, Quincy Porter and Gardner Read. In other words, Horvit is one of the last links between the great American Symphonic School and today's music. Not surprisingly one can hear echoes of this illustrious past in such works as the Cullen Overture and Concerto for Brass Quintet and Orchestra (on TROY265, works for orchestra), resplendent pieces which conjure up great open vistas and exuberant optimism. This exceptional disc of chamber music further reveals his traditionalist style, particularly in the String Quartet No. 2, "The Wide Missouri," whose thematic material is mostly based on one of his favorite folksongs, Shenandoah. This is truly heartfelt American music. More of Horvit's music can be heard on TROY134 and TROY533.

Do you know the name David Maslanka? Probably not and yet he is writing some of the most wonderful music. He lives on his ranch in Montana and composes music; music for himself and for us: music which is romantic, tonal, imaginative; music which is good and worth hearing by a larger audience. Maslanka was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He studied at the New England Conservatory, the Oberlin Conservatory, the Mozarteum in Salzburg and received his Ph.D. in music theory and composition from Michigan State University. His principal teachers were Joseph Wood and H. Owen Reed. A Child's Garden of Dreams s commissioned for the Northwestern University Symphonic Wind Ensemble. It was composed in the summer of 1981 and premiered by Northwestern in 1982. The Symphony No. 2 was commissioned by the Big Ten Band Directors Association in 1983. It was given its premiere at the CBDNA Convention in Evanston, Illinois. The performing group was the combined Symphonic Band and Symphonic Wind Ensemble of Northwestern University.

Robert Maggio is a composer of concert music, and scores for ballet, modern dance and theater. He is Professor of Music at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. A graduate of Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania, his music has been performed nationally and abroad. Aristotle was commissioned and first performed in 1999, by the Ithaca College Choir. Billy Collins' text is often funny, sometimes poignant, and in certain moments sharply haunting. The Irish poet Seamus Heaney wrote his poetic vision, The Wishing Tree, after the death of his mother. The imagery of envisioning his mother as a wishing tree lends itself naturally to a musical setting. The work was commissioned in 1999 by Donald Nally and the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia. The music evokes both the serenity of the dream-state and the ecstasy of the vision itself. Jacklight was commissioned by the West Chester University Concert Choir in 1997. The title of Louise Erdrich's poem refers to a torch or a light used to attract fish or game at night, holding them in thrall so they might be more easily killed. Rachel and Her Children - Small Hands, Relinquish All was commissioned by the Bucks County Choral Society for its 30th anniversary in 2002. Inspired by the relationship of sacred and secular texts in The Wishing Tree, the libretto combines the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay with David Rosenberg's poetic transformation of verses from the book of Jeremiah, and the Psalms. Rachel's lament for her children, found in the account of the slaughter of the innocents in the second chapter of the gospel of Matthew, here provides the anchor for reflection on mortality and renewal, hope and fear from the contrasting perspectives of adults and children.

Since establishing Ohio Light Opera in 1979, The College of Wooster has upheld the goals of providing young musicians with an opportunity to perform in a professional setting and of entertaining audiences with operettas which have charmed the publics of an earlier era. Liberal arts colleges are, in the words of President R. Stanton Hales, "national treasures which have provided the ideals for American undergraduate education." Of these small and independent treasures, Wooster is one of the brightest. A recent study measured the leading 50 colleges in three critical areas Ð educating scientists, educating leaders in international affairs, and educating business executives. Wooster is only one of 21 colleges to earn a place in all three groups. It is also a school that is dedicated to the performing arts with strong programs in theater and music. Steven Daigle, the artistic director for the company says: "The Ohio Light Opera Company is happy to offer Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard. No other festival here or abroad can boast a company that has dedicated itself for 25 years to the preservation and traditional presentation of all forms of opera. This "operetta haven," supported by the Wooster community has set a unique standard to which many performing arts companies aspire."

The Young Debussy comprises the songs composed by Claude Debussy before his 30th birthday that he felt were good enough to publish. The vocal writing varies, but in most of them there is the emphasis on the middle and low range characteristic of much French vocal music. Darren Chase sings all of the songs in the composer's original keys. Recordings of Debussy's songs now go back more than 100 years but the large majority feature sopranos or mezzos with the rest sung by lyric baritones. This is the first recording since 1975 where this repertoire is sung by a tenor and as such offers an enlightening experience of this music.

Percussionist and baritone vocalist Lee Hinkle, whose percussion playing has been called "rock-steady" by the Washington Post, is the principal percussionist with the 21st Century Consort and a faculty member at the University of Maryland in College Park. An active recitalist and soloist, Hinkle has performed at universities and festivals across the U.S., and with the National Symphony Orchestra and Taipei Philharmonic. His recordings can be heard on six labels. For this recording, Hinkle explores the boundaries between contemporary music and theatre, performing compositions by Greek composer Georges Aperghis and American composers Daniel Adams and Stuart Saunders Smith as well as one of Hinkle's own compositions. These works include The Authors, a marimba opera, is made up of 11 movements with spoken and sung texts excerpted from various authors' novels, poems and sonnets. The performer is tasked with speaking, singing, whistling, and acting while playing the marimba.

Theodor Berger was born in the village of Traismauer-on-the-Danube on May 18, 1905. He was a pupil of Franz Schmidt at the Academy of Music in Vienna. His compositions include a number of works for large orchestra, chorus, string quartet and music for radio, television and film. His style and technique vary according to the nature of the individual work at hand. The titles of his compositions are almost always organic, conveying the nature of each work with clarity. One of his works, Malinconia, written in 1933, brought admiration from Richard Strauss. The list of conductors who promoted Berger's music includes Furtwängler, Kleiber, Krips, Ormandy and Steinberg. However, this recording is the only one of his music that is available today. This compact disc presents the first recordings of the orchestral compositions of Miguel Del Aguila. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1957, Del Aguila moved to the United States in 1978 and studied at the San Francisco Conservatory and in Vienna where he has lived since 1982. The rhythmic propulsiveness in much of Del Aguila's music derives from Latin American sources. Another influence is American blues. Beyond these influences, there is a very personal sense of drama in his music, which is partly the result of "programs" or stories of the composer's own devising - which is the case for the works on this recording.

Composer, concert presenter, educator and arts administrator, Theodore Wiprud has played many important roles in American musical life since the 1980s. His ongoing work with musicians, students, and communities -- currently as Director of Education at the New York Philharmonic and host of the Philharmonic's Young People's Concerts -- corresponds with music described as "rewarding to perform," "warmly received by audiences," and "destined to set a high standard." Theodore Wiprud came of age as a composer as the rigorous precepts of both serialism and classic minimalism yielded to a flowering of musical plurality. His works characteristically employ a freely tonal approach to harmony, convey specific emotional climates, and often reflect aspects of spiritual experience. This is the first commercial recording dedicated to his music.

Christopher Theofanidis' music has been performed by many of the world's leading performing arts organizations, from the London Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic to the San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and the American Ballet Theatre. A two-time Grammy nominee, Theofanidis is currently on the faculties of Yale University and the Aspen Music Festival. This recording of two of his concertos is performed by the Albany Symphony conducted by David Alan Miller, which is known for its commissioning and performances of music by American composers. Chee-Yun, violin soloist is a winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and has performed with many of the world's foremost orchestras. Viola soloist Richard O'Neill is the newly appointed violist of the Takács Quartet. An EMMY Award winner, two time Grammy nominee and Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, he has appeared as soloist with the world's top orchestras.

Things Fall Apart, a work for voice/narration and small ensemble, is based on the landmark novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. It tells the story of Okonkwo, a village leader, who through a series of unfortunate events and the coming of Europeans, ultimately takes his own life. Things Fall Apart was written in 2011 and was commissioned by Odekhiren Amaize, who gave the world premiere performance with the musicians on this recording. Composer Roger Vogel has more than 140 compositions to his credit. He is on the faculty at the University of Georgia. He has received awards and prizes from the Roger Wagner Choral Composition Competition and the Delius Composition Competition, among others. Nigerian-American Odekhiren Amaize has studied voice at the University of Texas at Austin, Indiana University and the St. Petersburg State Conservatory. His other professional teaching and research interests include promotion and marketing of the arts, arts management and creative advertising through literature. He is currently on the faculty at the Canadian University in Dubai. His recordings appear on the Musicians Showcase and MSR Classics labels.

Tanya Bannister's career began with her victories at the Concert Artists Guild International Competition and the New Orleans International Piano Competition, confirming her status among the leading pianists of her generation. Ms. Bannister has a special affinity for contemporary music. As she says, "I find the experience of working with composers to be an enlightening and energizing one..." Three works on this recording Del Tredici, Farrin, and Theofanidis were commissioned for her by Concert Artists Guild.

Karen Beres and Christopher Hahn, members of the CanAm Piano Duo, have been presenting innovative programs of duet and two-piano repertoire since 2002. They received the silver medal at the 2008 International Chamber Music Ensemble Competition in Boston and a distinguished ranking at the 2009 IBLA Grand Prize competition in Ragusa, Italy. As avid proponents of contemporary music, Beres and Hahn perform a varied repertoire of new works and masterpieces of the 20th century. Karen Beres is on the faculty at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and Christopher Hahn serves on the faculty at the University of Montana. The program chosen for this recording includes a world premiere of David Maslanka's This Is The World; Libby Larsen's Gavel Patter based on American auctioneering patter and concludes with Lutoslawski's Paganini Variations in an arrangement for two pianos with added percussion parts.

Bonhoeffer was conceived as a concert work in a theatrical context by composer Thomas Lloyd. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was one of the most influential Christian theologians of the 20th Century. He returned to Germany from the United States to become an active leader of the Confessing Church, which actively resisted the capitulation of the establishment Lutheran and Catholic churches to the fascist leadership of Adolf Hilter. He was involved in the unsuccessful plot to assassinate Hitler and suffered imprisonment and death, being hanged at Flossenbürg Concentration Camp a few weeks before Germany's surrender. He fell in love with Maria von Wedemeyer and was engaged to her shortly before his arrest. The text for Bonhoeffer is adapted from the writings of both Bonhoeffer and von Wedemeyer. Thomas Lloyd is on the faculty at Haverford College; the artistic director of the Bucks County Choral Society; and director of music at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral. His music has been performed by many choirs — professional, collegiate, community, and high school. The Crossing is a professional chamber choir based in Philadelphia conducted by Donald Nally and dedicated to the commissioning and performance of new music. They have collaborated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the International Contemporary Ensemble, Bang on a Can, and the American Composers Orchestra, among many others. They premiered John Luther Adams' Sila: the breath of the world in collaboration with the Mostly Mozart Festival in 2014. Their discography includes six recordings and they have been hailed in reviews as "superb" (New York Times) and "ardently angelic" (The Los Angeles Times). Under conductor Donald Nally's leadership, The Crossing has commissioned and premiered more than 50 works for chorus.

The distinguished American composer Thomas Pasatieri is well known for his operas, having composed 22, as well as for his hundreds of songs and other vocal works. In fact, his first symphony, written at age 63 came about because of his association with the University of Kentucky and their production of his opera, The Hotel Casablanca. His Symphony No. 2 was written for conductor John Nardolillo and the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra as well, while Symphony No. 3 was commissioned and premiered by the Northwest Sinfonietta. These are world premiere recordings of these works.

Thomas Sleeper's Einstein's Inconsistency is a series of eight operas, the longest being about 20 minutes with the shortest just under a minute. On the surface, the operas seem unrelated, but each acts as a sort of mosaic tile to create a treatise on the very nature of existence. What all the characters have in common (a king, a bureaucrat, a critic, a grieving man, a heretic, a priest, a paranoid woman, and finally God) is that they are all at the brink of discovering what it means to exist. When taken as a whole, Einstein's Inconsistency takes the listener into a sort of sonic funhouse. One cannot experience this work and remain unaltered by it. It is clearly a deeply personal piece for the composer and contains some of his most inventive and powerful music to date.

Thomas Sleeper enjoys an active dual career as composer and conductor. His compositions include three symphonies, six operas, 14 concerti and numerous chamber works. His music is regularly performed through the U.S., in Europe, Asia and South America. He is director of orchestral activities at the University of Miami's Frost School of Music and music director of the Florida Youth Orchestra. With this world premiere recording of four of his concerti, we discover a composer in full control of his considerable faculties. His musical voice is oblique, as language in a dream, which tends to evaporate the more you attempt to sharpen your focus. These works display a composer with something interesting and important to say in a voice that is uniquely, authentically and unmistakably his.

Thomas Sleeper enjoys a highly prolific career as both composer and conductor. An active guest conductor in the U.S. and abroad, Sleeper has appeared with more than 30 orchestras on four continents. His compositional oeuvre to date includes two symphonies, two orchestral song cycles, eight concerti, six operas, numerous chamber and solo works and music for film. Sleeper is the Director of Orchestral Activities at the University of Miami's Frost School of Music.

For many years, here at Albany Records, we have had the idea of doing a recording of American music that would tie in to horse racing - specifically the August season at Saratoga. Thoroughbred Thunder is the result and it has an appeal and charm well beyond its initial idea. Obviously, all of the selections have something to do with horses and racing, so any place that has a race track, or a racing audience will find this disc most entertaining. It should be a best seller, not only at Saratoga, but at Churchill Downs, Belmont and any other place there is a track. What about the music? It does sound like what you would hear at a circus. It has a jolly, albeit, repetitive nature to it, but this will only make the disc appeal to a wide variety of listeners: the listener for whom the composers on this disc they have only read about, never having heard a note of their music to the listener who is looking for something just as entertaining and charming as the title suggests.

Fueled by the brashness of a young nation, nineteenth century America produced a group of composers as diverse as the people who created the United States. They created a body of music that was distinctly American in sound and spirit. They were teachers, conductors, performers, publishers and administrators, but first and foremost, they were composers. Composers of music that moved the feet, sang the praises and expressed the hopes and desires of the American people. Who were they? Francis Johnson (1792-1844) was an American-American probably born in Philadelphia. Hailed during his lifetime as America's first native born master of music, he was a skilled performer on the keyed bugle, violin and piano. William Henry Humiston (1869-1923) was born in Marietta, Ohio. Easily the most enigmatic of the composer on this recording, Humiston was primarily an organist. He studied composition with Edward MacDowell from 1986-1899 and became assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1916. Harry Rowe Shelley (1858-1947) was one of the few American composers of his generation to study exclusively in the United States. Born in New Haven, Shelley studied at Yale University with Gustav Stoeckell and later with Dudley Buck and Antonin Dvorak in New York. Shelley was an organist at various churches in Manhattan and Brooklyn until his retirement in1936. George Whitefield Chadwick (1954-1931) was an American original, an independent Yankee who rose from humble origins to a position of prominence on his own merits. Founder of the Music Teachers National Association, Chadwick used his salary from his father's insurance firm to finance his musical education. Edgar Stillman Kelley (1857-1944) was a prolific composer of programmatic works noted for his innovative orchestration. Born in Sparta, Wisconsin, Kelley studied with Clarence Eddy in Chicago with further studies in Stuttgart. Kelley taught at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music for more than 20 years.

Thoughts and Prayers is an album of tributes that draw upon composer Larry Bell's personal, social, national, and international awareness. The music is drawn from a solemn personal conviction and desire to preserve the lives of others in our memory. It is also a simple act of bearing witness to events that may be all too soon forgotten or too painful to contemplate. Bell offers four works for solo piano interspersed with two works for soprano, cello/viola, and piano. Award-winning composer Larry Bell's music has been commissioned and performed by a distinguished array of musicians, ensembles, and orchestras. He has taught at The Juilliard School, the Boston Conservatory, New England Conservatory, and the Berklee College of Music. He is joined on this recording by mezzo-soprano Jennifer Webb, cellist Sam Ou, pianist Deborah Nemko, and violist David Wallace.

Looking back over the past 100 years, it would seem that the string quartet has been the most popular outlet for contemporary composers' most intimate thoughts. It may have taken longer for the unique blend of violin, piano and cello to catch up in terms of repertoire, but this remarkable disc displays the diverse voices that can be heard in this form. The Finn Segerstam has been best known as an orchestral conductor and a very prolific composer (as of January 2nd of this year, he had composed 173 symphonies). This Trio is a perfect example of the free-flowing, almost improvisational style he calls "free-pulsative." Needless to say, Hans Werner Henze has now achieved status as one of the world's most significant composers, and his early Kammersonate reflects the neo-classical influences of the post-War era. Both Sharafyan and Mansurian are Armenian. Sharafyan's music is rooted in ancient Armenian culture, while Mansurian's approach is in a more personalized, mystical vein. Finally, the Baird Trio's cellist, Jonathon Golove, has contributed a work using material from an opera based on Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest. The Baird Trio, in residence at the University of Buffalo, performs a wide range of repertoire, devoting particular attention to rarely heard and recent original works for their medium. The members believe the piano trio has a significant role to play in 21st century musical life.

Molly Morkoski introduces her disc noting that "The selections on this disc encompass my musical journey as a college and graduate student through my time as a beginning professional in New York City. Three of the works represent my time in study with teaches whose musical input and genius still instructs my work today...There is the traditional repertoire of my youth and undergraduate studies, the period of discovery and love of new harmonic and rhythmic structures from my time as a master's student, and a final synthesis and balance of all styles from my time as both a doctoral student and professional musician in New York City." Morkoski has performed as a soloist and collaborative artist throughout the U.S., Europe and Japan, and has appeared at major concert halls and festivals around the world. She was a Fulbright scholar and the recipient of the Teresa Sterne Career Grant and the Thayer-Ross Awards. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Indiana University and SUNY-Stony Brook. Currently she is on the faculty at CUNY's Lehman College.

It might be said that the composers on this recording represent three aspects of what Gilbert Chase called "Boston Classicism." Each composer had close ties to the musical life of Boston, and in his own way, each composer reflected European classical traditions. Typical of turn-of-the-century ideals, the two American-born composers, Parker and Heilman, studied in Germany, then brought back to New England the romantic European style that was then considered more acceptable than less cultured American styles. Paradoxically, Samuel Adler was born in Germany, but he studied in Boston. Even so, his style is solidly based on European classic techniques, especially on his love of Bach and Handel. The Rawlins Piano Trio was founded in the summer of 1987 at the University of South Dakota and named by the trio in honor of their principal benefactors. The trio has dedicated itself to performing works by American composers, as well as the more traditional piano trio literature. Performing throughout the United States, the Rawlins Piano Trio has been invited to perform for the International Sonneck Society for American Music and continues a very active concert schedule.

This disc contains three wonderful American works for piano, two of which, the Converse and the Oldberg, are receiving their world premiere performances here. The least known figure on the disc has to be Arne Oldberg. Who was he? He was the teacher of Howard Hanson for starters. He was born and lived in the Chicago area. His father, Oscar Oldberg, founded in 1886 and was the first Dean of the School of Pharmacy at Northwestern University. His son, Dr. Eric Oldberg, became President of both of the Chicago Board of Health and the Orchestral Association, the governing body of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Arne was appointed Professor of Music at Northwestern University in 1899, and later Dean of the graduate school, a position he held until he retired in 1941. Mary Louise Boehm writes: "I met Mr. Oldberg after he had retired. I premiered his Third Piano Concerto with the Chicago Civic Orchestra. Oldberg himself played for me his Piano Sonata which is recorded here. He also coached me, explaining his ideas about the piece to me." Frederick Shepherd Converse never had to worry about money as he was born into a prominent Boston family. He studied with John Knowles Paine at Harvard and also George Whitefield Chadwick. In 1896, he went to Munich where he studied with Joseph Rheinberger. For awhile, he taught at the New England Conservatory and Harvard, but he soon retired to his estate in Westwood, Massachusetts, near Boston, where he lived the rest of his life. Nothing much needs to be said as way of introduction for Amy Beach except to say that Mary Louise Boehm is an expert in the performance of her music. Her recording of the Beach Piano Concerto is still considered definitive.

Jake Heggie composed this musical play in three acts for Frederica von Stade, who has had a large influence on his composing career. Heggie was working in the press office of the San Francisco Opera when he first met von Stade. She listened to some of his songs and became so enthused that Heggie received a commission for his first opera. Three Decembers is taken from a play titled Some Christmas Letters and tells the story of the emotional lives of three people: mother, adult daughter and son through letters and phone calls during three Decembers in three different decades of their lives.

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.

The Albany Symphony, conducted by David Alan Miller, gives world premiere performances of two commissioned works by the distinguished American composer Michael Torke. Torke's music has been called "some of the most optimistic, joyful and thoroughly uplifting music to appear in recent years." (Gramophone) Hailed as a "master orchestrator whose shimmering timbral palette makes him the Ravel of his generation" (New York Times), Michael Torke has created a substantial body of works in virtually every genre. Torke has served as Composer In Residence for the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and has founded Ecstatic Records. The two works on this recording include a concerto for piano and orchestra titled Three Manhattan Bridges. Torke uses bridges as a metaphor for connecting to an earlier stance that music once had of a direct relationship with its audience. The second work, titled Winter's Tale is a concerto for cello and orchestra. Though not based on Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, it is inspired by lines from the play.