Music history likes to pay its most serious attention to the mavericks, the revolutionaries who boldly discarded with precedent. But it is equally an artistically important achievement to listen closely to what one has learned and forge it anew. That is the case with the composers on this program, voices committed to respecting the styles, teachers, and inspirations that preceded them. By 1932, Paris was besotted with one new fashionable trend after another, but Maurice Durufle could not let go of the sound of the past. His Three Dances are redolent of the dreamy world of Debussy and the vivaciousness of his teacher Paul Dukas, who in turn is represented by a work that is the ultimate cautionary tale about honoring elders: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, based on the poem by Goethe and famously retold by Disney using this thrilling music. Contemporary percussionist and composer Andy Akiho’s work pays homage to an older sculptor, Jun Kaneko, whose oversized pieces so stunned the younger musician that he felt compelled to capture just how he felt looking at them “in that space, at that time.” Finally, William Grant Still — despite seeing himself at the vanguard of the Harlem Renaissance and a new future for black folks in the US — wrote his First Symphony infused with the sounds of the Blues, looking back over his shoulder in dedication to “the sons of the soil, who still retain so many of the traits peculiar to their African forebears.”
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