'Paul Freeman Introduces' Vol. 1 - James Kimo Williams, Fanfare for Life - Richard J. Rendleman, October 9, 1943 - Wendel Logan, Runagate, Runagate Richard Yardumian, Veni, Sancte Spiritus - Peter Saltzman, Walls - Czech NSO, Paul Freeman - Albany Records 1998

This is Volume one of Albany Record's "Paul Freeman Introduces" series, an enterprising project that records works by lesser-known composers and, like most of Albany's priceless catalog, encourages listeners to explore otherwise uncharted compositional territory. The project is headed by the passionate conductor Dr. Paul Freeman, who eloquently introduces the program and the composers at hand on track 1 of every disc (there are 12 volumes in the series). 

Kimo Williams's poignant "Fanfare for Life" packs an instant punch and is a splendid beginning to this recording. Richard J. Rendleman's "October 9, 1943", which is the 2nd movement to his Symphony No. 1 is a slow and sublime movement, and by the sound of this music it's tragic that the whole Symphony has not been recorded commercially (I have emailed him recently, hoping to acquire a private recording..) and I'm happy I "discovered" this piece again; I haven't played this disc in many years. "Runagate, Runagate" by Wendel Logan was initially far from appealing to me. However after many listens, and given the music's sincerity and subject matter, It has grown on me; I  do not particularly care for the Tenor however. The Yardumian piece is the reason I bought this disc, and as I expected it's a beautiful and entirely convincing opus. Saltzman's "Walls" has it's moments, but for me that's about it. 

James Kimo Williams is a versatile composer who has written both serious and commercial works. He is a faculty member of Columbia College in Chicago and writes the following:

"Fanfare for Life was commissioned by AT&T and premiered May 6, 1994 by the Chicago Sinfonietta at Orchestra Hall in Chicago under the baton of Paul Freeman. I composed this work in direct response to the outgrowth of gang violence during that same year. 

A 14-year-old girl, Shavon Dean, was shot and killed by 11-year-old gang member Robert Sandifer. Robert was then hunted down and killed by two members of his gang, a 14-year-old boy and his 16-year-old brother. That same summer 5-year-old Eric Morse was dropped to his death from the 14th floor of a public housing high-rise by two little boys ages 10 and 11. This tragedy occurred simply because Eric would not steal candy for them.

With Fanfare for Life, the beauty of life is presented with an orchestral fanfare. In the second segment the lives of these children are symbolized by two distinct pentatonic melodies. These melodies are cut short as were the young lives that never developed. The third segment (brass tutti) is a variation of the two "child" melodies, symbolizing the families that now only have memories of those lost lives. The last segment is a repeat of the initial fanfare, again emphasizing the beauty of living and the celebration of life. Fanfare for Life is dedicated to the memories of these young souls: Shavon Dean, Robert Sandifer, and Eric Morse."

Richard J. Rendleman, Jr. was born in 1949 in Salisbury, North Carolina and holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he currently serves as Professor of Finance. At age 32, he began studying composition with the renowned composer Robert Ward. As a result, he has written a number of works for piano, chorus, chamber ensembles and orchestra. His works have been performed or recorded by a number of orchestras, including the North Carolina Symphony, the St. Stephens Chamber Orchestra, and the orchestras of Knoxville and Seattle.

Dr. Rendleman provides the following notes:

 "October 9, 1943 serves as the second movement of my First Symphony, completed in 1997. The music is based on a poem of the same title by my grandfather's cousin, Margaret Proctor Wood (born in Danvers Massachusetts, 1881, died 1971). The opening passage was originally set for soprano and piano in my song cycle, Poems of Margaret Proctor Wood. This passage is then extended for string orchestra featuring harp and flutes. The text of the poem is as follows":

October 9, 1943

The yellow leaves drift through the golden air

Making a sound like ghost treads in the grasses.

One pauses in its downward flight

To brush my cheek as it passes.

In the old fond caress she used when I was seven.

The chamber version of Wendel Logan's "Runagate, Runagate" was first performed at the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta in 1990. Subsequently the orchestral version was premiered by the Savannah Symphony in 1994 with the distinguished tenor William Brown, for whom the work was written.

Wendel Logan, who is a prolific composer and on the faculty of Oberlin College, writes:

"The text and title of my composition are based on Robert Hayden's collage poem "Runagate, Runagate," which was taken from the collection Angle of Ascent(1975). This poem and others from the collection ("Middle Passage," "O Daedalus, Fly Away Home," "the Ballad of Nat Turner," and "Frederick Douglas") represent a kind of historical chronicle of the Afro-American journey towards freedom.

My primary concern in attempting a musical setting of Runagate, Runagate was to capture some of its inherent musical qualities: the frenetic "beat" of a train (symbolic of the Underground Railroad); the unmistakable melodic character, resulting from repetition of lines and phrases and the use of lines from spirituals ("Mean, mean, mean to be free" and "And Before I'll be a slave, I'll be buried in my grave"); and finally, the imagery of the poem, from which sprang many creative ideas about drama, pacing, sound, texture, and so forth. The word "runagate" refers to a fugitive, a runaway slave."

Richard Yardumian (1917-1985) enjoyed a rather unusual career as a twentieth-century composer. Although he is largely self-taught, by the mid-1940's his music had attracted the attention of Leopold Stokowski, Jose Iturbi, and Eugene Ormandy, who encouraged and supported the young composer's work. He was composer-in-residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra for nearly 15 years.

Yardumian's "Veni, Sancte Spiritus" was premiered by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra on April 3, 1959 and performed over 100 times during Ormandy's tenure. The work was inspired by a Plainsong, a sequence for Whitsunday and the Octave of Pentecost in the Roman Liturgy. The Plainsong has five sections or sentences that have been put into a chorale setting, mainly for the string section of the orchestra. Near the end of the fourth section and throughout the fifth, other parts of the orchestra join in the chorale setting. The pungent, quiet, and reflective plainsong is introduced by an unaccompanied solo clarinet at the beginning by clarinetist Lubomir Lebenza. The harp cadenza is played by Dagmar Platilova.

  

Peter Saltzman has written extensively for dance and theater groups as well as for orchestra. He is very active in the Chicago musical scene and writes the following:

"I wrote Walls during a three-week period in December, 1995 and January, 1996. It was commissioned by Kevin Iega Jeff, choreographer of the Dallas Black Dance Theatre, which premiered a synthesized version of the work in February, 1996. Like most of my large-scale works, this piece follows a design similar to the cyclical sonata-allegro form of the classical period: exposition, development, recapitulation. I do not impose 18th or 19th century structure on 20th century content. While there is certainly nothing wrong with emulating this formal clarity, I prefer form following content. In my case the content is the music which I heard and played during the early years of my development, i.e. jazz, pop, rock, rhythm and blues, etc. To extend these beyond song-forms, I have employed techniques similar to those of the classical era: motivic development, counterpoint, and variation.

The title and concept for Walls came from Kevin Iega Jeff. Throughout history, walls such as the Berlin Wall, the Western Wall, the Great Wall of China, the Viet Nam Memorial, have been a symbol of the divisive elements within a society. If the walls could talk, I wonder what they would say?"

Paul Freeman  (1936-2015)

Paul Freeman has distinguished himself as one of the world's pre-eminent conductors. Much in demand, he has conducted over 100 orchestras in 28 different countries including the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and major orchestras in London, St. Petersburg, Moscow and Berlin. Maestro Freeman has served as the Music Director of Canada's Victoria Symphony, Principal Guest Conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic and Associate Conductor of the Detroit and Dallas Symphony Orchestras. He was Music Director of the renowned Chicago Sinfonietta and simultaneously served as Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Czech National Symphony Orchestra in Prague. With over 300 recordings to his credit, he has won numerous awards for his unique interpretations of the classical, romantic, and modern repertoire. Dr. Freeman, who studied on a U.S. Fulbright Grant at the Hochschule in Berlin, holds a Ph.D. degree from the Eastman School of Music and LH.D. degrees from Dominican University and Loyola University.

 Enjoy everyone!

Paul_Freeman_Introduces_Vol.1-Tzadik.zip

http://www104.zippyshare.com/v/BabcS6fj/file.html

Richard Yardumian - Violin Concerto - Symphony No. 2 for Medium Voice & Orchestra, "Psalms" - Armenian Suite - Nancy Maultsby, mezzo - Alexandr Bulov, Violin - Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Lan Shui - BIS 2002

Richard Yardumian (1917-1985) was an Armenian-American composer (his parents emigrated to the United States from Armenia ten years before Richard was born) who wrote music that is accessible and lyrical, incorporating Armenian folksong into a sweepingly gestured, Western symphonic style. All three works here are wonderful, from the Violin Concerto which is both contemplative and ecstatically big-boned to the gorgeous Symphony No. 2 "Psalms" which has always impressed me. There are many gloriously explosive movements that recall the masterpiece that is Vaughan William's "A Sea Symphony". So, imho this is really an all around knock-out.

Richard Yardumian was born on April 5th, 1917 in Philadelphia, and this remained his home town until his death in 1985. His musical education was unusual: he learned a considerable amount of classical repertoire by listening when his brother Elijah, who was studying at the Curtis Institute, was practicing the piano at home, and he heard the folksongs of Armenia sung by his parents. But he did not study music in earnest until he was 22, when he began lessons in harmony with William Happich, counterpoint with Alexander Matthews and piano with George Boyle. Although as a composer he was largely self-taught, his musical style was influenced by the exploration of ancient Armenian and regional American composers. By the mid-1940s, Yardumian's music had attracted the attention of such famous conductors as Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy, who encouraged and supported the young composer's work. The association with Ormandy was particularly fruitful as it led to a close, long-term collaboration between Yardumian and the Philadelphia Orchestra. (In fact, all the works included on this disc were premiered by Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra.)

Though Yardumian’s music is identifiably of the twentieth century, it has suffered from being seen as somewhat old-fashioned; even though he developed "a method of composing with twelve tones" which differed from that of Schoenberg in being in general, tonally based. Perhaps the times were "out of step" with his religious preoccupations (not unlike Hovhaness, but to a lesser degree), a factor which, to today's listener, makes the music all the more interesting. Since he had few connections in the major American musical centers of New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, his music is less well known, even in America, than it deserves. Despite the championship of Ormandy and the great pianist John Ogdon, Yardumian's music has yet to really catch on (other than a few cds his music is documented on vinyl, and there's not really that much on lp either).  

The three-movement Violin Concerto (1949, rev. 1960, third movement revised in 1985) is based on a number of intervallic and rhythmic points of interest. Loudly insistent sonorities supported by C sharp and G sharp in the lower registers, accompanied by fleeing semi-quavers with melodic leaps of thirds, punctuate the opening. Very soon a plaintive descending line is heard in the solo horn, followed by strong lines in the strings, and later in the winds. Another loud tutti entry paves the way for the soloist's very first entry, with chordal support from the woodwinds, strings and brass until the end of the movement. "Soliloquy" might have been a more appropriate description of the solo part; even the cadenza, which arrives rather early in the movement, is rather plaintive and expressive in form. The soloist's line is characterized by leaps of thirds, twisted in chromaticism, and contrasts with the largely chordal support which pervades the entire movement.

The second movement pursues a similar line of enquiry; a cadenza for the soloist makes an early entry with block vertical sonorities for support, and the demands again are more expressive than technical. More than midway through the movement, however, the orchestral texture becomes richer with the woodwinds, brass and strings playing out a web of unison lines and sonorities. Plaintive lines replace this short-lived texture, first in a further solo cadenza and then in orchestral solo lines from the trombones, trumpets, violins and violas. Like the first movement, this one ends quietly.

The motoric pursuit of a motif – rhythmically and intervallically – sets the third movement apart from the rest with its quick pace and increasing virtuosic demands – not only on the soloist, whose passages are curiously not marked "cadenza" in this movement, but also on the orchestral forces. The perception of C sharp and F sharp in the movements of this work as significant pitches of focus, the linearity of melodic configuration and the seemingly unrelated vertical sonorities are characteristic of the modality not only of a distant past but also of Yardumian's compositional strategy in the Violin Concerto.

Yardumian's individual style, a system of melody and harmony based on the chromatic inflection of the intervals of major and minor thirds, coupled with religious fervour and mysticism – characterizes almost all his music. This is most telling in his two symphonies. The Symphony No. 2, subtitled "Psalms", features a vocal soloist (mezzo-soprano, alto or baritone). The first version, written in 1947, was premiered in the 1950s under the title "Psalm 130" for Tenor and Orchestra. In the second version (1964) a substantial movement lasting more than twice as long as the first was added. Stylistically speaking, however, there are few perceptible differences in idiom between two movements. The symphony is, in effect, a richly orchestrated song cycle with arresting melodic lines. The first movement is characterized by a hushed orchestral entry based on a C sharp/B cluster before the vocal entry, which is characterized by chromatically inflected modality. Recitative-like gestures by the euphonium, and later the horns, distinguish this movement in which the vocal line is closely, but not identically, shadowed by the first violins. There is a deliberate attempt by Yardumian to define 'space' for the vocal soloist, and the orchestration is carefully maintained in order not to overshadow that balance.

The second movement is notable for a relatively more mellifluous vocal line, although the modality is unmistakable. The orchestra is given a more prominent role here, and holds for the most part a steady, stately rhythmic pulse. Orchestral textures and modal clashes of major and minor thirds in this movement recall a style not far removed from Vaughan Williams. The vocal cadenza towards the end of this movement is to be understood from Yardumian's perspective, which has little to do with virtuosic display. In fact, the directions in the score read: "Perhaps the best way to interpret this cadenza is that it be sung as a mother to an infant (as an ancient song)". As in the Violin Concerto, C sharp and F sharp as pitches of focus in the work affirm the modal quality, but the chromatic inflection of the modal line and the use of the third intervals are Yardumian's.

Yardumian's Armenian Suite is, in conception, an early work. The suite started out as a small piece for piano based on an Armenian lullaby. The composer orchestrated this, adding five other movements in 1937. In 1954 the suite attained its present seven movements after Eugene Ormandy had asked for a new conclusion to the work. This resulted in the splendid Finale, the seventh movement of the suite, which is much more extended than the other, generally quite brief movements. The various movements of the suite, some (wildly) festive, some meditative to the point of melancholy, combine Armenian influences (all the folk-songs included in the suite are genuinely Armenian) with seemingly Middle Eastern melodic elements as well as various Western musical influences. The results variously tear at the heartstrings and give rise to a sense of elation, not to mention providing lovely solos for almost all the section leaders. This is a piece that surely no one could resist for its range of emotions and its sheer beauty, all contained in a minimal space.

Enjoy everyone!

Yardumian-V.Concerto_Symphony2_A.Suite-Tzadik.zip

http://www55.zippyshare.com/v/GLWup4op/file.html