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[Symphony 1 (in one Movement) 1956 by Roberto Falabella (1929-1958)]

Symphony 1 (in one Movement) 1956 by Roberto Falabella (1929-1958)


Chile Symphony Orchestra
Hector Carvajal, Cond.
Live performance, private recording.  Date unknown.

From the collection of Karl Miller

This Symphony is several minutes shorter than Webern's, has some modern trappings, but also mixes in folk motifs and interesting rhythms. 

Wikipedia Bio

Roberto Falabella was a chilean composer active in the decade of the 50′s. He suffered from a disease called Little that kept him in a wheelchair through out his life and eventually killed him at the age of 29.

Despite his disease, he was a very active composer that created a huge catalogue of works and became known by his colleagues as the "Chilean Mozart". He had a deep knowledge of Latin American music, the classical tradition and of the avant-garde music of his time.

Most of his work remains unperformed.

His unorthodox eclecticism was very uncommon at his time and connects Falabella's music to younger generations of composers (such as Alfred Schnittke, John Adams, John Zorn, etc) .

The work "Estudios Emocionales" (Emotional Studies) combines minimalism, serialism (in a time when they were considered antagonists) and huayno rythms and melodies from the Andes. Another peculiar aspect of this work is the use of very long pauses.

[Nikolai Korndorff: Sempre Tutti]

Nikolai Korndorff: Sempre Tutti



BBC Symphony Orchestra
Alexander Lazarev, Conductor
19 November, 1992
Radio Broadcast

1: Intro
2. Sempre Tutti

From the collection of Karl Miller


It seems like a lot of our Canadians were born somewhere else-- Korndorf was originally Russian, but emigrated to Canada.   This is a longer "spiritual" work with a sustained drone-- I liked it, and found it pretty accessible.  He seems like he was a fascinating character.  I'd like to hear more of his work, and I'm sorry he left us at such an early age.  Here are a couple of clippings.

BRIEF STATEMENT ABOUT MY WORK
    I belong to the direction in Russian music which, independently of the composer's style, usually turns to very serious subjects:  philosophical, religious, moral, problems of spiritual life of a person, one's relationship with the external world, the problem of the relationship between beauty and reality, as well as the relationship of the spiritual and the anti-spiritual.  All this means that most of my works were not written for fun and that then can in no way be classified as entertainment.  As much as possible, I strive to ensure that every one of my works contains a message to each listener and that my music leaves no one indifferent but arouses an emotional response in them. I even accept that sometimes my music arouses negative emotions - as long as it is not indifference.

     I compose various types of music:  the dramatic and lyric, the ecstatic and calm, the humorous and tragic.  Everything depends on the aim of the specific piece.  Some of my pieces are composed using contrasting material, the others (without contrasting material) emphasizing a single emotional state.  I strive to make my music have many interpretations rather that one meaning.  This difference of character produces a multi-layered complexity and a polyphony of texture in whatever instrumentation I use.

     Most of my pieces last from 20 to 40 minutes. A prolonged dynamic, a large culmination and an attempt to create monumentalism and sound color are typical of my music.  Often the form of a piece represents a dynamic wave or a set of such waves.  In my music, I employ different types of contemporary composing techniques; I  also attempt to synthesize elements of different styles and trends, sometimes opposite to each other.  I do this because I believe that our time is the time of synthesis and that all the treasures accumulated during the centuries of musical cultural existence should be used.  That is why my music reflects medieval chorale, elements of modern rock music, folk music and underground music.  It also  contains elements of romantic music, European vanguard music, and American minimalism.   I seek to use and work out all of these elements, however, in my own way.

     I work in various genre but mainly in symphonic and chamber music, using both traditional tendencies (for example:  Symphonies # 1, 2, 3 and 4, opera MR  ("Marina and Rainer"), brass-quintet and string trio) and nontraditional tendencies. In symphonic pieces, I prefer to use a large instrumentation that enables me to create an extended sound, rich in volume. In chamber music, I frequently employ nontraditional instrumentation (for example, Confessiones, Amoroso, Primitive Music, Movements, Let the Earth Bring Forth, Get Out!!!).  I repeatedly return with special interest to the genre of the instrumental theater, where the performers and even the instruments are the characters (Yes!!, "...si muove", The Dance in Metal in Honour of John Cage, Merry Music for Very Nice People).  I also use the traits of an instrumental theater (dance and movements of the performers on stage or in the auditorium) in some of my chamber pieces (Confessiones, Primitive music, Mozart-variationen, Get Out!!!).  Sometimes I combine live and recorded sound   (Singing, Yarilo, Movements).  I like to use the performers in unconventional ways: instrumentalists as singers, singers as instrumental performers, the conductor, too, as an  instrumental performer (Yes!!, Victor, string Quartet, Welcome, Amoroso, Music for Owen Underhill and His Magnificent Eight).  Although I seek to solve a different problem in each new work, and not to repeat myself, there is, of course, inheritance   in some of my works (Prologue and Epilogue).  Other works represent a different approach as to the same musical material (Hymns I, II and III).  Some pieces are written in two versions, each  for a different instrumentation (Welcome! for chorus and for 6 performers, Lullaby as a version of Con Sordino).


From the "Gone, but not Forgotten" website:


Gone but not Forgotten is an occasional series featuring musicians from yesterday who deserve more attention today. In this installment: composer, conductor, musicologist and educator, Nikolai Korndorf.
Nikolai Korndorf was a gifted composer known for his brilliant orchestrations and encyclopedic knowledge of standard classical repertoire. His scores continue to be performed by major orchestras around the world, and his reputation for almost super-human musical feats is now legendary.

Korndorf could play any piece of standard classical repertoire at the piano from memory. He could also instantly transpose enormously difficult orchestral scores, such as the Miraculous Mandarin, at tempo, during composition lessons – to the amazement of his students. These were more than parlour tricks. Korndorf's demonstrations had real pedagogical value, and his colleagues and devoted students were left enlightened and slack jawed by his pyrotechnical displays.

From Russia to Canada
Korndorf was born in Moscow in 1947 and studied at the famed Moscow Conservatory, where he eventually became a professor of composition. He was a co-founder of the New ACM, an association of leading Soviet composers that included Alfred Schnittke and Sofia Gubaidulina. In 1991, in the midst of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Korndorf and his family left Moscow for Canada, landing in the quiet suburban community of Burnaby, B.C. From his new home base just outside Vancouver, Korndorf gingerly assimilated himself into Canadian society and began to create bonds with like-minded musicians who, at first, didn't know quite what to make of the soft-spoken, big bear of a man.

Composer Keith Hamel describes his first exposure to the enigmatic Russian genius at the Canadian Music Centre, where they were both perusing scores. "When I met Nikolai at the CMC office I was immediately impressed by his phenomenal knowledge of music," says Hamel. "He was very shy and, as I discovered, inclined to stay in the shadows. So, to draw him out, I invited him to audit a computer music class at the UBC School of Music and he accepted."

The real Korndorf emerges from the shadows
Capilano University music professor Bradshaw Pack was in that same computer music class, and describes the behavior of the odd interloper: "Nikolai was older than the other students, and never really said anything. We were all trying to figure out this computer equipment and not doing very well. But before long Nikolai discovered how to make this unbelievable sound that seemed like it would shake the whole building down."

"One day we noticed Nikolai was missing from class and we learned that he was in London recording a CD of his orchestral music with the BBC Symphony Orchestra for Sony Records," continues Pack. "That's when we realized what a heavy guy he was."

That CD, A New Heaven, drew comparisons to the music of Henryk Górecki and Arvo Pärt. It also led to a commission from the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra that, in the end, didn't meet expectations for either the orchestra or Korndorf.

"The VSO thought they were getting a piece like Hymn 2 and 3 [from A New Heaven]," Pack explains, "but instead they got a very aggressively scored piece called Get Out in which the players and conductor engage in a fight that ends with the conductor tearing the score to bits and storming off stage. The piece was never performed."

The simple beauty of Maud Lewis inspires Korndorf
Fortunately, there are other instances of orchestral commissions with happier outcomes. Pianist Anna Levy, a close friend of Korndorf's, witnessed the creation of one of his most compelling works, a gentle homage to the Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis. Levy describes the genesis of this work, saying, "Nikolai had just returned from an exhibit of the paintings of Maud Lewis. His eyes were wide open and he was saying 'I can't believe it, I can't believe it! This artist, Maud Lewis, suffered so much pain and lived in poverty but created such beautiful, simple art. And her smile, I'll never forget the purity and innocence of her smile!'"

Korndorf's legacy
The Smile of Maud Lewis has never been commercially released, like so many of Korndorf's other works. In fact, much of the composer's music has never even been performed. But that may change if interest in his music continues at pace. Several books and academic papers on Korndorf are now underway, in both Canada and Russia. A new CD of cello compositions is due out later this month, and a cello concerto is scheduled for performance on June 7 in St. Petersburg with Alexander Ivashkin as the soloist with the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev.

Korndorf died suddenly at the age of 54 in 2001 while playing soccer on a local pitch. His friends and family were devastated by the loss. Former student Brent Lee created a festival in Korndorf's honour in Windsor in 2006.  Others wrote pieces as tributes: Jocelyn Morlock composed half-light, somnolent rains and Hamel produced Kolokolchiki.

It's clear that this gentle giant of a man, who made such an impact during his time here, will not soon be forgotten. 

To be honest-- I wouldn't know any better, but the names were from the radio broadcast, and they could have been Americanized.

Hi everybody,

The Index to French Music is renewed.
I think this is the easier way to view.
There is a remark about the date and time of the latest update.

Elroel

Elroel-- Thanks for all of your hard work and recent posts.

I am wondering about Alexandre Tansman-- you have him listed as French. (With good reason.) We have another work of his posted in the Polish section, where he was born. (According to the Wikipedia Bio, he always referred to himself as a Polish composer, even though he spoke French at home.  He also spent time in the US.

Short Question-- Where do I put a Tansman work I'm ripping?

More philosophical QuestioN:

I'm wondering if it would help us to use the Tagging feature in Simple Machines to show more than one nationality, and enable searches  by tagged fields.   This way, you could launch a search for all "French Composers" and it would return people like Tansman with more than one nationality.  It would also remove the need to maintain indexes by hand, and we could also apply tags for period, type , etc.  So you could say "Show me all chamber works b y  early 20th century German Composers"   It would also require a poster to provide more info, but I THINK we can have a form for postings.

That sounds great, but retagging all of the existing  postings would be a lot of work-- and We'd likely want to make sure that the feature works as they say  on a small set before doing a major retagging effort.


Something to ponder...

[Music of Joseph Jongen]

Music of Joseph Jongen




1. Serenade for Strings
Belgian String Ensemble
Nicolai Berezowski, Conductor

2. Commentary

3. In The Fragrance of the Pines
Lucian Laporte Kirch, Cello

4. Outro

From the collection of Karl Miller
Source: Radio broadcast, date unknown

Wikipedia Bio
Joseph Jongen
Marie-Alphonse-Nicolas-Joseph Jongen (14 December 1873 – 12 July 1953) was a Belgian organist, composer, and music educator.
Contents

Biography
Jongen was born in Liège. On the strength of an amazing precocity for music, he was admitted to the Liège Conservatoire at the extraordinarily young age of seven, and spent the next sixteen years there. Jongen won a First Prize for Fugue in 1895, an honors diploma in piano the next year, and another for organ in 1896. In 1897, he won the prestigious Prix de Rome, which allowed him to travel to Italy, Germany and France.

He began composing at the age of 13, and immediately exhibited exceptional talent in that field too. By the time he published his Opus 1, he already had dozens of works to his credit. His monumental and massive First String Quartet was composed in 1894 and was submitted for the annual competition for fine arts held by the Royal Academy of Belgium, where it was awarded the top prize by the jury.

In 1902, he returned to his native land, and in the following year he was named a professor of harmony and counterpoint at his old Liège college. With the outbreak of World War I, he and his family moved to England where he founded a piano quartet. When peace returned, he came back to Belgium and was named professor of fugue at the Royal Conservatoire in Brussels. From 1925 until 1929, he served as director of that institution; a quarter of a century after leaving the directorship, he died at Sart-lez-Spa, Belgium.

Compositions
From his teens to his seventies Jongen composed a great deal, including symphonies, concertos (for cello, for piano and for harp), chamber music (notably a late string trio and three string quartets), and songs, some with piano, others with orchestra. (His list of opus numbers eventually reached 241, but he destroyed a good many pieces.) Today, the only part of his oeuvre performed with any regularity is his output for organ, much of it solo, some of it in combination with other instruments.

His monumental Symphonie Concertante of 1926 is a tour de force, considered by many to be among the greatest works ever written for organ and orchestra.[1] Numerous eminent organists of modern times (such as Virgil Fox, Jean Guillou, and Michael Murray) have championed and recorded it. The work was commissioned by Rodman Wanamaker for debut in the Grand Court of his palatial Philadelphia department store, Wanamaker's. Its intended use was for the re-dedication of the world's largest pipe organ there, the Wanamaker Organ. as part of a series of concerts Rodman Wanamaker funded with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Mr. Wanamaker's death in 1928 precluded the performance of the work at that time in the venue for which it was written, but it was finally performed for the first time with the Wanamaker Organ and the Philadelphia Orchestra on 27 September 2008.

[Rhapsody for Piano and Saxophone by Tutti Camarata]

Rhapsody for Piano and Saxophone by Tutti Camarata

Performers Unidentified
February 13, 1949
Radio Broadcast

From the Collection of Karl Miller

Okay, this is a case where I must admit I find the composer more interesting than the work.   I have to confess that I take a perverse pleasure in posting a work by a composer who has had artistic interactions with:

Jascha Heifetz



Benny Goodman



Annette Funicello


Van Halen:


and Kiss:


Who was this person? 

From the Space Age Music Maker site.

Salvatore "Tutti" Camarata
________________________________________
•   Born 11 May 1913, Glen Ridge, New Jersey
•   Died 20 April 2005, Burbank, California
________________________________________
Nicknamed by bandleader Jimmy Dorsey, "Tutti" Camarata was truly a jack of all musical trades--instrumentalist, orchestrator, arranger, composer, producer, and even record company executive.

Perhaps his drive had something to do with being born as the youngest in a family of eight children. He started studying the violin at the age of nine and switched to the trumpet at twelve. He managed not only to be heard above the noise of his siblings but to earn an invitation to attend the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. Working in stage and radio studio orchestras to pay the rent, he completed Juilliard and went on to study composition at Columbia University.

At 21, he was hired by Charlie Barnet, whose band was just starting to gain some fame. Known then as "Toots," he then worked briefly on Bing Crosby's radio show and as an arranger for bandleader Paul Whiteman when Jimmy Dorsey lured him in with the chance to work both as an arranger and as Dorsey's first-chair trumpet player.

Camarata's arrangements were one of the crucial ingredients in the Dorsey band's quick rise to success in 1939. The sponsor for Dorsey's radio spots wanted the last number of the show to showcase all of the band's top talents--singers Bob Eberle and Helen O'Connell, Dorsey and several other top instrumental soloists. Camarata came up with a three-part structure--a slow intro featuring Eberle, a mid-tempo section with O'Connell, and a finale with a full, upbeat swinging band. At least two of Dorsey's biggest hits--"Green Eyes" and "Maria Elena"--are direct results of this novelty.

In the early 1940s, Camarata quit Dorsey's band and went to work for Glen Gray as the lead arranger for his Casa Loma Orchestra, and then for Benny Goodman. His round of the best of the era's big bands came to an end in 1942, however, when he went to work as a civilian flight instructor for the U.S. Army Air Force, and later enlisted.

In 1944, Jack Kapp of Decca Records hired him as a musical director, and Camarata arranged and orchestrated for a number of Decca's biggest acts, including Crosby, Mary Martin, and Louis Armstrong. During this period, he arranged and conducted Billie Holiday's first sessions backed with a studio orchestra.

Within a year of hiring him, Kapp dispatched Camarata to the U.K., where he scored the film, "London Town," starring Sid Field, Kay Kendall, and a very young Petula Clark. The big band Camarata put together for this film later became the core of Ted Heath's band. He became close friends with Sir Edward Lewis, CEO of the U.K. arm of Decca, and together, the two founded London Records with the aim of distributing classical music from the U.K. in the U.S. market.

While London did become a major classical label, both in the U.S. and internationally, it also went on to become one of the U.K.'s most prominent record companies, with artists ranging from Edmundo Ros to the Rolling Stones. Camarata himself recorded for London as a classical performer, usually preparing original settings for full orchestra of pieces ranging from Erik Satie's solo piano works to chamber pieces by Bach and opera overtures and airas by Verdi, Puccine, and Rossini.

His stay in the U.K. was short, however, and he returned to the U.S. in 1950, where he rejoined Decca. He set up a studio big band, dubbed the Commanders, which had good sales with a series of albums such as Meet The Commanders. He also began working in television, arranging and conducting a number of the medium's more spectacular musical productions, including "Together With Music," which featured Mary Martin and Noel Coward.

These shows brought his name to the attention of Charles Hansen, an executive working with Walt Disney, who had been looking for someone to run a record label that could release soundtracks of his movies on the then-new LP format. Camarata moved to southern California, where he established and ran Disneyland Records for nearly twenty years. Soon after the label's formation, Disney stumbled into a huge popular hit with its "Mickey Mouse Club" television series. Camarata was soon busy producing singles by most of the show's featured performers, including the young Annette Funicello.
Funicello had a fairly thin voice and was something of a reluctant performer at first. But then Camarata experimented with a new echo effect device Disneyland Records had bought, and he was able to develop a richer, rounder sound that convinced Disney to push her as a full-fledged recording star.
Camarata was more than just a record maker for Disney. He played an important role in building up the studio's already well-known library of original music and provided some significant additions to the studio's casts. He introduced Sterling Holloway, who became the voice of Winnie the Pooh, and helped convince Louis Prima and Phil Harris to provide the voices for King Louie the Ape and Baloo the Bear in "The Jungle Book." He also expanded the label's repertoire to works outside the Disney oeuvre, including a series of Broadway musical songtrack albums he recorded with the Mike Sammes Singers. Over the course of his time with Disney, Camarata's recordings earned a total of eight Grammy Award nominations.

Even with his hectic schedule of work as an executive and musical director with Disney, Camarata managed to return on occasion to his big band roots. Of particular note are the two albums, Tutti's Trumpets and Tutti's Trombones. Trumpets dates from 1957 and features a trumpet choir manned by some of the best jazz and studio musicians in Hollywood: Mannie Klein, Uan Rasey, Pete Candoli, Conrad Gozzo, Joe Triscari, and Shorty Sherock. In 1970, he reprised the approach with Trombones, using a stellar ensemble that included Dick Nash, Joe Howard, Tommy Pederson, Ernie Tack, Kenny Shroyer, Frank Rosolino, Hoyt Bohannon, Herbie Harper, Gil Falco, and Lloyd Ulyate, plus Tommy Tedesco on guitar, Red Mitchell on bass, and Hal Blaine on drums. Despite the solid jazz credentials of most of the players, the two albums stay on the easy listening end of the Space Age Pop spectrum.

In the early days of Disneyland Records, Camarata relied on recording studios rented from other firms in the L.A. area, and he kept pressing Disney to invest in its own studio to reduce costs and provide a consistent quality of recordings. "Why would I want to own a studio," Walt Disney responded to the suggestion of his company's director of recording Tutti Camarata. "I'd rather be a client." After Disney rejected the idea several times, Camarata decided to take action himself. He bought an old auto repair shop on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, built and equipped several studios, and, in 1960, opened Sunset Sound Recorders.

Although Disneyland Records was the studio's principle customer at first, it quickly became known, along with Gold Star, as one of the best independent studios in Hollywood. Soon a wide range of artists began to pass through the space. Sunset Sound was an early adopter of the more sophisticated mixing technology used as rock shifted its focus from singles to albums, and some of rock's biggest names, including the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, Prince, and Van Halen, became regular customers.

As Sunset's success increased, Camarata found it increasingly difficult to juggle its demands with those of Disney, and in 1972, he decided to leave Disney to concentrate on his own company. He continued to arrange and conduct accompanying groups as part of his work at Sunset Sound, but his energies returned to his earliest interest, classical music.

One of his last creative endeavors was the orchestration of a number of the most popular numbers from the Church of Latter Day Saints' hymnal. Camarata then traveled to London, where he recruited and conducted an ensemble including a 100-piece orchestra, a choir of 180 adults, a children's choir, a pipe organ, and a brass section for the resulting recording, The Power and the Glory. "This is the most important album I have ever done," he said of the work when it was completed.

Camarata continued to work on classical recordings into the mid-1990s. He eventually turned over the control of Sunset Sound to his son, Paul, who still heads the studio today.


Wiki Bio
Tutti Camarata
Salvador "Tutti" Camarata (May 11, 1913 - April 13, 2005) was a composer, arranger and trumpeter.

Early life and career
Born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, Camarata studied music at Juilliard School in New York - a student of Bernard Wagenaar, Joseph Littau, Cesare Sodero, and Jan Meyerowitz. His early career was as a trumpet player for bands such as Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and others, eventually becoming the lead trumpet and arranger for Jimmy Dorsey (arranging such hits as Tangerine, Green Eyes and Yours). He also did arranging for Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and many others. He conducted and orchestrated a recording of Jascha Heifetz, the legendary violinist.

During World War II, he served as a flight instructor in the Army Air Forces.

London Records
In 1944, J. Arthur Rank summoned him to London, England, to write a musical score for the film London Town. He became good friends with Sir Edward Lewis, CEO of the U.K. arm of British Decca, and often visited Bridge House in Felsted (this was Sir Edward And Lady Lewis' summer home) and the two founded London Records with the aim of distributing classical music from the U.K. in the U.S. market.[1] One of his assignments was to see that London Records maintained the best classical catalog in the industry. In addition to his "administrative" duties at London Records he also served as a classical artist orchestrating and conducting a number of classical albums including the works of Puccini, Verdi, Bach, Bizet, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff.

Joining the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) in 1948, his popular songs and instrumentals include Mutiny in the Brass Section, Story of the Stars, Hollywood Pastime, Dixieland Detour, Moonlight Masquerade, Louis, and No More. He also composed the work Verdiana Suite.
He also recorded other albums, including the popular Tutti's Trumpets (1957) and Tutti's Trombones, titles which featured his compositions and arrangements and are considered classics of the genre.

Sunset Sound Recorders
In 1956 Walt Disney hired him to form Disneyland Records and to be Music Director and producer for the label. Camarata had suggested Disney build his own recording studio, but Disney declined and instead encouraged Camarata to build his own. In 1958 Camarata purchased the first building, an old auto repair shop on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California, that would become the location of Sunset Sound Recorders. He produced over three-hundred albums there during his 16-year association with Disney. He scored several albums at Disney to help children gain a knowledge of, and love for, classical music.

By the early 1960s, Sunset Sound Recorders became an independent recording studio - and remains so to this day - one of the largest independents in the industry. Clients over the years have included: Rolling Stones, Van Halen, Miles Davis, Carly Simon, The Doors, Herb Alpert, Jackie DeShannon, Brazil '66, Ricky Nelson, Paul McCartney, James Taylor, Macy Gray, Bee Gees, the Doobie Brothers, Whitney Houston, Barry Manilow, Dave Grusin, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Lee Ritenour, Fourplay, Richard Thompson, Yes, Brian Wilson, Beach Boys, Annette Funicello, Louis Armstrong, The Bangles, Fishbone, Randy Newman, Sly and The Family Stone, Tom Petty, Sheena Easton, Patti Austin, Aaron Neville, Sam Cooke, The Turtles, Lovin' Spoonful, Buffalo Springfield, Janis Joplin, Genesis, Kenny Loggins, Jackson Browne, Led Zeppelin, Smashing Pumpkins, Ringo Starr, Elton John, Celine Dion, Earl Klugh, Alanis Morissette, Toto, Robert Palmer, Aretha Franklin, Tom Waits, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Jennifer Holliday, Olivia Newton-John, Melissa Manchester, Barbra Streisand, Roberta Flack, Rick James, Andy Williams, and many, many more.

Television and cinema work
Camarata was the musical conductor for several TV series, including Startime, The Vic Damone Show and The Alcoa Hour. He was also the vocal supervisor for the 1963 movie Summer Magic, which included musical performances by Hayley Mills and Burl Ives. A great many Disney movie sound tracks were also made at Sunset.

Sound Factory
In November 1981, Camarata would also purchase The Sound Factory, previously owned by David Hassinger. Like the Sunset Sound studios, the Sound Factory is one of the top recording studios in Hollywood, and has been used by many top music artists including Jackson Browne, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Linda Ronstadt, Ringo Starr, T Bone Burnett, Bette Midler, Richie Furay, Warren Zevon, Dolly Parton, Elvis Costello, Sam Phillips, Tonio K., Neil Diamond, Cher, Los Lobos, The Wallflowers, KISS, Kenny Rogers, Beck, Brian Wilson, Victoria Williams, Ben Folds Five, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Danny Elfman and many others..

Final work
Camarata's last album was The Power and the Glory on which he worked for four years. Once completing the arrangements, Camarata returned to England (St. John's Smith Square) to conduct a large orchestra and choir for the recording of the album which he had noted in one of his last interviews to be one of his most important works.

[Music of Igor Kuljeric]

Music of Igor Kuljeric

1.  Homage to Lukacic (1972)   
For mixed chorus and percussion
RTZ Symphony Orchestra
Igor Kuljeric, Conductor
Source LP:  Jugoton LSY-61250

2-6 Marimba Concerto (2001) (with intro and outro)
(Also known as "Concerto for Ivana")
Ivana Kuljeric, Marimba (his daughter)
Zagreb Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra
Igor Kuljeric, Conductor
January 25, 2002
Radio Broadcast


From the collection of Karl Miller


WARNING:   The first work here is very modernist, experimental, etc, and I would not have posted this if I  wasn't  posting a more accessible work by the same composer at the same time.   Colin-- you may wish to delete the first track off your hard drive without listening to it...

These are two very different works.  The first reminds me of Penderecki's more dissonant choral works.
A best as I can determine, this is a transfer from this LP:



The concerto was evidently written for his daughter-- I've found a later performance on Youtube with her performing after Kuljeric's death. 

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnHkHLn3Bag
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obF0FCc0neA&feature=relmfu
• 

Wikipedia Bio:
Igor Kuljerić (February 1, 1938 in Šibenik – April 20, 2006) was an important Croatian composer. His large opus has followed the stylistic changes and evolutions of 20th and 21st century music.

Biography
Born in the coastal city of Šibenik on the Adriatic Sea, Kuljerić graduated in composition from Zagreb Academy of Music and received a grant from the Italian government to study opera repertoire at La Scala in Milan, Italy. Attracted by the new movements in contemporary music, he participated in the experiments held in the Studio di fonologia musicale (Studio for musical phonology) at RAI with Luigi Nono and in Monte Carlo with Igor Markevitch. From 1960 to 1967 he served as the rehearsal and assistant conductor of the Opera of Croatian National Theater in Zagreb and later became a member of the famed I Solisti di Zagreb ensemble as harpsichordist and assistant to the director Antonio Janigro. His conducting debut in 1967 during the Zagreb soloists' tour in the United States, followed by positive reviews in the New York and Boston press led to his permanent appointment as conductor at Croatian Radiotelevision. From 1968 till the early '80s he served as the conductor of Croatian Radio Television Chorus and the Croatian Radio Television Symphony Orchestra. Kuljerić has held many important positions in Croatian cultural institutions, including music directorships of Dubrovnik Summer Festival, Croatian National Theatre, Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall Series and Music Biennale Zagreb festival of contemporary music. Kuljerić was also active giving performances abroad in such countries as the United States, the former USSR, Spain, Italy, and Austria.

He established himself early as one of the most frequently performed Croatian composers, his pieces becoming part of the repertoire of many orchestras, chamber ensembles, and soloists.

His student works, Symphonic Variations, Concert Ouverture, Concerto for French Horn and Orchestra, and Two Ballet Suites... owe much to academic influences while speaking of the young composer's particular talents and inventiveness.

After graduation Kuljerić felt intrigued by the new expressive and experimental musical tools that had become available. At that time Zagreb Biennale Music Festival of Contemporary Music was at the forefront of international avant garde movement hosting all of the important composers, musical writers, and performers. Some of the works from that period include Figurazioni Con Tromba for trumpets and orchestra, Solo-Tutti for piano and orchestra, Impulsi II for string quartet, Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh for orchestra and choirs, Folk-Art tape music (performed as contemporary dance music), Les Echos I for chamber orchestra, and Les Echos II for jazz band and symphony orchestra.

Kuljerić felt definitive limitations of the avant-garde movement in the beginning of the '80s with its aesthetics not allowing him further development of his musical ideas. He investigated the deeper layers of his musical heritage with many references—direct and indirect—to Croatian folk music and tradition, trying to incorporate the positive experiences of musical avant-garde. Since then his output demonstrated a desire to write in a more direct and communicative style, reflecting the questioning of modernist theories and practice.

Many of these features can be found in his Risuono Di Gavotta and Chorale Ouverture for symphony orchestra, Alleluia and Pater Noster for piano trio, the Waltz for chamber ensemble, Concertpiece for Flutes and Orchestra, Chopin Op. 7 No. 4 for vibes and flute, Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra, Barocchiana for marimba and strings, Riky Levi, a ballet that premiered in 1991 in Sarajevo, with a later orchestra suite version, Five Movements from the Ballet Riky Levi).

A special part of Kuljerić's opus references national musical roots and religious practice, Croatian glagolitic heritage, and historical artistic practice (Renaissance poetry and Baroque music) and can be found in Quam Pulchra Es (Ommaggio A Kukacic), Sea (More) for a girls choir, Song for string quartet, Cross Give Us Mercy (Krizu daj nam to milosti) for men's choir, Kanconijer for voices and instruments, and Croatian Glagolitic Requiem a monolithic work for soloists, choir, and orchestra written on an ancient Croatian glagolitic text of the Catholic mass (the live in concert recording CD published by Cantus – four nominations for PORIN – the most important Croatian discographic award) and Croatian Mass.

Kuljerić composed a great deal of film and incidental music, arrangements and crossover projects with famous Croatian pop and rock stars, music for sport events, and television jingles and commercials. He insisted on the freedom to explore various musical styles and forms, searching for a fusion that would reach the contemporary audience and communicate the present human situation. Thus he was attracted to stage drama and authored three operas:
•   The Power of Virtue (Moc vrline) premiered in 1977 at the Croatian National Theater in Zagreb. Written in avant-garde style, the work speaks about evil times in which witch hunts occur, when collective hysteria becomes the source of individual suffering. The opera was awarded an INA award.
•   Richard III, based on Shakespeare's drama, premiered in 1987 at Zagreb's Croatian National Theater. The mechanism of the crimes that rule over human history and govern human destinies are the crucial themes of this opera.
•   The Animal Farm opera fable based on George Orwell's novel. It premiered at the 2003 Music Biennale Zagreb in the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall as a joint commission by Music Biennale Zagreb, Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall, and Croatian Radiotelevision. The music combines traditional elements of opera and the modern music hall, using the technique of "persiflage" on the melodic-harmonic-rhythmic patterns of the music of consumer society (S. Reich's reference to "street music") and integrating them into an individual musical language. It is a familiar process to composers throughout the history of Western music.

Kuljerić's most recent works include Pop Concert for trumpet and orchestra, Folk Art for marimba and string quartet, and Milonga Para Victor Borges for cello ensemble.

Kuljerić was the recipient of UNESCO Award and many important Croatian awards. In 2004 he was admitted in the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Death
Kuljerić died in April 2006, only three weeks following the completion and premiere of his Hrvatska Misa (Croatian Mass), a monumental composition scored for soloists, chorus, and orchestra. The work on his new opera, Catherine of Zrin (Katarina Zrinska) featuring the heroine in a historical drama on love and politics, is unfinished.


   

I think you're correct.  I must have set the parameters wrong when I did the rip.

I can re-rip and post a corrected link.  To be honest, I don't think I have the time to identify what is up there now.

Thanks for the catch! 

[Erland Von KochMusica Malincolica for Strings, Op 50. (1952)]

Erland Von Koch
Musica Malincolica for Strings, Op 50. (1952)



Örebro Chamber Orchestra;
Lennart Hedwall,  Conductor

Source LP:  Swedish Society SLT 33224

From the Collection of Karl Miller


I've provided some biographical info here: http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,1516.msg28398.html#msg28398

Thanks! 

[Symphony for Small Orchestra Op. 37 (1984) by Giles Swayne]

Symphony for Small Orchestra  Op. 37 (1984) by Giles Swayne

Langham Chamber Orchestra
Nicholas Cleobury, conductor
Radio Broadcast 31st October 1988.

From the collection of Karl Miller.



Okay, to start with, I absolutely LOVE this work, and can't stop listening to it, but it may not be for all of your tastes. It definitely has a minimalist feel, so if Steve Reich or Philip Glass make your skin crawl, you may not want to try this.  There is a strong rhythmic  pulse throughout, (based on Swayne's research into African music), but the melodic lines are very strong (moreso, if you ask me, than Reich or Glass).   If you like the second movement of Creston's Dance symphony, you may really like this.  Also, the basic pulse  and cross rhythms reminds me a lot of John Coltrane's Africa,  which may be a reason I respond to it so strongly.

With that in mind-- a couple descriptions of the work:

From the composer's programme notes:

During the early '80s I became increasingly concerned about the remoteness, complexity, and general irrelevance of much contemporary music, and began experimenting with the use of a radically simplified language. This piece, which was first performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in June 1984, is in one continuous movement, and lasts about 24 minutes. It is scored for flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns and strings, with important solo parts for principal violin, viola and cello. The piece avoids all chromatic dissonance, and lies almost throughout in a modal A minor. Rhythmically it is both simple and elaborate - simple in that the pulse never alters, and there are almost no values other than crotchets and quavers, but complex because the patterns formed from these units are constantly shifting in length, and frequently superimposed upon each other.

As a result, although the score looks childishly easy to play, it is quite tricky to get together.

From Daniel Heslink, Sunday News, Lancaster, PA, 13/11/2005

The music is written in the style of the Jola people from Senegal and the Gambia. It is one continuous 24-minute movement, scored for a sparse contingent of winds and strings.

This work did not communicate in the same manner as Western symphonic music. Rhythmically, the work is complex for the interlocking nature of its parts, and at the heart of these seemingly written-down improvisations are the cherished values of improvisatory technique - spontaneity, creativity and continuously shifting shape.

A longer bio sketch by  MEIRION BOWEN  Written in the 1980s?


A radical change of style in the work of a composer seemingly mature and established is hardly a new phenomenon. Yet it always invites scepticism. It is an affront to the in-built conservatism of those performers and audiences, critics and publishers for whom the abiding principle tends to be 'better the devil we know...'. Liszt experienced it when he abandoned the life of virtuoso pianist to write symphonic poems and daring, innovatory piano pieces. Stravinsky experienced it more than most and for long was considered the chameleon of 20th-century music. Plenty more recent examples may be plucked at random from the contemporary scene, for instance Tippett (with the mosaic forms and scoring that suddenly appeared in King Priam), George Rochberg (with his disavowal of serialism), Henze and Cornelius Cardew (with their politically motivated pieces) and Dominic Muldowney (with his discovery of Brecht) - all have divided their followers into factions showing various degrees of sympathy (or antipathy) towards their new-found creative directions. A change of religious or political affiliation, or of sexual orientation, might have been more easily accommodated.

For Giles Swayne, as with many such figures past and present, the change was really a sudden discovery ofhis true identity. From about 1970 he had been writing works that used a variety of techniques and idioms. These had ranged from easy-going pieces deploying the talents of amateurs and children to more testing and diAicult music for professionals. He had won a number of prizes, was fluent enough to accept the commissions that were regularly forthcoming, and his music was being broadcast by the BBC.

Then, in 1979, he heard a record of some African tribal music - pygmy polyphony. At the same time he received a commission to write a work for the BBC Singers. The work soon went in a different direction from that expected either by the BBC or Swayne himself. And as it turned out, Cry, for 28 solo voices, became a landmark in his career and his most frequently performed large-scale piece.

At this time, Swayne accepted an appointment as composer-in-residence to the London Borough of Hounslow. Dealing with the untapped and untutored talents of school children and writing music for many local groups led Swayne to make an urgent reappraisal of his approach to music-making. He took time off to visit West Africa where he spent two months doing research and recording the music of the Jola people-of Senegal and the Gambia. On his return he found it exceedingly difficult to restart composition in the normal manner. He formed a rhythm group (largely by advertising for untrained musicians in the magazine Time Out); this became Square Root, an ensemble performing on tuned African drums, Western-style drums, other percussion instruments, guitars and keyboards. Before long it produced, collectively, music for a television play by Stephen Davis, Floating Off. Then the certainties that enabled him to compose afresh crystallized and, in the last year or so, Swayne has again become prolific.

The African influence that seeped into Cry is now obvious in his most recent music. However, a brief survey of his past compositions (which he does not disdain or reject) provides hints of what was to come, and perhaps a raison d'etre for the changes that occurred. For a start, Swayne was musically a late developer. Born in Liverpool in 1946, he came from a musical family, numbering among his relatives the composer Elizabeth Maconchy, a grandfather who was a good violinist and pianist and a father who was involved in the Three Choirs Festival and a member of the board of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Through his father he attended many of the RLPO's rehearsals and met Sir John Pritchard, who subsequently helped him.

Swayne was then mainly attracted to the chamber and orchestral works of Bartok and Hindemith. At Trinity College, Cambridge, he began reading classics but changed to music. He was baffled by academic music studies: form, fugue etc meant little to him and he was already, significantly, more interested in rhythm and colour. After graduating he went to the Royal Academy of Music, where he became suAiciently accomplished as a pianist and conductor to obtain work as a repetiteur and conductor at . Glyndebourne and to attend a conducting course at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena.

Swayne's progress as a composer, meanwhile, had been slow. A solo piano composition from his student days at the RAM shows something of the directness and flair that were to become hallmarks of his mature music. This was Phoenix Variations (revised 1979), a straightforward study, in serial technique in which a note row is presented unadorned and followed by seven variations (the second and fourth are identical) and a coda in which the theme returns slightly embellished - an ingenious design that manifests formal proficiency without selfconsciousness.

For three years Swayne studied with Nicholas Maw and his compositions suddenly began to burgeon. His debt to Maw is acknowledged in The Good Morrozv (1971), a setir< ting for mezzo-soprano and piano of poems by John Donne, arranged to form a tiny musical drama about a passionate yet light-hearted love-affair. It is clearly a counterpart to Maw's own, more serious and affecting song cycle, The Voice of Love: but Swayne's work is less a song cycle than a con- tinuous narrative, with more emphasis on Donne's vision i< of the oneness of the physical and the spiritual than upon human passion. This elevated, almost mystical preoccupa- tion with the experience of life as a whole is something that came increasingly into the foreground of Swayne's work as he matured.

Also in 1971, Swayne's String Quartet no. 1 appeared, win- ", ning the Greater London Arts Association Young Compo- sers' Award. It again was conceived as a continuous struc- ture, full of Bartokian sonic experiment yet demonstrably assured in its handling of a succession of short, concentrated episodes, including an aleatory section near the end. Swayne then embarked on a series of instrumental studies, under the generic title Canto, after Dante (Swayne knew by heart the first canto of Dante's Inferno and recited it often when gardening). His Cantos for guitar (1972), violin (1973), piano (1973) and clarinet (1975) are as much dramatic monologues as technical studies. The exploration of separate instrumen- tal identities in these works developed into something more intricate and intense in Synthesis (1974) for two pianos. Here, from a single comprehensive sonority, Swayne extracts a powerful dialectic of rhythmic and harmonic gestures. Much of the work sounds improvisatory, and indeed there is con- siderable interplay between the two pianists using metrically disjunct and aleatory presentation. This polarizes into sharp oppositions of rhythm which fleetingly resolve; harmonically the tendency of the music to erupt into chord-clusters is also stilled so that there is momentary repose (ex.l). A canonic episode presses the music towards a resolution of its conflicts and the final synthesis occurs when both pianists focus suddenly on trills on the same note, B flat (where the piece began).

Both in Synthesis and in his String Quartet no.2 (1977) the latter having an even more compact one-movement format Swayne maintains cogency of argument amid the most wild and rhapsodic invention. More dificult to apprehend is the overall scheme of Pentecost Music (1977) which seems partly to be the fruit of his attendance at Messiaen's composition classes in 1976 7. This single-movement, 30-minute work has nine subdivisions amounting to a huge arc-shaped structure symbolizing a journey towards fulfil- mended and a search for stability, only attainable at the end when a new beginning is possible. Swayne here uses a large orchestra (including two saxophones, six horns, four trumpets and five percussionists) with great panache, but the density of the musical thought is daunting. One immedi- 379 ately striking passage is the Dawn Chorus episode, the fourth, where the scoring divides into three audible strata: overlapping Messiaen-like birdcalls for woodwind, horn, trumpet and piano; rhythmic polyphony from the percus- sion; and long held notes for the lower brass and strings. The textures here prefigure the vocal writing in Cry. Orlando's Music, Swayne's first orchestral piece written a few years earlier (1974, revised 1976), is less ambitious: an effective, gentle and witty celebration of the birth of the composer's first son, with lullabies, plainsong and nursery songs supplying the basic musical ideas.

With Cry we reach the turning-point in Swayne's work. The recorded African music at first suggested to him a musical 'wake' with an African text. But he wanted something more universal in its implications and settled on a wordless (or nearly wordless) piece based on the story of the Creation. The work was conceived as a song in seven movements related to the Judaeo-Christian narrative of the Creation as described in Genesis, amounting not to a conventionally 'religious' work (except in the very broadest sense) but a celebration of life in all its aspects. The movements vary in length, the first being the longest (about 1 1 minutes), the second the shortest (5 minutes) and the rest about the same (8 - 9 minutes).

<omitting  a detailed description of "Cry"-- jowcol>

Subsequently Swayne's studies of African music and his projects with Hounslow children made him totally dissatisfied with the notion of contemporary composition in the solipsistic sense that might be exemplified by the work of, say, Brian Ferneyhough. To continue writing art music for an elite was not for him, hence his espousal of the synthesizers beloved of pop musicians and his involvement with an improvising group. His most recent works have discarded any kind of cerebral complexity and affect a disarming simplicity and refinement of texture, together with a concentration on limited melodic motifs and, above all, rhythm.

The most explicitly African pieces are Small Song for Miss Brown, for solo clarinet with optional improvised accompaniment of drums, and A Song for Hadi (both 1983). In the latter a 'song' for a group of wind and string soloists is generated from rhythmic ideas repeated, as a sequence of verses and choruses, by a percussionist playing on four conga drums. Swayne has also used an African ploughing- song recorded in Senegal as the basis for a setting of the Magnificat (1982). Modal melody, often a secondary feature of his earlier music (e.g. one movement of Cry is completely pentatonic), becomes a dominant aspect of his thematic invention in Canto for cello (1981) and thereafter. Riff-Raff (1983) for organ and Symphony for small orchestra (1984), the most extended of his recent works, are almost written- down improvisations. The symphony is another instance of Swayne's one-movement structures divided into clearly discernible shorter episodes, but rarely has a work sounded so removed from any standard conception of Western sym- phonic music. Rhythm is again to the fore: its units of varied length are increasingly inclined to destroy the regularity imposed by the bar-line. And when there is also an under- lying quintuple pulse, insisted on by cellos and basses, the slightly deadpan quality of the music becomes quite mesmeric. Another experiment of this kind is to be found in Naaotwa Lala (1984), written as a 'non-bass' piece for the BBC PO, making the violins and violas the centre of attention.
Against all this rhythmically centred, corporeal music can be set Swayne's latest effort, an opera called Le nozze di Cherubino, a follow-up to Le nozze di Figaro with a libretto in the style of Da Ponte by Swayne himself and music in a Mozartian idiom. In two acts and 21 scenes, it requires only a harpsichord and basso continuo and is intended more as an entertainment in intimate surroundings than a grand opera - almost like a revival of the madrigal comedy. Swayne's uninhibited use of a known style is neither eccentric nor perverse but simply a product of his candid response to any and every tradition, whether it be Mozart or pygmy music.

Swayne's present attitudes to music-making will undoubtedly be regarded by some as inane and by others as subversive. It is too early to guess where it will all lead him, let alone whether another work of the scope and quality of Cry might eventually appear. Swayne is certainly skilled enough, musically and intellectually, to make his own creative apologia in the course of time.

Re Jackson Hill:
etc

Thanks for the info-- I've hopefully updated the composition dates you've provided.

I've updated the posting.  Thanks!

[Birch Trees, by Stefan Nemeth-Samorinsky]

Birch Trees, by Stefan Nemeth-Samorinsky


Oops!  I posted this in the SLOVAKIAN downloads folder yesterday.
A Symphonic Poem
Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra in Bratislava
Oliver Dohnanyi, Conductor

(BBC Broadcast, possibly Dec 14, 2009)

I've not been able to dig much on on the composer, but some of your out there are better than Google, and I'd love to see what you come up with.


A sketchy, machine translated bio:

Štefan Németh-Šamorín

(29 Šamorín 9th 1896 - 31 1st 1975 Bratislava)

Classical music: composition, choral conducting

1906 - 1914 High School for the Poor Clares convent, while municipal music school in Bratislava (piano - Alexander Albrecht, playing the violin - Vilhelm Antalffy)
1908 - 1912 violinist City Symphony Orchestra (conductor Eugen Kossow) and also member of the Boys' Choir (Feliciano Mócik) with whom he performed well in the Church Music Society - Kirchenmusikverein - at St. Martin (Eugene Kossow)
1914 Music University in Budapest (piano - Bela Bartok, playing the organ - Dezső Antalffy-Zsiross)
1915 had to enlist as an officer aspirant to the front
After returning from the war he studied at the Academy of Music School
1921 he studied piano and organ (Aladár Zalánffi) a study of the composition (Leo Weiner)

[jowcol]

jowcol, regarding the Hoddinott Taliesin.... for which many thanks  .... is this the BBC National Orchestra of Wales?

The names seem to change so often that I can't keep track, so it may not be! I wonder what was wrong with "the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra" as a name.

In any case, at least the word "Orchestra" is retained! Here, the great symphony orchestras have had the word dropped from their titles, so we now have "the Sydney Symphony" ...... crazy. We have accepted for over a century that a symphony is a musical composition, not a group of musicians. I hate all this name changing, just to be considered fashionable or''cool' or 'hip' or 'PC' - or whatever it is nowadays.

I pulled the orchestra name from here: http://www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/2009/Jul-Dec09/swansea1010.htm

If there is a consensus about the proper name, I'll gladly post a change.   I'll try very hard not to quote the different political factions from Monty Python's the Life of Brian.