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Special offer. Dawson: Negro Folk Symphony

ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Arthur Fagen

Dawson: Negro Folk Symphony

Awards:

The performance perhaps feels a little staid in places (I’d love to hear what CHINEKE! might do with this score), but the energy and imagination with which Dawson treats material from traditional...

Special offer. Dawson: Negro Folk Symphony

ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Arthur Fagen

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This release includes a digital booklet

Stream now Hi-RES 96 kHz, 24 bit

Awards:

The performance perhaps feels a little staid in places (I’d love to hear what CHINEKE! might do with this score), but the energy and imagination with which Dawson treats material from traditional...

About

William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony was premiered by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1934 to huge enthusiasm. Its traditional form houses a continuous process of variation and introduces little-known spirituals in fragmentary form, while the work’s recurring motifs, remarkable transitions and syncopations are enhanced in Dawson’s 1952 revision heard here. The Fantasy Variations by composer and teacher Ulysses Kay employs dissonance with great expressivity in a work of textural and coloristic variety. Umbrian Scene, despite its pictorial suggestion, is lean and sombre.

Contents and tracklist

I. The Bond of Africa
Track length12:06
II. Hope in the Night
Track length12:41
III. O Let Me Shine!
Track length8:18

Awards and reviews

June 2020

The performance perhaps feels a little staid in places (I’d love to hear what CHINEKE! might do with this score), but the energy and imagination with which Dawson treats material from traditional spirituals speaks for itself, with some especially arresting writing for cor anglais and horns; this is a hugely attractive and powerful work which really deserves to be programmed far and wide, and the two shorter, more Expressionist works by Ulysses Kaye are equally worthy of attention.
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