Blue 8

Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra
conductor Giancarlo Guerrero
Johannes Moser cello

S. Barber: Essay No. 2
P. Hindemith: Cello concerto
A. Copland: Symphony No. 3

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Samuel Barber did not like to speak about his music. Thus when asked why he gave the title Essay to three of his orchestral compositions he replied “an Essay is a composition of moderate duration on a particular theme … more or less stylistically determined and limited in scope.” Essay No. 2 came about as a commission from the great conductor Bruno Walter, and was given its premiere performance by the New York Philharmonic on 16 April 1942.
Music history ranks Paul Hindemith amongst the most interesting and most important composers of the previous century. He wrote an enormous number of compositions, amongst which the Cello Concerto (in fact the composer’s third concerto for cello) takes the most important place. It was written in 1940 for Gregor Piatigorsky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Referring to Aaron Copland’s Third Symphony, written in 1944 on a commission from Sergei Koussevitzky, Leonard Bernstein said that it is “an American memorial, like a memorial to Washington or Lincoln”. Although Copland himself emphasised that any similarity to jazz or folk themes is entirely coincidental, the symphony, in the composer’s own words, “expresses the euphoric spirit of the country at the time”.

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