Roger Sessions: Violin Concerto; James Bolle: Ritual (2007)

Although Roger Sessions' Violin Concerto (1935) is considered one of his major works (and Elliott Carter, in his program notes for this recording, calls it one of the outstanding works of its era) it has never caught on with performers or audiences, either in concert or on recordings. Part of its neglect may be traced to the cultural climate in America at the time of its composition. In the midst of their own Depression, with disturbingly dark clouds gathering over Europe, Americans were more open to new music with the ... Read More

Although Roger Sessions' Violin Concerto (1935) is considered one of his major works (and Elliott Carter, in his program notes for this recording, calls it one of the outstanding works of its era) it has never caught on with performers or audiences, either in concert or on recordings. Part of its neglect may be traced to the cultural climate in America at the time of its composition. In the midst of their own Depression, with disturbingly dark clouds gathering over Europe, Americans were more open to new music with the sunny, jazzy ease of Gershwin than to Sessions' relatively cerebral abstractions in a distinctly modernist tonal language. With the ascendancy of modernism coming to an end in the late twentieth century, composers like Sessions went into eclipse, and the much of the avant-garde of the last century seems quaint and old-fashioned to many performers and audiences. Albany Records is to be recommended for focusing attention on classics that are an important part of our national musical... Read Less