performed by the Louisville Orchestra under Lawrence Leighton Smith (cover image by Jennifer Arlem Molina) William Elden Bolcom is still alive. He was born May 26, 1938 in Seattle. He entered the University of Washington at the exceedingly young age of 11 … Continue reading William Bolcom: Symphony No. 3, for Chamber Orchestra
performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project under Gil Rose, or below by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the composer’s baton (cover image by Andrew Yardley) Irving Gifford Fine was born in Boston on 3 December 1914. He earned both … Continue reading Irving Fine: Symphony
performed by the Seattle Symphony under Gerard Schwarz …without even the shadow of a doubt one of the half dozen great works written during the last ten years. It sings forever in my heart and in my consciousness, and it … Continue reading Walter Piston: Symphony no. 2
performed by the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein, or below by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy This is no abstract intellectual exercise but an expression of changing moods and emotions, generating excitement and ecstasy at the climactic points. … Continue reading William Schuman: Symphony no. 3
performed by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra under Gerard Schwartz second and third movements It speaks a language familiar to most audiences and does so with imaginative new inflections – such sumptuously long-breathed themes, such rhythmic vitality and such crystalline orchestration. … Continue reading David Diamond: Symphony no. 1
performed by the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein, or below by the NBC Orchestra and Arturo Toscanini For me the sounds were like no others I had ever heard – his whole ‘autogenic’ concept of form, the free and … Continue reading Roy Harris: Symphony no. 3
performed by the American Symphony Orchestra under Leon Botstein (cover image by Freddie Marriage) Henry Dixon Cowell was born on 11 March, 1897 in Menlo Park, California “to two Bohemian writers,” says Wikipedia. “His father was an Irish immigrant and … Continue reading Henry Cowell: Symphony no. 2, ‘Anthropos’
performed by the St. Louis Symphony under Leonard Slatkin, or below by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra (cover image by Dawid Zawiła) The dialectic of this music, that is to say, its movement, the way each and every note comes out … Continue reading Copland Symphony no. 2, ‘Short Symphony’
performed by the New Black Music Repertory Ensemble under Leslie B. Dunner (cover image by Dave Robinson) This is a historic symphony. Florence Beatrice Smith was born to Florence (née Gulliver) and James H. Smith on April 9, 1897 in Little … Continue reading Florence Price: Symphony no. 1 in Em
performed by the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein, or below by the Detroit Symphony under Neeme Järvi second part of the above video It is based on no program either literary or spiritual. It is not cyclical. I wanted … Continue reading Randall Thompson: Symphony no. 2 in Em
performed by the St. Louis Symphony under Leonard Slatkin …a popular concert work which is the epitome of the twentieth-century symphony that could have been written by an American. (cover photo by Les Anderson) Howard Harold Hanson is not a … Continue reading Howard Hanson: Symphony no. 2 in D-flat, op. 30, ‘Romantic’
performed by the Japan Philharmonic under Akeo Watanabe …coming back from Europe I found America a very strange place. Some of the musical life had become quite European, with the arrival of so many distinguished musicians who had fled the … Continue reading Roger Sessions: Symphony no. 1
performed by the Eastman Rochester Orchestra under Howard Hanson, or below by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields under the late Sir Neville Marriner, who died exactly a year ago today (15 April 1924 – 2 October 2016) … Continue reading Ives Symphony no. 3, ‘The Camp Meeting’
performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under Neeme Järvi (cover image by Igor Goryachev) George Whitefield Chadwick was born on 13 November 1854 in Lowell, Massachusetts. I haven’t seen a lot around about his musical education, but he took organ … Continue reading George Whitefield Chadwick: Symphony no. 3 in F
performed by Neeme Järvi and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra …[w]e of the North should be far more likely to be influenced by old English, Scotch or Irish songs, inherited with our literature from our ancestors. -Amy Beach (cover image by … Continue reading Beach Symphony in E minor, Op. 32, ‘Gaelic’
performed by the Ulster Orchestra under JoAnn Falletta, or below by the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta (cover image by Freddie Marriage) Before Mr. Paine, there had never been an American music writer worthy of serious consideration in the … Continue reading John Knowles Paine: Symphony no. 1 in Cm
or The American Symphony: a Series I’ve been wanting to use that line for so long, and I am positive someone’s used it somewhere but I haven’t even bothered looking because I’m so proud I thought of it. In any case, … Continue reading America’s Next Top Mahler
performed by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Riccardo Chailly, or below by the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra under the late Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (cover image by Adam Edgerton) It’s been sometime since we’ve seen Bruckner. And aside from the revisit article … Continue reading Bruckner Symphony No. 3 in D minor, WAB 103
performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Sir Georg Solti, or below with the Vienna Philharmonic and Claudio Abbado (cover image by Nick Scheerbart) I’ve been needing to do this for some time. Back when I wrote about Brahms’ first … Continue reading Revisit: Brahms Symphony no. 1 in C minor, op. 68
performed by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly or (very) alternatively, here by Klemperer and the Philharmonia, which I’ll talk about below “In the deep twilight we went today to the palace were Queen Mary lived and loved…The chapel below … Continue reading Mendelssohn Symphony no. 3 in Am, op. 56 ‘Scottish’
performed by the Taipei Symphony Orchestra and National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra under Lan Shui, with: Emma Bell, soprano 左涵瀛 (Hanying Tso), soprano 黃莉錦 (Li-Chin Huang), soprano Charlotte Hellekant, alto 陳珮琪 (Pei-Chi Chen), alto Barry Banks, tenor 巫白玉璽 (Wu Bai-Yu-Hsi), baritone … Continue reading Mahler’s Eighth in Taipei
Fugue for Thought 