This release showcases the ensemble’s unparalleled artistry and polished music-making, alongside as its longstanding commitment to perform and present new repertory under the direction of Music Director Franz Welser-Möst. This album features four works spanning half a century by pioneering American composer George Walker (1922-2018). Together, they demonstrate his wide-ranging musical vision and meticulously-crafted sound-worlds.
A trained concert pianist, George Walker later turned to composition, writing ninety pieces for orchestra, chamber orchestra, and a variety of other instruments and ensembles. The four works on this Cleveland Orchestra album were recorded in live performances in the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center in Cleveland. Walker’s early lyrical work Antifonys (for string orchestra, 1968) was recorded in October 2020. Also featured is Walker's Lilacs (for voice and orchestra), which received the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Music and is a setting of lines from Walt Whitman’s poem When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d. © The Cleveland Orchestra