Reference Recordings' series of albums with the Kansas City Symphony under conductor Michael Stern continues to grow, and, with distribution from Chandos in Britain, to attract attention beyond the U.S. This attractive pair of works, both receiving their world recorded premieres here, were recorded live on two separate occasions, but both recordings came from Kansas City's acoustically superior Helzberg Hall, and the recording forms both an artistic and sonic whole. Jonathan Leshnoff's music is neo-Romantic, with echoes of ...
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Reference Recordings' series of albums with the Kansas City Symphony under conductor Michael Stern continues to grow, and, with distribution from Chandos in Britain, to attract attention beyond the U.S. This attractive pair of works, both receiving their world recorded premieres here, were recorded live on two separate occasions, but both recordings came from Kansas City's acoustically superior Helzberg Hall, and the recording forms both an artistic and sonic whole. Jonathan Leshnoff's music is neo-Romantic, with echoes of Samuel Barber in the Symphony No. 3, Shostakovich in the Piano Concerto, and other 20th century crowd-pleasers. The Symphony No. 3 has a tie to Kansas City, which is home to the World War I museum where Leshnoff found the letters home that he set in the symphony's finale. Baritone Stephen Powell is superb, with a sober reading bringing to mind a more tonal counterpart to Sessions' When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd. Stern displays excellent control over the long lines of the...
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