Dan Welcher, a professor at the University of Texas, composed Haleakala: How Maui Snared the Sun in 1991, when he was composer-in-residence at the Honolulu Symphony. The text, by Ann McCutchan, is drawn on a Polynesian folktale that sketches an origin for the seasons (yes, they do have them in Hawaii). Welcher's music, beginning with a Copland-esque vocabulary, follows the text closely but has convincing arcs of it's own; it is not a film soundtrack. Hawaiian percussion and bits of melody are employed. The story centers on a youthful trickster god named Maui, whose namesake is presumably one of the present Hawaiian islands. The narrator is none other than actor Richard Chamberlain.

Like Mozart's, the two string quintets of Brahms are scored for two violins, two violas and cello. The choice is characteristic. The register of the violas and the richness of texture that such an instrumentation can impart, whether in chamber music or in orchestral writing, was very typical of Brahms, and reflected in his music for the piano. He had first attempted the form in 1862, using two cellos, as Schubert had done, but had destroyed it, replacing it first with an arrangement for two pianos, and later, in a final version, as a piano quintet. Brahms had intended his String Quintet in G major, Op. 111, as his last chamber music composition. He wrote it in the summer of 1890 at Bad Ischl, following his usual custom of composing during summer holidays spent away from the city. It was, in the event, to be followed by four further compositions, the Clarinet Trio, the Clarinet Quintet, and two Clarinet Sonatas, the last also known in an effectively autumnal version for viola, an instrument offered in the other works as an alternative to the clarinet. The G major Quintet was first performed in Vienna on 11th November in the year of it's composition. It starts with a movement derived from sketches for a fifth symphony, allowing the cello an orchestrally conceived first subject. For the second subject Brahms turns to Vienna for inspiration. There is a shift to B flat major in the central development, further modulation leading to the return of the original key and thematic material in recapitulation. The D minor slow movement allows free variations on the opening material, until the theme returns in a simpler form, originally played by the first viola. The third movement opens in a melancholy G minor, the feeling dispelled by a G major trio section, which has the last word, after the re-appearance of the G minor material. The quintet ends with a Vivace ma non troppo presto, a rondo that finds a place for much else that is thoroughly Austrian or Austro-Hungarian in mood, ending in an energetic Hungarian czárdás.

There's certainly a niche for a budget series devoted to Dvorák's oeuvre for violin and piano. The violinist here, Qian Zhou, at first might not seem a familiar name, but many will remember her participation in the TV documentary featuring the late Isaac Stern's visit to China, "From Mao to Mozart", which has been broadcast by networks throughout the world. The American pianist Edmund Battersby accompanies Zhou with praiseworthy skill and sensitivity. Their program begins with a honeyed and alluring account of the lovely F minor Romance. It's good for a change to hear it played with keyboard accompaniment rather than in the orchestral edition as a makeweight filler on discs with the A minor concerto.


The Sonata in F has been surprisingly neglected on CD, making this impressive reading doubly welcome. But the two Supraphon recordings by Josef Suk are in a class apart in many ways, for Suk has one of the most personal, distinctive, and instantly recognizable tones around, and he plays this music with forceful insight and complete lack of self-aggrandizing rhetoric. Zhou and Battersby play with tremendous fire and energy (try them in the sizzling finale of Op. 57 for example), and also get plenty of punch and drama where it's needed, as in the big development section of the first movement of the F major sonata. But I wonder if anyone ever played the Four Romantic Pieces more bewitchingly than Itzhak Perlman and Samuel Sanders on their EMI recording, which also includes the Sonatina in G Op. 100. In both works, Perlman's masterful technique and matchless skill in vocalizing and inflecting his sound lends something special to his performances. Zhou hasn't the same skills--at least not yet--but plays with fine technical command and considerable feel for the music. Hopefully, these artists can retain such a consistently high level of musicianship in the next volume of this continuing cycle.
--Michael Jameson, ClassicsToday.com

This recording, the first devoted entirely to the music of Paul Fetler, features Ann Arbor poet and attorney Thomas H. Blaske as narrator in the evocative Three Poems by Walt Whitman, written to commemorate the American Bicentennial in 1976.

In December 2006, Gramophone Magazine named Dutch pianist Ralph van Raat “one to watch.” Now, with his second recording for Naxos, van Raat tackles one of the most important works of the modern piano literature: Frederic Rzewski’s fiendishly difficult set of 36 piano variations, The People United Will Never Be Defeated!

The People United Will Never Be Defeated! was written in only two months on a commission from American pianist Ursula Oppens, after Rzewski met Chilean composer Sergio Ortega. Three months before Salvador Allende’s death, Ortega heard a street-singer shout El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido!, which made him think immediately of a tune to accompany these words. A day later, the pop group Quilapayun played the melody. Since then, the tune has become an impassioned international symbol against any form of dictatorship. It was no surprise that Ortega and the politically leftist Rzewski greatly impressed and inspired each other when they met in Italy a few years later, resulting in Rzewski’s vision of this emblematic song.

One of the striking elements of this variation work is its length; the composition is a marathon for both the listener and for the performer. The extensive duration of its 36 variations is symbolic of the human struggle for change. Any struggle feels long, with many hurdles obstructing the final goal. The variations themselves all symbolize the different phases and aspects of a struggle: this readily explains the huge array of compositional styles that Rzewski has used, from angry, highly-energized modernism, via melancholic references to blues, calculated dense polyphony and nostalgic folk-music to written-out free jazz passages. Rzewski incorporates contemporary piano effects in some variations, which he charges with an unusual dramatic meaning (for example, the sound of a slammed piano lid in Variation 11, reminds one of a gunshot). Throughout all variations the intervals of Ortega’s theme are always present, whether they are used as a twelve-tone row or as a basis for a fugal passage.

Also featured on this recording is the popular Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues, which was written in 1979 as part of the set North American Ballads. The basis for this work is an existing song bearing the same name, which cotton-mill workers used to sing while working.

Eric Moe is an alchemist of expressive extremes, from what he calls 'beautiful quiet music' to 'the rough, raucous stuff'. His exquisitely controlled music distils rare eloquence, grace, force and beauty from the incongruous elements of pop, rock, jazz.

Andy Teirstein' background in movement theater has given him a unique perspective on the dramatic possibilities of composition. The works heard here translate theatrical physicality into a variety of musical impulses, drawing inspiration from.

David Winkler has composed some two hundred works to date, including operas, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, choral music and song cycles. In recent years, he has developed a unique and powerful style which at once connects with traditional a.

Based on the true story of two teenage lovers the Holocaust tore apart forever, the dramatic song cycle for a Look or a Touch casts long-awaited light on the fate of gay Germans in the Holocaust. By noted young American opera composer Jake Heggie.

HOIBY A Pocket of Time. Pierrot. In the Wand of the Wind. Lady of the Harbor. The Lamb. Where the Music Comes From. To an Isle in the Water. Winter Hubris. Jabberwocky. Lied der Liebe. Nuits. I Was There. Autumn. Evening. The Darkling Thrush. Last Letter Home. Goodby, Goodby World. The Nightingale and the Lark • Julia Faulkner (sop); Andrew Garland (bar); Lee Hoiby (pn) • NAXOS 8.559375 (75: 12)

"With the exception of Robert Ward (still active at 92, last I heard), Lee Hoiby (now 83) is probably America’s oldest traditional neo-Romantic still composing. Although he has made valuable contributions to most musical genres, his songs, choral anthems, and operas represent his most distinguished efforts. Hoiby’s musical language places his best efforts in the stylistic vicinity of such composers as Samuel Barber and Ned Rorem, while his lesser efforts call to mind the music of Gian Carlo Menotti. But this is not to suggest that Hoiby doesn’t have a voice of his own; indeed, he does, although it is perhaps not such a strikingly individual one. Less pretentious than Rorem’s, Hoiby’s music is even more resolutely tonal and diatonic than that of his three confreres, and more consonant harmonically as well, although fluid modulations, chromatic and modal ambiguities, and well-placed dissonances keep things active and interesting.

Hoiby’s songs display a remarkably consistent sense of good taste: though many of his texts deal with intense, vulnerable emotions, rarely, if ever, does he cross the line into kitsch. In addition, his workmanship, sensitivity to language, and wide range of expression are on a par with Barber’s, placing them among the most sensitive and rewarding of American art songs.

Lee Hoiby’s songs are part of the vocal repertoires of most singers who include music of the 20th century on their programs. Listeners with a taste for neo-Romantic lyricism are strongly urged to sample this music if they are not already familiar with it, and Naxos’s budget price keeps the risk at a minimal level."

FANFARE: Walter Simmons