Release Date: 01 January 2000
Label: Naxos / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 636943900420
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: BENNETT
Description
Robert Russell Bennett (1894-1981)Abraham Lincoln: A Likeness in Symphony Form (1929) Sights and Sounds (An Orchestral Entertainment) (1929)As Broadway's leading orchestrator, Robert Russell Bennett worked with the likes of Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers on more than three hundred shows. He also completed almost two hundred serious works of his own, including symphonies, operas, choral, vocal and chamber works and pieces for wind band.Born in Kansas in 1894, Bennett routinely substituted for whatever player was absent from his father's band He studied with the Danish composer and conductor Carl Busch, founder of the Kansas Symphony Orchestra, leaving there to take up work in New York in 1916.Bennett's first theatre orchestrations date from 1920, often working on over twenty shows a season. But he never lost sight of serious composition and in 1926 put arranging on hold and left to study, mostly in Paris and Berlin. The legendary Nadia Boulanger was a teacher who praised him as 'a true artist'. Recognition too came in the form of an 'honourable mention' (for his first symphony) in the pages of Musical America.In Paris and Berlin in 1927-28, on a Guggenheim Scholarship, he noticed an RCA Victor competition with a prize of 25,000 dollars for an outstanding orchestral composition, with a small prize for a lighter piece of music. He submitted the two works on this disc - the patriotic Abraham Lincoln and the abstract orchestral painting of Sights and Sounds. Both pieces were scored for an enormous band of musicians and are of large proportions. RCA Victor's jury consisted of Leopold Stokowski, Serge Koussevitzky, Frederick Stock, Rudolph Ganz and Olga Samaroff. They decided no work was better than any other to win outright and awarded five prizes to Aaron Copland's Dance Symphony, Louis Gruenberg's Symphony, Ernst Bloch's Helvetia and two 5,000 dollar awards to Bennett's pieces.Despite their huge orchestral forces, Bennett's prizewinners were then published Abraham Lincoln was first performed by Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in October 1931, with a second performance given a fortnight later at the dedication of the Juilliard School's new auditorium. For this, Bennett wrote his own programme notes, drawn from below. The first movement of Abraham Lincoln is in sonata form opening with a theme emphasising his simplicity and sweetness, before its grand return. There is the suggestion of a rhythm dear to the mid-West fiddlers and banjoists a hundred years ago. A second theme expresses Lincoln's sadness on cellos and bass clarinet. It comes to a climax, to be cut off by a drum and a hint of The Union Forever. A development section follows, the music becoming more confident before the sadness of the second theme returns serenely. The slow movement (Hi, Affection and His Faith) tells the story of Lincoln's first love affair at a time 'when women were worshipped'. At one point a confused march appears in half the orche
Tracklisting
Dariia Lytvishko
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop
Alice Di Piazza; Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Bigband; Titus Engel
Anna Alas i Jove; Miquel Villalba
David Childs; Black Dyke Band; Nicholas Childs
Yaqi Yang; Margarita Parsamyan; Robynne Redmon; Minghao Liu; Frank Ragsdale; Kim Josephson; Kevin S
Vilmos Csikos; Olivier Lechardeur; Manon Lamaison
Tomas Cotik; Martingale Ensemble; Ken Selden
