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.

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.

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

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.

Robert Muczynski, born in 1929, has been sparsely represented on recordings since the early days of the LP. The 35 movements of various works on the disc average under two minutes each; he is obviously terse-he tosses an attractive idea out and then goes on to the next thing. His mid-20th-century idiom is consistently engaging, and he writes very well for winds. The brief Movements for Wind Quintet is gorgeous. Hawley plays strongly in every work (joined briefly by her former teacher Rampal in a work for duets), and the composer is still a very adept pianist.

LEES: Symphony No. 4, 'Memorial Candles'

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.

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

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.

This is the first complete recording of MacDowell's art songs. Between 1883 and 1902 he composed a total of 42 songs, which were, however, published out of chronological sequence. The earliest in opus number, the Two Old Songs, Opus 9, were actually the eighth group of songs MacDowell wrote. MacDowell's songs in their order of composition, marked a change in technical style. The earliest, dating from 1883, are full and opulent, but he soon began cutting back the piano score to the merest background for the vocal line. The earliest songs were composed in 1883 and published as Opp. 11 and 12 by C.F. Kahnt in Leipzig. In 1898 Breitkopf & Hartel reprinted the five songs as one set. Heinrich Heine is the author of the poems for Du liebst mich nicht (You Love me Not), Oben, wo die Sterne gluhen (The Skies, where Stars are Glowing) and Mein LiebGhen (My Love and I sat Close Together). The texts for the two songs of Opus 12 are by Emanuel Geibel and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. MacDowel1 was still very much under the influence of Raff and these five early songs are fairly Germanic in both style and beauty and some biographers have even compared them stylistically to early Richard Strauss.

One of the first truly American-born and -bred composers, Leo Sowerby wrote organ music that came straight from the heartland. From his early studies in Grand Rapids, Michigan to his successful career in Chicago, Sowerby revitalized organ music with a body of work rivaling Bach in terms of both quantity and quality.
Sowerby was fascinated by traditional forms, and his 'Classic Concerto' explores many of these structures. Within its three brief movements, it gives an excellent introduction to Sowerby's playful sense of harmony. 'Medieval Poem' and 'Pageant,' both written earlier, also delve into traditional themes.
'Festival Musick' is an audience favorite, bright and playful. Its sense of humor is evident to occasional listeners as well as those more intimately versed in organ music. Composed during a single week in summer, it is one of Sowerby's last compositions.
Both organists involved with this album have the remarkable technical skill and performing panache to bring Sowerby to life. The rich sound of the organ at St. Bartholomew's Church in New York City and accompaniment of the Fairfield Orchestra have been captured masterfully. WORKS FOR ORGAN AND ORCHESTRA is a well-performed and expertly engineered recording.