Catalog

Stanislaw Skrowaczewski retains a unique position on the international musical scene, where he is both a renowned conductor and a highly regarded composer, especially of large scale orchestral works. Born in Lwow, Poland but resident in the U.S. since 1960, Skrowaczewski showed great promise as a pianist, making his debut with the Beethoven Triple Concerto, but an injury to his hands during World War II terminated his keyboard aspirations. Composing and conducting became his double focus. Directly after the War - still in his mid-twenties - he was named music director of the Breslau Philharmonic, then the Katowice Philharmonic, Krakow Philharmonic and then the Warsaw National Orchestra. During this period he also studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. In 1958, at the invitation of George Szell, he made his American conducting debut with the Cleveland Orchestra. In 1960, he was named music director of what was to become the Minnesota Orchestra, a position he was to hold for 19 years. His Passacaglia Immaginaria was completed in 1995. It unfolds in a provocative sound world. Similar to the Passacaglia of the Baroque era, a species of continuous variations on a ground, his design is based on the principle of metamorphosis. The work was commissioned by the Minnesota Orchestral Association and Eiji Oue gave the premiere with the Orchestra on April 10, 12 and 13,1996. For its 35th anniversary season in 1993-94, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, requested a new work from Skrowaczewski. The resulting Chamber Concerto was premiered on November 26, 27, 1993. In January 1981, while guest conducting in Frankfurt, Germany, Skrowaczewski finished his Clarinet Concerto, which he dedicated to Joseph Longo, the co-principal clarinetist of the Minnesota Orchestra. The premiere of this work was April 15,17,18, 1981 and again the composer conducted the orchestra.

About his Symphony No. 5 James Yannatos writes: "Symphony No. 5: Sons et Lumiere (1991) derives its title from the sound and light shows so popular in France in which historical events related to a particular epoch, chateau, or monument are dramatized through the use of sound and light. The title alludes to past as well as to present events in which the political face of Europe and Africa is changing. On another level, Sons et Lumiere refers to vibrations and waves that move through real time and space in the form of sound and interplay between the various levels of musical sound and meaning, referring to our physical world as we live it, our sensory world as we see, hear and feel it, and our spiritual world as we attempt to comprehend it." In May of every other year more than 900 cello lovers - from beginning cellists to esteemed cello soloists - congregate in Manchester, England for the International Cello Festival. The brain-child of cellist Ralph Kirschbaum, this festival features workshops, films, exhibitions, and performances by and for cellists. The Festival almost always features a premiere of a cello piece, and in 1994, Yehudi Wyner was commissioned to compose a piece for cello and orchestra. The result was the Prologue and Narrative for cello and orchestra, which Wyner himself describes: "Finding a title for the piece has been a difficult task. To call it a Concerto for Cello and Orchestra would be misleading, since the term "concerto" implies a form as well as a relationship. In general, my musical thinking is not comfortable with conventional modes of construction, nor does it rely on received conventions of form. While the music is constructed with great attention to contextual unity and formal coherence, it also strives for a sense of the informal, the improvisational, the spontaneous." Composer Charles Fussell was Artistic Director of New Music Harvest, Boston's first city-wide festival of contemporary music and Co-Founder and Director of the New England Composer's Orchestra. He is a member of the composition faculty at Boston University. His Symphony No. 5 was written in 1994-95 in memory of Virgil Thomson. The premiere was given November 1996 by the New Hampshire Symphony under the direction of James Bolle.

This release fills a hole in the catalog large enough to drive a truck through. This is the world premiere stereo release, the world premiere CD release of Walter Piston's Third Symphony. The only recording of this serious, somber, most beautiful of Mr. Piston's symphonies was made almost fifty years ago by Howard Hanson for Mercury. The Symphony is dedicated to the memory of Natalie Koussevitsky. It is particularly appropriate for Jimmy Yannatos and the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra to bring us this important music because Piston was closely associated with Harvard throughout his life. He attended Harvard as an undergraduate, joined the faculty in 1926, and became a full professor in 1944, remaining at Harvard for many years. It is also just as fitting that this disc contains the work of another American composer closely associated with Harvard, James Yannatos, who has conducted the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra since 1964. Those who are familiar with Yannatos' other works on Albany Records will know what to expect from this fine composer. His Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra was written for the Mendelssohn String Quartet while the composer was on a sabbatical leave from Harvard during February to June 1995. The Symphony No. 3 was commissioned by Joel Spiegelman in 1989 for concerts he was to conduct in the former Soviet Union with the Lithuanian State Symphony. Many customers will buy this CD because of the Piston Third, but they will be most pleasantly surprised at the bonuses presented to them by the music of Yannatos. His music is a perfect compliment to the music of Piston.

In the January-February 1998 issue of Fanfare, John Story writing about Yannatos' Trinity Mass said: "Trinity Mass is possibly a masterpiece worthy to stand comparison with such other 20th-century milestones as Britten's War Requiem, Tippet's A Child of Our Time and The Mask of Time, Penderecki's St. Luke's Passion, or Nono's Prometeo. The two works on this disc are the equal to the Trinity Mass, if not easier to enjoy because they are Orchestral works and the performances by both the Orchestra and the pianist are first-rate. The performers, under the composer's direction, play as well as any in this unfamiliar music. In 1988, William Doppmann asked Yannatos to write a piano concerto for him. He asked that it be a substantial piece which would show off the piano in various ways. Yannatos writes: "I started to think of ways to approach this formidable task in the summer of 1992, started to compose the work in the fall of 1992, and finished it in the spring of 1993, completing the Orchestration that summer. My own guidelines included writing a piece that linked the past to the present, musically and pianistically, presented both piano and Orchestra in a mutually dependent partnership and played with the notion of transformation and renewal in the cycles of the seasons and in the linkage and development of musical ideas." About his Symphony No. 4, Yannatos writes: "I was transfixed by events in Tiananmen Square - excited by the students' quest for greater freedom and appalled by the brutal response by the government. As a musician, I felt compelled to speak out the only way I could. I spent the summer of 1989 immersed in the rhythms and cadences of Chinese folk tunes from a collection by Yuen Ren Chao given to me by his daughter, Rulan Chao Pian, my colleague in the music department. Elements of these tunes were chosen to serve as my musical materials for the six-movement symphony I planned to write. Sketches were made that summer and the work was completed and Orchestrated by January 1990."

Yulan, an acrobatic, dance and visual extravaganza featuring the Dalian Acrobatic Troupe of China came about as a collaboration between dancer/choreographer Dennis Nahat, his Chinese colleagues, and composer Paul Chihara. Nahat, who was artistic director of the Ballet San Jose and founder of Theatre Ventures International School and Productions, was invited to China by Zhao Bin to create a work of international scope for the Dalian Acrobatic Troupe of China. Nahat enlisted Paul Chihara to compose music for the production and subsequently to conduct the orchestra for the performances and recording. The premiere took place November 28, 2012 in Dalian, China. Yulan means a magnolia flower and is one of the earliest flowers to bloom in the spring in Shanghai. Paul Chihara has composed scores for more than 100 motion pictures and television series. He was awarded the Composer-of-the-Year by the Classical Recording Foundation in 2008 and is on the faculty at UCLA.