专辑简介

The New World Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Raymond Thomas, has gathered together in this album a variety of favorite concert pieces. These works range from light, flippant humor to the haunting dreamland of fantasy. A gay tongue-in-cheek tour-de-force is Robert McBride’s Side Show. Throughout this delightful composition we hear a pseudo-oriental theme usually associated with a honky-tonk carnival. The music is as gaudy as the side-show attractions, and it takes on the character of a witty panoramic caricature of carnival life. In contrast to this mock-oriental music is a truer picture of oriental exoticism as painted by Modest Moussorgsky (1839-1881) in The Break Of Day from his opera ‘Khovantchina.’ The composer’s use of quiet and subtle dissonance and prolonged unresolved chords add excitement to his picturesque impression of sunrise. Another entrancing feature of this recording is the light gaiety of Johann Strauss’ (1825-1899) immortal Wine, Women And Song. This gaily infectious and always popular waltz is lyrical and carefree in its melodic spontaneity. The waltz is just one of several dance forms employed in the musical compositions recorded by the New World Symphony Orchestra. Antonin Dvorak’s (1841-1904) enchanting Slavonic Dance In D Major is a representation of the national dances of his native Czechoslovakia. It is a brisk and lilting composition typical of the music that has won fame for its composer. A strikingly different dance included in this collection of ‘Symphonic Vignettes’ is the Polonaise from Peter Ilich Tschaikowsky’s (1840-1893) opera ‘Eugene Onegin.’ It opens with a trumpet fanfare announcing the pomp and splendor of the dance that follows. Excited strings take over and this Polish processional dance becomes a pageant of unrestrained magnificence. The Wedding Music by the German composer-organist Edmund Kretschmer (1830-1908), is a sparkling processional march. This charmingly melodic composition is light and gay and an excellent contrast to the fiery Espanola by Carl Bohm (1844-1920) from his symphonic suite ‘From Many Lands.’ Spain, the land of passionate romance, is brilliantly captured in this stirring selection of stately dignity and impetuous grandeur. England’s Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934) is represented in this album with a haunting and melodic composition entitled Salut D’Amour, composed in the style of a song, originally written for violin and piano. The orchestral rendition by the New World Symphony Orchestra forms a transition in mood to the appealing Andante from Carl Reinecke’s (1824-1910) ‘Symphony No. 2.’ This later work flows along smoothly within the framework of a slow tempo and appealing sentimentality. In contrast to all that has gone before, this recording boasts a very unusual concert piece, Forest Spirits by the American composer Edward MacDowell (1861-1908). This charming work evokes the mystical and eerie qualities of a woodland, peopled by fairies and elves flitting within the shadows of the forest. It is lively and gay with an almost impish quality, and gains additional charm from its idyllic setting.