Word: riverrun
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...death diminishes the musical scene, but Stephen Albert's fatal automobile accident two years ago was especially costly. At 51, Albert had emerged as one of the leaders of the neo-conservative traditionalist movement, a position cemented by his winning the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for his first symphony, RiverRun, a work that was by turns lyrical, witty and sardonic. So it was a bittersweet occasion last week when the New York Philharmonic premiered Albert's Symphony No. 2: the music was first rate, and that made the loss of its composer seem all the more dear...
Commissioned by the Philharmonic, the symphony was completed in "short- score" forma piano score, with some instrumental indicationsin the fall of 1992, two months before Albert's death. Composer Sebastian Currier deciphered the manuscript and added missing dynamics. A smaller, more compact work than RiverRun, the three-movement, 20-minute symphony, as conducted by Hugh Wolff, attests to Albert's command of the post-Romantic idiom. A soaring arch, it consists of two slow movements framing a biting central scherzo, and it is full of Albert's trademark evocations of musical forebears. It opens, for example, with a motive...