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American Classics: American Ballet Music | EMI - American Classics 6952282

American Classics: American Ballet Music

New Item

Label: EMI - American Classics

Cat No: 6952282

Barcode: 5099969522826

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Ballet

Release Date: 8th June 2009

This product has now been deleted. Information is for reference only.

Contents

Works

Antheil
Capital of the World (abridged version)

Schuman
Undertow

Gould
Fall River Legend

Artists

Ballet Theatre Orchestra

Conductor

Joseph Levine

Works

Antheil
Capital of the World (abridged version)

Schuman
Undertow

Gould
Fall River Legend

Artists

Ballet Theatre Orchestra

Conductor

Joseph Levine

About

One usually thinks of something by Copland or Bernstein when the two words 'American Ballet' are mentioned. But here we have no less than three examples of the genre by other significant composers from the immediate post-war years. All of these works were premièred by American Ballet Theatre and it is this orchestra that performs them here.

Perhaps George Antheil (1900-1959) is best-known for another of his ballet scores, the Ballet Mecanique of 1924. The score for Capital of the World dates from 1953 and was based on an Ernest Hemingway short story with the same title.

The exciting Violin Concerto is an example of how good a composer William Schuman (1910-1992) was. Undertow was written in 1945 for the important English dancer/choreographer Antony Tudor, who had moved to New York in 1940 to join the American Ballet Theatre.

Morton Gould (1913-1996) wrote the score for Fall River Legend for the American Ballet Theatre. The story concerns one Lizzie Borden who, in August 1892 at Fall River, Massachusetts, was accused of murdering both of her parents. Although she was subsequently acquitted the event is commemorated in this pithy little rhyme:
     Lizzie Borden took an axe
     And gave her mother forty whacks.
     And when she saw what she had done
     She gave her father forty-one.

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