Music of Harold Farberman, Vol. 1

Harold Farberman’s career as a conductor has overshadowed his achievements as a composer. In fact, while a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Farberman turned first to composition as a further creative outlet, which in turn led to his more visible conducting career. From the mid-fifties onward, when he composed his first work, Evolution, for soprano, French horn and seven percussionists, Farberman has never stopped creating music. Farberman was born in New York City’s Lower East Side. Coming from a family of musicians (his father was the drummer in a famous 1920’s Klezmer band; his eldest brother was also a drummer) it seemed inevitable that he pursue music as a career. After graduating from Juilliard on a percussion scholarship in 1951, he immediately joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra percussion section. With a performer’s knowledge of percussion instruments and a dissatisfaction with their conventional treatment, he became an early advocate for the use of percussion sonorities as a major voice in compositional structures. His very first work, Evolution, written in 1954 before he began formal studies in composition, is scored for over 100 percussion instruments and has been recorded four times, once by Leopold Stokowski. Note the special way we are featuring Mr. Farberman this month; not only as the conductor of the fine Bazelon orchestral disc (TROY370), but here he also is represented as a composer.