Temple University Wind Symphony

Rimsky-Korsakov's three works for solo instruments and military band, the Concerto for Trombone (1877), the Variations for Oboe (1878) and the Concertstuck for Clarinet (1878), date from his years as Inspector of the Imperial Russian Naval Bands (1873-1884). Not only do these works testify to the growing expertise in Imperial Russian military music performance (doubtless as a result of the newly established St. Petersburg and Moscow Conservatories), but they also give us some insight into Rimsky's ever-evolving compositional thinking. The composer acknowledged as much, writing in his memoirs that they were "written primarily to provide the military band concerts with solo pieces of a less hackneyed natures than the usual: secondly that I myself might master the virtuoso style so unfamiliar to me, with its solo and tutti, its cadences, etc." And in many ways these three pieces constitute "experiments" in that combination of ensemble sonority and solo virtuosity that earmark Scheherazade (188) as a masterpiece of Orchestral wizardry. The first performance of Karel Husa's Music for Prague 1968 was given at the Music Educators National Conference in Washington, DC in 1969. The work was commissioned and premiered by the Ithaca College Concert Band with Kenneth Snapp, conductor. Since that time, it has received over 7,000 performances in both its original version for concert band, and the composer's adaptation for symphony Orchestra. Prokofiev began composing marches for wind band in the mid 1930s, during the period when he returned to the Soviet Union. His first was the Athletic Festival March from 1935, in which he imagined a festival march for millions of young Soviet athletic. As well, the three soloists on this disc are all or have been members of the Philadelphia Orchestra.