Track Listing

1. Movement 1
2. Movement 2
3. Movement 3
4. Movement 4
5. Movement 1
6. Movement 2
7. Movement 3

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #95434 in Music
• Released on: 1994-01-04
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.com
Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony had an early advocate in the person of Leopold Stokowski, who actually recorded it. It's a lively and colorful work, but the real find is the Second Symphony by Still. It's a thousand pities that no one has done the complete cycle (there are five of them), for he was a wonderful composer. If Gershwin had been a symphonist, this is what his music might have sounded like. There's the same "jazz fusion," but also a true elegance of utterance that places Still at the forefront of American composers of his era. Järvi and the Detroit Symphony do the music proud, and Ellington's classic, arranged for full symphony orchestra, sounds great. --David Hurwitz

Amazon.com
This is part of Chandos's mostly successful American Music series, this time highlighting the music of three African-American composers. Still (1895-1978) is probably the most famous serious African-American composer of his era, with Ellington probably being the most famous popular composer of that time. Still's Symphony No. 2 (Song of a New Race) was written in 1937. It contains traditional Negro folk melodies, though without the blues element found in Ellington. It's more rural than urban. Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony (1934) has many of the same elements as the Still work. Ellington's Harlem (1950) is a bluesy, upbeat masterpiece--here performed quite well. --Paul Cook

Customer Reviews

This is incredible
This CD is amazing. I wish all of Still's symphonies were recorded by Chandos with Järvi conducting the Detroit Symphony as this and the Still #1 are of the highest quality in it's composition, recording, and performance. These pieces are indispensable for those wanting an essential view of American music and particularly African-American classical music. As much as Still #1 has gotten much attention world-wide I like this one better and it's never talked about. What an oversight. The Dawson piece is also amazing and this is the first time I've heard of him. You can be sure I never forgot him after hearing this! Also Ellington, is of course, Ellington - one of the greats of all time. How I wish Still #3, 4, and 5 would have been recorded in the same series with some of these other surprise gems. Chandos has such a high recording quality and Järvi with Detroit just nail this music. I've heard there is a recording of Still #3 out there but not with a major orchestra. If you're even thinking about buying this, grab it before it goes out of print. This is high quality stuff and this CD is one of my favorites in my 2000+ CD collection. That's a high standard to stand out among that many recordings.

Colorful American Music From an Orchestra that "Gets It"!
A few months ago I was introduced to the music of William Grant Still (d. 1978) via these same forces in their recording of his Afro-American Symphony (Still: Symphony No. 1; Ellington: Suite from "The River"), purported to be the first such work by an African-American composer to be played by a major orchestra (the New York Philharmonic in 1930). I commented: "....while this symphony is fleetingly entertaining, it's not a very elaborate musical expression." Still's second symphony "Song of a New Race" seemingly eschews much of the European-derived formalism heard in that earlier work and strives for a more "homegrown" classical/folk idiom. Again, Järvi and the DSO immerse themselves in it, though here their playing is freer and more alive to the expressive possibilities the score presents. Irrespective of the composer's own predilection to "....[represent] the American colored man of today; in so many instances a totally new individual produced through the fusion of white, Indian, and Negro bloods....", this later music (premiered in 1937 by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra) presents the listener with a more delightfully varied, colorful, and thoroughly American expression while adhering to classical musical ideals. Though culminating powerfully, the symphony oddly ends on a harumph of a note, but...

...it segues most comfortably with the Negro Folk Symphony of William Levi Dawson (d. 1990), a renowned arranger of choral spirituals and whose long career included founding the music school at Tuskegee Institute. According to the notes, he began work on his symphony in Chicago where he received his master's degree in composition from the American Conservatory of Music and later presented the score to Stokowski in New York while touring with the Tuskegee Choir. Suggestions were made by the famous maestro for the work's expansion and the final work was premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1934. The first movement, titled "The Bond of Africa", commences with a soulful clarion theme on a solo French horn which is echoed and varied throughout by strings, winds and dynamically by the trombones -- it peculiarly evokes in this listener's mind a sort of African-American Wagner! The second movement, "Hope in the Night", begins softly but leads to some powerful swells of various percussion and brass again echoing the main theme. The finale, "O, le' me shine, shine like a Morning Star!", is a colorful and uplifting working of the main theme with the DSO treating us to a wide-ranging and exhilirating orchestral workout.

Duke Ellington (d. 1974) was world famous when he composed Harlem in 1950 on the sea voyage home from a successful European tour with his band. Again according to the notes, it was originally commissioned by Arturo Toscanini to be part of a Portrait of New York suite, but the maestro's infirmities precluded him from conducting the piece. Ellington's band recorded it in 1954 and Don Gillis performed it in Carnegie Hall the following year with the Symphony of the Air, the successor to Toscanini's NBC Symphony Orchestra. If you've yet to hear it, this is about as colorful, jazzy, and swingin' as an orchestra gets! The DSO revels in it...and I can just picture Estonian giant Neeme Järvi groovin' uncontrollably and tapping his toes on the podium!

As per usual in Detroit's Orchestra Hall, Chandos provides the most naturally vivid recorded sound imaginable for a most entertaining 74 minute program.

sill + +
If you like great music ,compsition scoreining and duke eliingtonn this is for you. It turns your ears as well as your soul on!