Romanian Radio National Orchestra - Orchestral Music - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Voices of Ascension - From Chant to Renaissance [COMPACT DISCS] date 01/08/2002

Percy Grainger (1882-1961) and Ronald Stevenson (1928-2015), both composer-pianists of the Golden Age of keyboard virtuosity, shared a passion for folksong, especially the modal Celtic melodies from the fringes of the British Isles. Though the two never met, they corresponded for many years, with Stevenson arranging many of Grainger's transcriptions in a deliberate act of homage to the older man, whose quirky originality brought Stevenson illumination on his own idiosyncratic path. This seventh instalment in Christopher Guild's Toccata Classics survey of Stevenson's piano music uncorks the exultant good humour that he and Grainger found on that common Celtic ground.

This is a new in the series 'New Music In Eastern Europe' implemented together with the publishing house Bôlt Records. This is an album dedicated to the work of Octavian Nemescu - one of the 20th century's classics, underestimated by the phonographic industry. Octavian Nemescu is a Romanian composer of orchestral, chamber, choral, electroacoustic, multimedia, metamusic, imaginary, and ritual works that have been heard throughout Europe and around the world. From 1956 to 1963 Nemescu studied composition at the National University of Music Bucharest with Mihail Jora, harmony with Paul Constantinescu and orchestration with Alexandru Pascanu and Anatol Vieru. From 1971 to 1978 he taught music analysis and counterpoint at the Transilvania University of Brasov. Until 1990 he was professor of counterpoint, harmony and music history at the School of Art InchGeorge EnescuInch in Iasi. The works featured on this album are his NonSymphony No. 5, and his PreSymphony No. 6, written in the late 1980s and the late 1990s, respectively.