Gerard Schwarz - Sym in C Major / Konzertstuck for Four Horns - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Seattle Symphony’s first holiday album embraces works composed specifically for Christmas as well as other pieces that convey a universal message of peace, love and hope—the essence of humanity’s highest aspirations. Music Director Gerard Schwarz asked two composers, the Symphony’s Composer in Residence Samuel Jones and Seattle Symphony Principal Oboe Ben Hausmann, to “make the music their own” by scoring several of the pieces to retain the unaffected simplicity of these well-known Christmas and concert works. Schwarz joined them in this task, arranging or editing several of the pieces, with the resulting works celebrating the remarkable artistry of the musicians of the Orchestra. In these new settings, recorded entirely in Benaroya Hall, the music emerges with honest, untarnished beauty.

Bart k' early piano works demonstrate his Lisztian flair as a virtuoso pianist, and nowhere more so than the ambitious Study for the Left Hand, the first of his Four Piano Pieces.

Diamond composed his Symphony No. 2 in 1942-43, a period of anxiety for the composer as an American whose country was at war and as an artist in lacking a solid financial underpinning. Encouraged by conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos, Diamond sent the score to the Boston Symphony conductor Serge Koussevitzky, renowned for his ongoing support of contemporary music. After a read-through of the symphony, that is to say, not a public performance, the Boston musicians responded with an outpouring of spontaneous applause. The actual première concert performance followed on 22nd October, 1944. In the final year of the war, 1945, Diamond composed Symphonies 3 and 4. Once again, the Boston Symphony music director proved his mettle by persuading the Koussevitzky Foundation to commission the Fourth Symphony. Diamond graciously dedicated the new work to the conductor's late wife, Natalie Koussevitzky. The première took place 23rd January, 1948 with the Boston Symphony, but under Leonard Bernstein, who replaced an indisposed Koussevitzky.