Gottschalk: A Night In The Tropics / Celebre Tarantelle / Berceuse

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Cat No: 8559036

Release Date: 01 January 2000

Label: Naxos / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 636943903629

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: GOTTSCHALK

Description
Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829 - 1869)Symphonie romantique, and other works Before his death at the age of forty in 1869, Louis MoreauGottschalk achieved a stunning list of 'firsts'. He was the first Americancomposer to be hailed inEurope; the first American virtuoso (on piano) to be salutedby the likes of Chopin; the first American musician to erase the hard linedividing 'serious' from 'popular' genres; the first to introduce Americanthemes into European classical music; the first Pan-American artist in anyfield; and among the first American artists to champion such causes asabolitionism, public education and popular democracy. Above all, he was thefirst to capture the syncopated music of South Louisiana and the Caribbean inenduring works that anticipate ragtime and jazz by half a century. Who was this phenomenon? Born in New Orleans in 1829, hewas the son of a Jewish businessman from London and a colourful and capriciouswhite Creole woman whose family had fled the slave revolt that swept the island of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) during the French Revolution. Steeped in NewOrleans's rich operatic heritage (the Crescent City had two opera companiesbefore New York had one), young 'Moreau', as he was called, was sent as a boyto further his studies in Paris Before his twentieth birthday he had stunned thesalons frequented by Liszt, Thalberg and Chopin with brilliant and movingcompositions that evoked the Creole songs he had absorbed from his familycircle. Gottschalk, like Chopin or Dvorak, was not content simplyto incorporate folk material into his works. In the process of composition, hetransformed his raw material into pieces that are alternatively sentimental, bracinglyraucous, or darkly brooding. Sometimes, as in the quotation from the popularnursery song included here as part of the medley O! ma charmante, the musicalmaterial even transformed from major to minor, changing its emotional toneentirely. Most of his symphonic works, demanding pieces for piano, operatic fragments,patriotic works and art songs are imbued with a tender lyricism that exudes themusical bouquet of the tropics. An ardent Unionist during the Civil War, henonetheless saw himself, and was seen by others, as the 'Chopin of theCreoles'. Conductor Richard Rosenberg has captured this essence ina beguiling and diverse selection of Gottschalkiana. Here is the firstrecording of Gottschalk's Symphonie romantique, subtitled A Night inthe Tropics, based on the composer's own orchestral score, now preserved atthe New York Public Library. In the second movement it features an unlikely andarrestiug fugue based on a syncopated Cubau theme. Here, too, are adaptatious of Gottschalk pieces by hisfriends and self-proclaimed disciples Sidney Lambert (1838-1909), LucienLambert fils (1858-1945) and Nicolas Ruiz Espadero (1832-1890). Thelast, a formidably proficient Cuban friend of Gottscha1k's, transcribed the Louisianian'sTarantelle, Op. 67. No.5 for winds, strings and piano.
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