The American composer Frederick Shepherd Converse was a leading name in American music up to the Second World War. It was Converse who composed the first American opera, performed at the Met in New York. Yet despite being widely heard in his day, after his death in 1940 he was soon eclipsed by the new generation of Copland, Harris, Barber and their contemporaries. His revival is long overdue, vividly demonstrated by this programme of colourful orchestral tone poems – the four movements of American Sketches from the late 1920s, the early Festival of Pan (after a Keats poem) and the evocative Song of the Sea, a tone poem after Whitman. Whether you respond to the lyricism of the Festival of Pan and Song of the Sea or the varied scenes of American Sketches, this is enjoyable music to which you will return time and again.
Frederick Converse: Song of the Sea: tone poem after Whitman (1923)
Frederick Converse: Festival of Pan op.9 (1899)
Frederick Converse: American Sketches: symphonic suite for orchestra (1929) - i Manhattan
Frederick Converse: American Sketches: symphonic suite for orchestra (1929) - ii The Father of Waters
Frederick Converse: American Sketches: symphonic suite for orchestra (1929) - iii Chicken Reel
Frederick Converse: American Sketches: symphonic suite for orchestra (1929) - iv Bright Angel Trail
February 2012
“Until the arrival of the present disc, I had rather assumed that Converse was a one-time wonder...The BBC Concert Orchestra can hardly have been confronted with this material before, but under its energetic new American conductor Keith Lockhart, it lacks for nothing in authority and panache.”
Frederick Converse: Song of the Sea: tone poem after Whitman (1923)