Honored in 2009 with an Academy Award, David Gompper has traveled the world working as a pianist, conductor and composer, and developing a fascination with all manner of things, from the experience of echoes in the mountains.

The Violin Concerto is at one and the same time George Rochberg' most widely performed and least known work, since it was heavily cut in the "Stern version" played and recorded in the 1970s.

A uniquely valuable release consisting entirely of world premiere recordings of works by a highly respected and influential name in American 20th Century music. They include a Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. 15 which had been lost for more than 70 years until rediscovered by the soloist on this recording, Hasse Borup.

Award winning composer James Aikman' music is 'accessible and inventive', and these three works embrace a colorful tapestry of stylistic influences, including jazz and pop.

Every Friday for two years between 1942 and 1944, a group of teenage boy prisoners in the Terezin concentration camp shared their poems, stories and artwork in a secret magazine they called Vedem. Most of those boys perished in the Holocaust.

Paul Salerni' award-winning opera with a libretto by Dana Gioia takes place in a classical music radio station on the last night of it's operations.

Eleanor Cory's music is performed throughout the US and internationally and has been recognized by many awards and commissions including the Aaron Copland and Fromm Foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts. The shifting musical languages that give her compositions their unique vibrancy include the "modal, tonal, atonal mix" of her First Violin Sonata, as well as jazz elements. All of this and more can be found in Things Are, her memorial for composer Milton Babbitt, and in the Celebration of pianistic virtuosity. Cory's Third String Quartet expresses both "sweet melancholy" and playful dialogue. Epithalamium explores the flute's flexibility in elegantly shaped gestures, while the instrumentation of the Fantasy is light in it's mood and airy textures.

Jon Deak is a composer who ‘has more fun with music than anyone I know’ (New York Newsday), and all of the pieces on this album of symphonic stories for young and old alike involve the performers as narrators. These tales include the wolves of Canada and Alaska in B.B. Wolf (An Apologia), a loving tribute to the immigrants of America in Bye-Bye!, and a dramatic and virtuoso version of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen Finale. The Legend of Spuyten Duyvil is a tale of old New Amsterdam that invokes the heroic spirit of trumpeter Anthony Van Corlaer. John Deak, composer and education specialist, was associate principal bassist with the New York Philharmonic for many years. A Pulitzer and Grammy Award-nominated composer, he has written over 300 groundbreaking works, many of which are accessible to children.

Paul Moravec' music is firmly rooted in Western tradition, yet manages to sound at once fresh, elegant, and fiercely individual. His Tempest Fantasy, the work that wonhim the Pulitzer Prize in 2004, is a meditation on Shakespeare' the Tempest.

Charles Wuorinen writes virtuosic music for virtuoso performers. He has a profound desire to engage with the listener and with sympathetic performers, and essential to this engagement is a spirit of adventure and fun.

Underscoring the very special relationship between the United States and the Republic of Korea, the 2017 version of Ian Krouse'sSymphonyNo.5performed on this recording with a South Korean orchestra commemorates the 70thanniversary of the Korean War. At the heart of the second movement of this expressively powerful and wide-ranging work Krouse mingles three famous American melodies with the popular Korean tune Arirang. The two Symphonies of Strings show why he is so distinctive a composer: one is scored for strings but without violins and the other is a brilliantly inventive 'geometrical' exploration of La Follia.

Strongly inclined towards neo-romanticism, Richard Danielpour's music is a rich unity of energy, intensity, and serenity. First Light reveals these elements perfectly with it's rhythmically charged writing contrasting with hypnotic chant melodies. The Awakened Heart is a kaleidoscopic three-movement work that ranges from darkness and passion through a stately chorale to an exuberant and breathless conclusion. Symphony No. 3 charts a triumphant ascent from "the dream of death and our own fearful existence" to a belief "in a world of hope and love." "Danielpour is an outstanding composer for any time - one who knows how to communicate deep, important emotions through simple, direct means." (The New York Daily News)

Jose Serebrier' conducting has been so triumphant that we tend to forget he is an equally distinguished composer. Symphony No. 2, 'Partita', written at the age of 19 and premiered by the National Symphony Orchestra in Washing.

A new Naxos life for this accomplished and appealing compositional voice... The work's nine sections show an original approach to the medium of piano and orchestra characterized by soft music thrown into sharp relief by loud eruptions... superb command of the orchestra... The lasting impression is of his unusually fluent command of sumptuous sounds, harmonically controlled, well represented in these recordings which ought to bring the composer more admirers.

The composer stated that his symphony was about a crisis in faith, an issue that would concern him for life. The biblical Jeremiah preached in Jerusalem some six centuries before Christ, centering his message on religious reform in a time of confused morality. The Prophecy first movement sets the tone of slow, solemn contemplation found throughout the entire work. The scherzo movement, Profanation, gives a feeling of the destruction of Jerusalem during the tumultuous times of the prophet. The final Lamentation is the literal cry of Jeremiah, lamenting the pillaged city. This movement, composed years earlier, captivated initial audiences as the horrors of the Nazi Final Solution were being revealed. One of Bernstein's many works that embrace Jewish themes, the piece was dedicated to Samuel Bernstein, the composer's father, who helped impart his faith to his son. The work uses the Ashkenazic Hebrew pronunciation of the Book of Lamentations. In Jeremiah it is certainly possible to see parallels between the prophet and the young composer/conductor/pianist, taking brave and unpopular positions despite the risk. Not surprisingly, interest in his symphony sprung from various corners. The first performance was conducted by Bernstein with the Pittsburgh Symphony, at the invitation of it's director, Fritz Reiner, on 28th January, 1944. Koussevitzky invited Bernstein to lead the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Jeremiah shortly thereafter, and the New York Philharmonic followed with four performances in the spring. In what was to be one of many whirlwind years for Bernstein, the symphony would win the New York Music Critics Circle Award for 1944.