Inspired by diaries, letters, and personal accounts from the 1860s, Rappahannock County is a music-theatre work which movingly and dramatically commemorates the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War. The location of the Rappahannock River as a border between north and south is a metaphor for the region's many conflicts. Performed by a cast of five singers who play over 30 rôles, the piece brings this dramatic historical period to life in songs which express the devastating impact of the Civil War on all of the people who endured it.

Although he is a prolific composer of operas, symphonies and concertos, songs lie at the core of Daron Hagen’s output. With over 350 published art songs, he has embraced and extended the great lineage of American song exemplified by Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein and Ned Rorem, and is now considered one of the foremost twenty-first century composers for the voice. The meticulously crafted and wholly idiomatic examples included here have been recorded under the composer’s supervision with his chosen performers, members of Lyric Fest, Philadelphia’s renowned song series.

This collection of songs with voice and clarinet has at its heart Lori Laitman’s profoundly moving cycle I Never Saw Another Butterfly, which sets the words of hope and desolation written by children imprisoned in the Terezín concentration camp. Inspired by this poignant music, Kristine Hurst-Wajszczuk and Denise Gainey commissioned a follow-up, The Secret Exit, on poems by Nobel Laureate Nelly Sachs that reflect on life and death. Newly arranged for voice and clarinet, Living In The Body is a cycle about love, memory and resilience. The program is completed with Diana Rosenblum’s delightful setting of Winter Rain and Kalmen Opperman’s haunting Unseul.

This recording of choral works showcase a group of composers who are or were once faculty members of the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, CUNY. The widely differing languages and poetic aesthetics set by these composers represent the concept of “Songs of Peace and Praise,” from symbolic, descriptive pieces such as Bright Sheng’s “Two Folk Songs from Qinghai” to tender and moving interpretations of traditional texts such as Allen Brings’ “In paradisum.” The voices of The New York Virtuoso Singers and Queens College combine to express the universal nature of shared experience.

Born in New York in 1928, Nicolas Flagello began his career as a concert pianist touring widely in the States and Europe. During his student years he had also been a conducting pupil of Dimitri Mitropoulos, and in 1962 was appointed as Music Director of the Rome Symphony Orchestra. As a composer he studied with Vittorio Giannani, an American of Italian descent whose mentor had been Goldmark. It comes as no surprise therefore to find that Flagello inherited a cosmopolitan background, and on his death, at the early age of 66, he left a considerable catalogue of scores, the earliest dating back to his early twenties, though he was forty before he completed his first symphony. Looking back at a previous Flagello review I described his idiom as 'Korngold orchestrating Hindemith's thematic material', a description I would be happy to attach to the present disc. I could add 'Rachmaninov meets Hollywood' to set the scene for the First Piano Concerto, its opening in a rich and dramatic mood offering unlimited space for virtuoso solo display. Conventional relaxed Andante comes before we turn full circle for another shot of brilliant orchestral colours. For Dante's Farewell we are in the world of opera, the big scene highly rewarding for the solo soprano. The Saxophone Quartet Concerto - his last completed work - is highly engaging, its lyrical centrepiece offset by the wild conclusion full of spine tingling excitement. Performances are of mixed origin, but share the same degree of conviction, with soloists that are unfailingly superb, the gorgeous voice of Susan Gonzalez being a major discovery that I am itching to hear again. Sound quality is good, and has the bass drum ever been more realistically captured than in the finale of the saxophone concerto? One of the most enjoyable American music discs I have heard.

"David's Review Corner"
June, 2006

Nicolas Flagello was one of those composers who was a skilled craftsman, and very much a member of his "school", that school being American "neo" something-or-other (fill in the blank with either "classical" or "romantic", it doesn't much matter which). If you like the school, and there's plenty to like, then you will like Flagello. During the dark days of the 1960s and '70s, tonally speaking, facing little if any prospect of performance, he left some of his larger works in short score, hence Anthony Sbordini's sensitive orchestration of Dante's Farewell, a moving scena for soprano based on works by Mrs. Dante. It's a lovely, affecting piece that would have been wonderful had it been sung by someone with a voice far more appealing than that of Susan Gonzalez.

The First Piano Concerto is a bold, passionate, memorably tuneful work that takes its romanticism seriously. There's plenty of storm and stress, and my only quibble is that there doesn't seem to be any particular motivation for the piano and orchestra to divide the musical argument the way that they do. In that sense, it's an odd piece, but still a good listen. Tatjana Rankovich already has recorded Flagello's Second and Third Concertos, and she knows what she's doing, as does the orchestra under John McLaughlin Williams.

Best of all, though, is the Concerto Sinfonico, a late work dating from 1985. This has to be the best piece ever written for saxophone quartet and orchestra--not that there's all that much competition, but it really does work extremely well. The timbres that Flagello exploits are consistently ear-catching, the argument easy to follow but rewarding as well. The performance also sounds very comfortable--inside the idiom and aptly high-spirited. The Rutgers orchestra (of New Jersey) acquits itself proudly, and despite the different venues, the sonics are consistently good.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

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.

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

The Naxos Deutsche Schubert-Lied-Edition: Schubert set the poetry of over 115 writers to music. He selected poems from classical Greece, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, from eighteenthcentury German authors, early Romantics and Biedermeier poets.