Customer Reviews

MacDowell: The Symphonic Poems

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This recording allows for new listeners to appreciate the contributions of American composers to the furhter development of program music or what is called symphonic/tone poems. The US Library of Congress issued this recording of pices first recorded in 1958 but never released. Through technical expertise, everything has been updated and the beauty of MacDowell's music shines through, particulary in Hamlet/Ophelia (Tracks 3&4). Excellent booklet notes give a good overview of each poems composition. Recommended for people who enjoy the tone poems of R. Strauss and Franz Liszt.

MacDowell was highly regarded in his day, but now is known for a few piano pieces and his second piano conerto, which occasionally turns up. Andre Watts and Van Cliburn among others have championed it.
MacDowell was a very accomplished composer in a post-Lisztian/pre-Impressionistic vein. These compositions lack only melodic memorability to make them staples of the repertory.
These are old recordings from the 1960's made fresh as new by great restoration. Karl Krueger provides strong advocacy ably backed by the great Royal Philharmonic of London in its heyday. Well worth a hearing.
Bravo Bridge for rescuing them from the attic.

These are not brand new recordings. It's okay, because you can't tell it. Karl Kreuger leads spirited and atmospheric performances. MacDowell can come across turgid at times, but these performances don't. The pieces are well played and capture the varied moods involved. The "two fragments from Song of Roland" - Saracens and Lovely Alda - are short and easy listening, a little bigger than the miniatures MacDowell does so well, but still impressive. Hamlet/Ophelia (opus 22, is a great pairing. The pieces don't represent specific scenes from Shakespeare, but more aspects of the characters involved. "Lancelot and Elaine" (based on Mallory, of course), and Lamia are of greater consequence. They are wonderfully evocative pieces. For style, think something between Liszt and Tchaikovsky, with a little Sibelius thrown in. The repertoire may not be well known, but here it sounds like major music.