 |
 |  |  | | | | Track Listings | | | Concerto for Clarinet and Strings | | | 1 I. Allegro ma non troppo | 4:53 | | 2 II. Andante | 6:54 | | 3 III. Allegro ma non troppo; Allegretto scherzando | 3:27 | | 4 Concerto for Violoncello and String Orchestra (“Kaddish”) | 14:03 | | Lachrymose (a concerto for violoncello and symphony orchestra) | | | 5 I. Lament | 11:12 | | 6 II. Canticle-Celebration (Religioso, meno mosso) | 11:01 | | 7 Dance of Death | 16:24 | | Total time: | 68:22 |
| | | | | |
| | | | | | Fredrick Kaufman | | | Our Price: $9.95  | | | | Item Number: MMC2074 | | Audio Format: HDCD | | Genres: Concerto\Featured Composer | | | | Description | | Excerpts from the Liner Notes (by Douglas Townsend)
Concerto for Clarinet and Strings
In his notes to the author, Kaufman described the occasion which gave birth to his Clarinet Concerto: “During the summer of 1987, …a conductor friend called to ask me if I would write him a short clarinet concerto which would be performed by Charles Neidich at Lincoln Center in New York within six weeks. The only stipulations he made was that the work should be easily accessible to the audience and it would show off Neidich’s wonderful tone quality rather than his phenomenal technique. Since I had always wanted to write a clarinet quintet, I accepted the commission with the intention of writing a work that could be performed by a clarinet solo with a string quartet or with a string orchestra.” The premiere was very favorably reviewed by Bernard Holland of the New York Times, who wrote that the work was “destined to enter the ranks of the standard classical repertoire.”
Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra (“Kaddish”)
Kaufman wrote his Cello Concerto (Kaddish is the Hebrew word for the prayer for the dead) in 1985 in memory of his father and mother who died within six months of each other. Kaufman notes, “as I wrote the piece, I thought about my parents personalities: my father, a devout and extremely intelligent man, with untapped musical talent and a passionately erratic personality that reflected his strong Rumanian/Moldavian background‹plus too many years of sweatshop work; my mother, a product of New York’s lower-east-side poverty in the late 20s and early 30s, with a passion for life and fun, and a driving nervous energy that manifested itself in overt loquaciousness. Although the concerto is not programmatic in nature, I did think of the solo cello part with respect to the complexities of my father’s personality and the driving energy of the solo violin part for that of my mother. I also chose the cello as the solo instrument because of the magnificence of its sound and its capability to express pathos, warmth and exhilaration in one breath.”
Lachrymose (a concerto for violoncello and orchestra)
Kaufman’s Lachrymose, written in 1985 for Mark Drobinsky, is a piece dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust, is more than a cello concerto: the soloist is a voice that speaks to us, in its own language, of the sorrows and joys of life. It speaks to us in a language without words but which people everywhere understand, the language of the emotions and of the senses.
Dance of Death
The Dance of Death is from the final scene of the third act of Kaufman’s Masada, an opera based on the tragic event that took place in Israel in 73 A.D., when a small group of Jewish settlers defended a fortress (Masada) on top of a mountain, against the overwhelming forces of the Roman army. They held out against the Romans for two years, but eventually were forced to choose what form the end of their struggle would take: resistance to the death; surrender, followed by the humiliation of becoming slaves, or, as a last resort, suicide. The process of making this decision forms the central issue of Kaufman’s opera. |
| | | |
|
