Michael Kurek
Liner Notes   Cat. No. 80497     Release Date: 1996-01-01

The Blair String Quartet; The Blair Woodwind Quintet; Mario Falcao, harp; Members of the Nashville Symphony, Kenneth Schermerhorn, conductor

"My leap of faith, my credo, is to believe in a single style, to try to use one coherent method of composing within one context, and write music that justifies using a traditional aesthetic, rather like a latter-day Samuel Barber, whose neo-Romanticism was in place prior to the Romantic revival." -Michael Kurek

Nashville-born Michael Kurek (b 1955) writes unabashedly tonal music in a language that is strongly evocative of Debussy and Ravel. All four works on this disc, written between 1989 and 1995, testify in varying degrees to the composer’s love of the art and music of this period-from the shimmering textures of the String Quartet No. 2 to the “"hommage to Matisse’'s musical contemporaries"” of Matisse Impressions, a wind-piano sextet in two movements based on two paintings by the French master. The Sonata for Viola and Harp is a gentle, lyrical piece that breathes the air of Debussy’s similarly-scored work (minus the flute) while the Concerto for Harp and Orchestra is a poetically-inspired meditation in three movements, subtitled “"Starry Night,"” "“Remembrance,"” and "“Essence."” 

Various Artists

Michael Kurek

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Track Listing

String Quartet No. 2
Michael Kurek
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Sonata for Viola and Harp
Michael Kurek
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Matisse Impressions: I. Tangier Landscape
Michael Kurek
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Matisse Impressions: II. Open Window at Collioure
Michael Kurek
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Concerto for Harp and Orchestra: I. Starry Night
Michael Kurek
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Concerto for Harp and Orchestra: II. Remembrance
Michael Kurek
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Concerto for Harp and Orchestra: III. Essence
Michael Kurek
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