American Orchestral Music / Falletta, NOI Philharmonic
Naxos
CD
$19.99Nov 24, 2023
JoAnn Falletta conducts the National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic in works by four extraordinary mid-20th-century American composers who helped shape the country’s musical destiny: Aaron Copland, Walter Piston, Paul Creston and Ulysses Kay. Includes two world premiere recordings – Paul Creston's Saxophone Concerto and Ulysses Kay’s poignant and elegiac Pietà.
The present release is a commemorative edition of two albums by the pianist Claudette Sorel featuring selected works for solo piano and three American Piano Concerti. Claudette Sorel was one of America’s most notable female pianists of all time. Born in 1932 in Paris, upon the Nazi invasion of France she moved with her family to New York, where she studied at the Juilliard School with Olga Samaroff-Stokowski. She was renowned throughout her live as a brilliant pianist, educator, author, philanthropist, and advocate for women in music. “Claudette Sorel is in the front-rank of American pianists... She has spirit, tone and technique. She can just about make the piano sit up and do tricks... Her playing has amazing personality.” (Harold C. Schonberg, The New York Times)
Stellar piano duo Quattro Mani's latest recording features John Adams's ebullient "Hallelujah Junction", and premiere recordings by Paul Moravec and Danish composer Bent Sørensen. Bonus tracks include rarities by Paul Creston and Paul Bowles. Fanfare’s Robert Carl writes that “Quattro Mani is one of the most enduring and leading keyboard duos anywhere.”
REVIEW:
John Adams’s Hallelujah Junction (1996) has had at least half a dozen recordings since the first, by Nicolas Hodges and Rolf Hind for Nonesuch. Pianists Steven Beck and Susan Grace of Quattro Mani take a very different tack from that recording, yet one that is equally compelling.
The miniatures that make up the remainder of the program by Creston, Bowles, Moravec, and Sørensen, are also effectively varied.
All in all, this is an enjoyable, wide-ranging program – I only wish there was more of it.
For some decades in the middle of the twentieth century, Paul Creston (1906–85) was one of the most frequently performed of American composers, though his music has sunk from prominence in recent years. He was himself a fearsome pianist, and his Three Narratives are Lisztian concert essays that require freewheeling virtuosity. Rhythmicon is a ten-volume collection of 123 brief studies that examine various aspects of rhythm. Their difficulty grows as the series progresses, reaching its zenith in Volumes 7 - 10, where Creston presents 25 studies that range in mood from serious to light-hearted, from hymn-like introspection and calm to jagged, Bartokian energy.
