JoAnn Falletta - Orchestral Music: Diversions Overture - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

During his brief life, Charles Griffes was able to compose music of distinctive beauty. He was fascinated by the music of the French-Impressionist composers Debussy and Ravel but was also influenced by the Russian sounds of Scriabin and Mussorgsky.

Director of the School of Music at the University of Oklahoma from 1998 to June 2005, Kenneth Fuchs has written for orchestra, band, chorus, jazz ensemble, and various chamber ensembles.

Gustav Holst's youthful enthusiasm for Wagner is reflected in his ebullient Walt Whitman overture written in 1899. Shortly afterwards he composed the Cotswolds Symphony which embraces hints of contemporary British folk music but is dominated by the slow movement, a profound elegy for the utopian socialist William Morris. Though completed at college, a Winter Idyll shows real orchestral assurance. Indra is an accomplished tone poem revealing Holst's interest in the legends of India, whilst the glittering and evocative Japanese Suite was written in response to a request from a Japanese dancer appearing in London. The Ulster Orchestra is one of Northern Ireland's cultural cornerstones and since it's foundation in 1966 has become one of the major symphony orchestras in the United Kingdom and Ireland. JoAnn Falletta was appointed Principal Conductor in May 2011, the orchestra's twelfth but first female and first American to be appointed to the post.