559356 bk Anderson 2/13/08 1:19 PM Page 4 BBC Concert Orchestra AMERICAN CLASSICS The BBC Concert Orchestra was formed in 1952. It has a wide and flexible repertoire, ranging from classical works and musical theatre to light music and film scores, and appears with a huge range of artists every year. Its Conductor Laureate is Barry Wordsworth and Principal Guest Conductor is Charles Hazlewood. Anne Dudley was the Orchestra’s first Composer-in- Association; and Jonny Greenwood has now taken on that rôle as Leroy Composer-in-Residence. The Orchestra has close links with BBC Radio 3 which broadcasts the majority of its concerts and with BBC Radio 2 where it is featured on the weekly programme Friday Night is Music Night. On ANDERSON BBC television the BBC Concert Orchestra has appeared in several programmes and can be heard on countless BBC TV soundtracks including the award-winning natural history series Blue Planet and Planet Earth on BBC 1. The Orchestra performs annually at the BBC Proms, makes regular visits to the Royal Festival, Royal Albert and Barbican halls in London and appears throughout Britain and abroad. It has made many recordings, with recent releases on Chandos, ASV White Line, Dutton Epoch and Naxos. The Orchestra is resident at Chichester Festival Orchestral Music • 2 Theatre and Watford Colosseum. Leonard Slatkin Jazz Pizzicato Appointed Music Director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra from 2008, after completing his twelfth and final season as Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra, the distinguished American conductor Leonard Slatkin The Waltzing Cat continues as Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Music Advisor to the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, and Conductor Laureate of the Saint Louis Symphony, of which he was Music Director for seventeen seasons. He has served as Festival Director of the Cleveland Waltz Around The Scale Orchestra’s Blossom Festival (1990-1999), Principal Guest Conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra (1997-2000), Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (2000-2004) and Principal Guest Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl (2004-2007), in a brilliant international career. His many recordings have won five Grammy awards and further Grammy Nominations, while honours and awards include the 2003 National Medal of Arts, the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, the American Symphony Orchestra League’s Gold Baton for service to American music, ASCAP awards with both the National and Saint Louis symphonies, honorary doctorates from The Juilliard School, Indiana University, University of Missouri and the Declaration of Honour in Silver from the BBC Concert Orchestra Austrian ambassador to the United States for outstanding contributions to Photo: Steve Sherman cultural relations. Leonard Slatkin 8.559356 4 559356 bk Anderson 2/13/08 1:19 PM Page 2 Leroy Anderson (1908-1975) With its unmistakeably feline string glissando, The Anderson wondered why his second tango, The Girl Orchestral Music • 2 Waltzing Cat became one of Anderson’s more popular in Satin, was never as popular with the public as his first compositions, picturing, in his words, “Puss-in-Boots at (Blue Tango), for he was equally proud of both. In any Leroy Anderson etched out his own unique place in known withdrawn works from Anderson’s last decade. a fancy dress ball”. Another felicitous example of the case, The Girl in Satin is an even more seductive piece of American music – a composer rigorously trained in the Woodbury Fanfare, was written for the tercentenary composer’s fondness for 3/4 time is Song of the Bells work than its hit predecessor, with lush string harmonies classical tradition whose records topped the pop charts, of Anderson’s adopted home town, Woodbury, (originally called Waltz of the Bells), where the chimes in the final chorus that touchingly evoke the 1950s. a meticulous arranger of music whose own melodies Connecticut, in 1959. Consisting of a series of festive get a rare chance to spell out a marvelous tune. The posthumously-published March Of The Two were crafted with inventive precision. While he labored fanfares for four trumpeters, this tiny prelude was actually One little-known aspect of Anderson the practical Left Feet probably had the longest gestation time of any alone over each measure of each piece, the result recorded by Anderson that year, but he chose not to craftsman was his willingness to write music for Anderson original. First mentioned as a piece for Fiedler sounded as if he had pulled one marvelous tune after release it, so this recording is the first to be made public. beginning musicians. Forgotten Dreams was originally and the Pops in a 1947 letter, yet not completed until another out of his hat almost at will. Born in Cambridge, A Harvard Festival, also a first recording, is a 1969 conceived as a piano piece for beginners, but the more 1969, this madcap fast polka was inspired by a reading Massachusetts, in 1908, Anderson was a graduate of revision of A Harvard Fantasy, the very piece that gave Anderson played with the theme, the more he felt it of P.G. Wodehouse’s The Man With Two Left Feet – Harvard University, where he studied composition with Anderson his entrée to the Boston Pops in 1936. deserved development into a symphonic piece. This and Anderson has a devilish time tripping up the Walter Piston and George Enescu and led the Harvard Consisting of four Harvard student-songs skillfully sweet yet emotional vignette has a depth that belies its percussion section with wild offbeats. Band for a number of years. He seemed headed for a woven together, with an organ grandly adding weight to simplicity, inviting listeners to muse upon their own Another late piece, Lullaby of the Drums (1970), career in linguistics until a guest spot in 1936 leading the bass toward the end, this amounts to Anderson’s dreams or memories that got away. withdrawn by the composer, receives its first recording the Boston Pops Orchestra caught the discerning ear of Academic Festival Overture – and there are passages of Likewise, Waltz Around The Scale started life in in its orchestral version here. More a relaxed march than Pops conductor Arthur Fiedler, who promptly asked orchestration that do remind one of Brahms. As 1970 as a piece for beginning string ensemble and a lullaby, the tapping of the snare drum, pounding of the Anderson to write some pieces for the orchestra. Anderson related in a 1972 interview, “I did this piece percussion and was expanded later that year into a timpani, and Latinized tattoo of the bongos ironically Following a long break during World War II, where he and Arthur Fiedler took a look at it backstage and said, concert piece for full orchestra – Anderson’s last guarantee that the listener will not be lulled to sleep. served in the U.S. Army as a translator of Scandinavian ‘Anderson! You orchestrate well!’ I didn’t know if he original orchestral work. Here, the composer deploys Finally, we hear two samples from Anderson’s large languages, Anderson became a regular at the Pops, was accusing me of something or what; that was his another series of graceful waltz tunes against output as an arranger. One, Song Of Jupiter, is a crafting arrangements of popular music and contributing blunt, direct manner. But then he said, ‘How about descending and ascending major and minor scales, with straight-forward, dignified treatment of Where’er you miniature gems of his own. Anderson’s star rose to doing something for us?’” a central section that recalls Song of the Bells. Anderson walk from Handel’s Semele. The other is part of a surprising heights after he was offered a recording Two years later in 1938, Anderson came back with led the first performance in Hartford, Connecticut in follow-up to the concert overture A Christmas Festival, contract of his own with Decca Records in 1950, for something for the Pops, a bit of whimsy for pizzicato 1971 but soon withdrew the piece. where Anderson hit upon the idea of weaving a host of which he led pick-up orchestras of New York’s finest strings called Jazz Pizzicato – and his career was By contrast, Whistling Kettle was a student piece for Christmas carols into a suite for an album to be released symphonic musicians in best-selling albums of his own launched. This is the earliest published example of the violins and violas that stayed in this form as part of a during the 1955 holiday season. Soon, the one suite compositions. He turned to Broadway, completing the Anderson style, full of good tunes, infectious rhythms, projected, but never finished, 1966 multi-movement expanded into three – one each for the string, winds and score for one show, Goldilocks, in 1958 before returning and distinctive carefully-worked-out harmonic work, The Musical Household. Built around a high brass sections alone. to his metier, the miniature, with one final burst of new movement within a compact structure. While Anderson violin drone on E that no doubt represents the kettle, this The neo-classical elegance and imaginative published material in 1962. Aside from writing a few always recorded this piece in its original string-orchestra piece was also withdrawn by the composer. deployment of sonorities in Anderson’s string unpublished original pieces, Anderson’s remaining version, this disc contains the 1948 edition for full The idea of movement was often a part of treatments of Pastores a Belen, It Came Upon A years were spent mostly arranging and guest-conducting orchestra. Anderson’s game, and one particular form of Midnight Clear, O Little Town Of Bethlehem, Bring a until his death from lung cancer in 1975.