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American Classics - Siegmeister: Piano Music Vol 2 / Boulton

Naxos

Available as CD

~~$19.99~~ $9.99

Aug 01, 1999

If you're encountering the late American, New York born composer Elie Siegmeister for the first time, skip the first five tracks for now. Cue up Track Six to his gritty, uncompromising 1964 Second Sonata. The one movement work commences with stabbing, isolated pitches. These work their way into petulant clusters and stark, flickering triads. Leaping rhythmic patterns forge a grim, motoric path of no return, on which teasing jazz flourishes and starburst, two-handed arpeggios provide breezy relief. Siegmeister's predilection for granitic sonorities and bleak lyricism informs both his early 1932 Theme & Variations and his notey, rigorous Third Sonata from 1979. Five movements from the 1985 suite "These Shores" depict a quintet of American writers, whose identities are difficult to decipher without a score card. Yet this composer could write simple, accessible music too. Turn now to the opening "Sunday in Brooklyn" suite, a five movement work laced with wistful tunes and gentle, wrong-note Gershwinisms. This is music that deserves to be played much more than it is. One regrets that the composer, who died in 1991, didn't live to hear pianist Kenneth Boulton's dynamically charged, fiercely committed, and brilliantly virtuosic performances. He would have been delighted.--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

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American Classics - Siegmeister: Piano Music Vol 2 / Boulton

~~$19.99~~ $9.99
CD

Naxos

Aug 01, 1999

8559021

On Wings Of Lightning Vol. 3

Naxos

Available as CD

~~$19.99~~ $9.99

Aug 01, 1999

This recording celebrates Sousa's important early associations with dance and the music theatre. Picture a young John Philip Sousa, a tiny young man aged eleven, confidently standing in front of a group of much older musicians, playing his violin in the style of the famous Strauss and leading his own popular dance orchestra as Washington's society swirls and dances in front of him. It is impossible to overestimate the effect this interaction of the young man, his orchestra and the dancers was to have on the later Sousa -the composer to be. He was once quoted as saying, "I want my marches to make a man with a wooden leg stand up and dance." The dance never left him. Dancing rhythms for ever permeated his compositions, marches and dances alike. A young Dance Prince begat the March King. Soon also, his musical activities brought him to the theatre, where he began to experience the close and often raucous give and take of audience and performer that constituted the popular side of nineteenth century American theatre and early vaudeville. By the age of 21 he was the leader, arranger and concert master of the orchestra at Ford's Theatre in Washington. Later he led the Chestnut Street Theatre Orchestra in Philadelphia. Once again the magical chemistry of music and rhythm, as it reaches for audiences, became central to the composer's thinking. While many of the dances found here stem from this early period of Sousa's life, these initial encounters with the infectiousness of music and how it infuses dancers and listeners never left him. Throughout his long and sparkling career he continued to write music for each new craze: waltzes, gallops, two-steps, gavottes, tangos, cakewalks, rags, polkas, marches of course, and sometimes even a foxtrot or two.

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On Wings Of Lightning Vol. 3

~~$19.99~~ $9.99
CD

Naxos

Aug 01, 1999

8559029

Meredith Willson: Symphony No. 1 and 2 / Stromberg, Moscow SO

Naxos

Available as CD

~~$19.99~~ $9.99

Oct 01, 1999

Meredith Willson, certainly one of the most remarkable individuals in the history of American music, is finally given his due by these world premiere recordings of his two symphonies of 1936 and 1940.
The First Symphony was written as a commemorative piece for the 30th anniversary of the San Francisco earthquake of 1916. But rather than recall the horror of that event, the piece is more of a tone poem celebrating the city. The second movement, however, is poignant in its evocation of a city rebuilding itself. The rising opening violin line, emulating a rebirth out of the ashes, is particularly effective.
The Second Symphony, another work celebrating the glory of California, has a vague Spanish character to it as it pays homage to Father Junipero Serra, a "padre-pioneer" in the words of Willson. As with the First Symphony, the outstanding movement is the Andante with its veiled references to Gregorian chant and its Spanish motives as an allusion to the Spanish mission founded by Serra.
William Stromberg, a conductor who has an affinity for performing film music, is to be commended for bringing to light these once forgotten works with sterling performances from the Moscow Symphony Orchestra.

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Meredith Willson: Symphony No. 1 and 2 / Stromberg, Moscow SO

~~$19.99~~ $9.99
CD

Naxos

Oct 01, 1999

8559006

American Classics - MacDowell: Piano Music Vol 1 /Barbagallo

Naxos

Available as CD

$19.99

Oct 01, 1999

All this music needs loving care and I can hardly imagine it played with greater warmth or affection than by James Barbagallo. The recordings are as natural as the performances ...I can hardly wait for a second volume.
- Gramophone

American Classics - MacDowell: Piano Music Vol 1 /Barbagallo

$19.99
CD

Naxos

Oct 01, 1999

8559010

American Classics - Foote: Piano Quintet, Quartets /Da Vinci

Naxos

Available as CD

~~$19.99~~ $9.99

Oct 01, 1999

The first real school of American composers arrived in the last quarter of the 19th century and were known as the Boston classicists. Comprised largely of well-to-do New Englanders who were trained in Europe by way of Harvard and worshipped Brahms, they were a pretty conservative bunch all around. Prominent among them was Arthur Foote of Salem, Massachusetts. His studies with John Knowles Paine at Harvard culminated in the first graduate degree in music ever granted by an American university and though he did not go on to study in Germany, he spent the following summer at Bayreuth soaking up the rays before returning to Boston to teach, compose and serve as choirmaster and organist of the First Unitarian Church.
Foote's chamber music is strongly influenced by Mendelssohn and Brahms, neoclassical in outlook, graceful and lyrical with little hint of storm or stress. This disc, featuring the Piano Quintet along with the Op. 32 and Op. 70 string quartets, is one of two of all-Foote releases which are part of Naxos' admirable American Classics series. The recordings feature the Da Vinci Quartet, a very good Colorado-based ensemble which has undertaken the performance of all of this composer's chamber works.

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American Classics - Foote: Piano Quintet, Quartets /Da Vinci

~~$19.99~~ $9.99
CD

Naxos

Oct 01, 1999

8559009

American Classics - MacDowell: Piano Music Vol 3 /Barbagallo

Naxos

Available as CD

$19.99

Jun 01, 1999

One of the most important contributions Edward MacDowell made to American music was his reputation: born in New York City, trained in Paris and Vienna, he was the first Native-American composer to win respect in Europe. Among his supporters were Grieg and Liszt, and while MacDowell's music is frequently compared to the Norwegian master's for its lyricism and use of folk melodies--heard in miniatures such as the 'Forgotten Fairy Tales'--there is also strong affinity to the Faustian heroics of Liszt, as evidenced by the Piano Sonata No. 4, the 'Keltic.'
James Barbagallo has the full measure of the sonata, reveling in its dash and fire, and is quite fluent in the legerdemain of the 'Twelve Virtuoso Studies' as well as the rustic reveries of the 'Fairy Tales' or the Six Heine Poems. The young American pianist was well into a series of the complete MacDowell piano music at the time of his sudden death from a heart attack in 1996, but this disc serves as a powerful reminder of his accomplishment.

American Classics - MacDowell: Piano Music Vol 3 /Barbagallo

$19.99
CD

Naxos

Jun 01, 1999

8559019

American Classics - Piston: Violin Concertos /Buswell, Et Al

Naxos

Available as CD

$19.99

Oct 01, 1999

Walter Piston was one of the more influential American musicians of the twentieth century. For nearly four decades he was a mainstay of the Harvard Music Department, authoring a series of widely used textbooks and teaching generations of composers. Like many Americans who went to Paris in the 1920s he fell under the influence of Stravinsky and neoclassicism and it was that aesthetic that prevailed at Harvard and in Piston's own composition.
Piston worked in all the formal genres, leaving a substantial legacy of quartets, symphonies and concertos. His two violin concertos are among his most important works and Naxos has provided an invaluable service by placing both on one disc, along with the later Fantasia, as part of their American Classics series. The performances by erstwhile prodigy James Buswell are strong, he is able to get inside these cerebral scores and light the fires within. Theodore Kuchar and the Ukraine National Symphony lend solid support and the recording is first rate.

American Classics - Piston: Violin Concertos /Buswell, Et Al

$19.99
CD

Naxos

Oct 01, 1999

8559003

American Classics - MacDowell: Piano Music Vol 4 /Barbagallo

Naxos

Available as CD

$19.99

Jul 01, 1999

MACDOWELL: Second Modern Suite / Etude de Concert / 12 Etude

American Classics - MacDowell: Piano Music Vol 4 /Barbagallo

$19.99
CD

Naxos

Jul 01, 1999

8559030

American Classics - MacDowell: Piano Music Vol 2 /Barbagallo

Naxos

Available as CD

~~$19.99~~ $9.99

Oct 01, 1999

Barbagallo is every bit the piano-bard that MacDowell could have wished for...the recording communicating, however, the energy and range Barbagallo can deliver in person. I could listen to this fine player in just about any repertory he chooses
- American Record Guide

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American Classics - MacDowell: Piano Music Vol 2 /Barbagallo

~~$19.99~~ $9.99
CD

Naxos

Oct 01, 1999

8559011

American Classics - Glass: String Quartets Nos 1-4 / Carducci Quartet

Naxos

Available as CD

~~$19.99~~ $13.99

Jun 29, 2010

Although Philip Glass came late to the string quartet, his contribution to the genre has since become a significant one. This disc features the first four of his five quartets, ranging from the uncharacteristic yet fascinating sound-world of the First, through the compact dimensions of the subsequent two (themselves derived from theatre and film scores). The more expansive manner of his Fourth Quartet makes allusions to the formidable string quartet heritage, in particular those of Schubert and Dvořák.

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American Classics - Glass: String Quartets Nos 1-4 / Carducci Quartet

~~$19.99~~ $13.99
CD

Naxos

Jun 29, 2010

8559636

Glass: Complete String Quartets / The Smith Quartet

Signum Classics

Available as CD

~~$27.99~~ $20.99

Jan 01, 2008

The players have lived and breathed this music – the results are stunning.

The success of Philip Glass outstripped the first flush of celebrity in the 1980s and 1990s. This logical set serves further to consolidate his reputation in a world in which no single style has monopoly or ascendancy.

The Third Quartet owes its existence to a commission for the music for Paul Schrader's film of the life of Yukio Mishima. Mishima’s samurai life and death by seppuku made him almost as much of an iconic figure in the 1960s as Che Guevara. The music moves between a lulling iterative murmur (II) and a sense of rise and uplift (IV). The finale (V) is almost Schubertian or may remind you of a fragment from Smetana’s bustling Aus Meinem Leben. I have heard Company in two other different orchestral version recordings recently: the Naxos Glass set and the EMI ‘American Classics’ disc. The first and third movements are suggestive of a melancholic slowed fanfare. The third is chaffingly Sibelian. The finale is shot through with urgently propulsive power; angst and exhilaration meet and mediate. The early death of the artist Brian Buczak from HIV/AIDS was the spur for the Fourth Quartet. It is one of the longer quartets and has only three movements. It's a work of more complexity than its mates on CD1. There is a great tenderness here and the slow-rocking and piercing poignancy of the second movement is memorable. In the finale it is as if the lock-gates have been raised to release a surge of Schubertian melody.

The First Quartet is from the mid-1960s; pretty early for Glass. It dates from shortly after he had completed his not entirely comfortable studies in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and Pierre Boulez. The work has some of his trademark iterative cell-patterning but the world he creates is more involved, varied, troubled and dissonant. The Fifth Quartet - so far his last - is contemporary romantic. Its second movement is launched with a typical sombre ostinato but other figures of passionate and sanguine weight are interleaved. Passion too drives the third movement which is thrillingly empowered. The fourth carries reminiscences, in Schubertian cotton wool, of those unhurried fanfares of Company. In a flighty finale high-pitched bustle and wonderfully inventive optimistic writing lead to a triumphantly winged episode. There's just a hint of Tippett at full throttle in this music which at the close moves into tender reflection.

As with the other performances you feel that the Smith Quartet have lived and breathed this music.

The set is well presented and the whole effect is very pleasing prompting curiosity about the other Signum/Smith collaborations - Different Trains (Reich) SIGCD 064 and Ghost Stories SIGCD 088.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb Internationl

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Glass: Complete String Quartets / The Smith Quartet

~~$27.99~~ $20.99
CD

Signum Classics

Jan 01, 2008

SIGCD117

VIVA CUGAT THE BEST OF CUGAT

SEPIA RECORDINGS

Available as CD

$14.02

Jun 10, 2014

Xavier Cugat, the daddy of Latin American music, introduced Latin music and dance rhythms to the world. 'Viva Cugat!' was his first adventure into the ear-arresting world of stereo with a group of outstanding Afro-Cuban melodies performed with a rare lyricism and rhythmic drive. 'The Best of Cugat' presents twelve great songs of the 1930s to the 1950s with a Latin touch all of which receive the Cugat treatment. Of the six bonus tracks, American classics such as "Chattanooga Choo Choo" and "In the Mood" are performed with an innovative and fun Twist beat.

VIVA CUGAT THE BEST OF CUGAT

$14.02
CD

SEPIA RECORDINGS

Jun 10, 2014

SEPI1258.2