American Dean

This is one of the more difficult posts to make because if I am honest, just about the only things I know of the composer concerned come from the cd booklet notes and I am loathe to simply reproduce a precis of those. It is part of Naxos's American Classics series and the budget price makes it tempting to sometimes take a flyer on things you don't know. The cd in question is of music by Walter Piston, his 4th Symphony, Capriccio For Harp and String Orchestra and Three New England Sketches, by the Seattle Symphony under Gerard Schwarz. The harp soloist is Therese Elder Wunrow. Piston was a 20th century conservative musically but there is no harm in continuing to be proficient in forms that have survived well over the years. Like Copland, he studied with Nadia Boulanger and subsequently gained a teaching post at Harvard where his own pupils included Carter and Bernstein. An enjoyable record, as might be expected Gerard Schwarz is perfectly at home with this repertoire. I have to admit that I would need to hear more to begin to get a handle on Piston as anything more that a skilled craftsman but even that has its' own worth and isn't intended to be faint praise.