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HOLLYWOOD FLUTE CD - LOUIS DI TULLIO, Flute / SINFONIA TORONTO / RONALD ROYER, Conductor
Produced by Jeannie Gayle Pool / Released by Cambria www.Cambriamus.com / Distributed by Naxos www.Naxosusa.com – www.classicsonline.com
A heart-pounding chase or a poetic love scene at the movies and the music makes it scarier, happier or just more fun. No one is more aware of the music/movie connection than Louise DiTullio. She has played her flute for the music of more than 1200 films, many which include the composers on her new CD, “The Hollywood Flute of Louise DiTullio“ Cambria CD-1194. According to Ms. DiTullio, “This album fulfills my personal goal to revisit and record some of the solos I have played in films over my career, as well as concert music written for me by film composers.
The new CD includes music from Hook, composed by John Williams; Dances with Wolves, John Barry; Charlotte's Web, Danny Elfman; Sleeping with the Enemy and Rudy by Jerry Goldsmith. Also on the CD, Le Papillon, by David Rose, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn composed by Laurence Rosenthal and Short Stories by Ronald Royer including, Siren’s Song, Rather Blue, The Chase for Flute and Child’s Play for Piccolo. Mark Watters’ arrangement of William’s Hook showcases the magic and beauty of the score, which captures the pure innocence of childhood in this universally-loved story of Peter Pan. Although this score fits the screen images, the strength of the music effectively stands alone in concert.
She notes that the flute and piccolo parts for the score for Hook are possibly the most challenging music she has ever encountered in her studio career. She is very familiar with Williams’ music as she has played flute on most of his Los Angeles scoring sessions for the past forty years, including Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Home Alone I and II, Catch Me If You Can, and some of the Indiana Jones movies.
DiTullio has also played on most of John Barry’s scores recorded in Hollywood, including Out of Africa, Body Heat, King Kong, Robin and Marian, Mercury Rising, among others. Recently, DiTullio commissioned Ronald Royer to write a new arrangement that features music from John Barry’s Academy Award-winning score for Dances with Wolves. Both Sleeping with the Enemy and Rudy showcase Jerry Goldmsith’s great melodic gifts and love of the flute. Louise played on most of Jerry’s Los Angeles scoring sessions including L.A. Confidential, Basic Instinct, Air Force One, Congo and several Star Trek movies.
Movies she played for Danny Elfman include the scores for Beetlejuice, Meet the Robinsons, Spiderman, Edward Scissorhands, and Nightmare before Christmas. Elfman’s score for Charlotte’s Web, based on the famous children’s book by E.B. White, is a favorite. Ms. DiTullio began recording weekly television shows for David Rose during the last season of Bonanza, continuing with Little House on the Prairie, Highway to Heaven, and numerous other projects until the end of his life in 1989. Rose was commissioned to compose a work for Louise to perform as soloist with the New American Orchestra. The result was Le Papillon, premiered in 1980. Thereafter, she had the opportunity to perform the work several more times with Rose as conductor including with the Boston Pops Orchestra. Ms. DiTullio comments, “Since I first performed Le Papillon in 1980, I have wanted to record it to secure a place for it in the flute repertoire.”
Commissioned by Louise DiTullio for The Hollywood Flute recording, Short Stories for Flutes, Harp, Percussion and String Orchestra was composed by Ronald Royer to showcase the varied tone colors and techniques of the alto flute, bass flute, flute, and piccolo. Studio flutists are regularly asked to play these and other instruments for movie scores.
The only piece on this CD not written for or premiered by Ms. DiTullio is Laurence Rosenthal’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn for Solo Flute is a story from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. It was favorite reading material for Rosenthal and his daughter, Maria, when she was growing up and he wrote this piece for unaccompanied flute as a Christmas gift for Maria when she was sixteen. Laurence later gave the piece to Ms. DiTullio at a recording session. According to Rosenthal, she is the only flutist who has played the piece. Rosenthal film scores include A Raisin in the Sun, The Miracle Worker, Becket, The Return of a Man Called Horse, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Who’ll Stop the Rain. He also wrote music for numerous television shows, including several large-scale epic scores for the two miniseries Peter the Great and Mussolini: The Untold Story.
Ms. DiTullio musical legacy is a family inheritance; she grew up in Los Angeles in a musical family and was the fourth DiTullio to join the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra before reaching the age of 20, following in the footsteps of her father and two uncles. During this same period, Louise performed as Principal Flute with the Columbia Symphony, recording many of Igor Stravinky’s works under the baton of the composer. She continues to play in many studio orchestras and is a regular performer in the Pasadena (CA) Symphony. She lives in Eugene, Oregon with her husband, Burnett Dillon a well-known classical trumpet player.
FLANDERS FIELDS CD
Released by Marquis Classics “Flanders Fields Reflections” CD is conducted by the orchestra’s Music Director Nurhan Arman and dedicated to string compositions by Canadian composer John Burge. Works on the CD include One Sail, which features the renowned
Canadian cellist Shauna Rolston.
John Burges wonderful music for strings has been in our repertoire for a number of years. We had already performed the Toronto premieres of his Upper Canada Fiddle Suite and One Sail, and also the world premiere of Flanders Fields Reflections, which was a Sinfonia Toronto commission and the first orchestral work ever composed about the famous Canadian poem. Recording these works was a real labour of love for us, and we are delighted that now people across Canada will be able to listen to these remarkable compositions. We have a strong commitment to performing Canadian music and other contemporary compositions from around the world, and it’s a great privilege to help pieces as beautiful as these become better known.
This CD won the 2009 JUNO award for "Best Recording of a Canadian Classical Composition".
Upper Canada Fiddle Suite John Burge
Waltz: With simplicity*
Jig: Vigorously
*Mary-Elizabeth Brown, solo violin
One Sail John Burge
Moderato — Animato — Moderato
Shauna Rolston, solo cello
Flanders Fields Reflections John Burge
The Poppies Blow
Still Bravely Singing*
We Are the Dead
Loved and Were Loved
We Shall Not Sleep
*Mary-Elizabeth Brown, solo violin
The John McCrae poem on which Flanders Fields Reflections is based
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields,
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
John McCrae (1872-1918)
Biographies of the composer and performers
John Burge was born in Dryden, Ontario in 1961. Since 1987 he has been teaching at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario where he is a Professor of Composition and Theory. He has composed a large body of instrumental and vocal music, but has particular renown for his choral compositions, many of which have been published by Boosey and Hawkes. His love of Canada has often served as a point of inspiration in his compositional process and this can be observed in the three works recorded here by Sinfonia Toronto. A passionate advocate on behalf of all Canadian music, John was a member of the executive council of the Canadian League of Composers for fourteen years, serving as President from 1998-2006.
Sinfonia Toronto was founded in 1998 by Maestro Nurhan Arman. Now considered one of Canada’s finest chamber orchestras, its core of thirteen virtuoso string players are heard in this recording. In the tradition of great chamber orchestras, they perform standing, blending each musician’s soloistic energy and passion into a brilliant ensemble style under Maestro Arman’s inspired direction. Often augmented by Toronto’s best woodwind, brass and percussion players, the orchestra performs the full range of chamber orchestra repertoire. Over the years the orchestra has made a dedicated effort to perform Canadian music on all of their concert programs and as a result, they have directly commissioned and premiered a number of works from Canadian composers, which includes Flanders Fields Reflections.
Nurhan Arman was born to Armenian parents in Istanbul and trained as a violinist at a young age. After arriving in the United States on a Disney Foundation Scholarship, he concertized from coast to coast appearing in major US cities as well as at a number of prestigious music festivals. After several seasons leading US orchestras as concertmaster, he began his conducting career. In 1982, he accepted the post of Music Director of the North Bay Symphony and moved to Canada. In 1987 he was named Music Director of Symphony New Brunswick, an orchestra with which he remains closely associated as Music Director Emeritus. Maestro Arman has conducted many European and North American orchestras and has recorded regularly for CBC Radio.
Shauna Rolston has been captivating audiences with her passion for music since the age of two. Recipient of a Masters degree from the Yale School of Music where she studied with Aldo Parisot, she made her New York City Town Hall degut at the age of 16. She has continued to perform in major halls and festivals worldwide. Shauna is an enthusiastic performer of the music of our time and has premiered many works specifically written for her including One Sail. In demand as a master class clinician and teacher, Shauna is also Professor of Cello and Head of the String Department at the University of Toronto.
Program Notes
Upper Canada Fiddle Suite was commissioned and premiered by The Thirteen Strings of Ottawa in 1997 and has gone on to be performed by orchestras across Canada. “Upper Canada” is the name given by European explorers to the region of Ontario that surrounds the waterways near the Great Lakes. This old-fashioned name is used to help convey the nostalgic quality of the music. All three movements are entirely based on original material which often incorporates traditional fiddle clichés and rhythms in a slightly off-beat fashion. One aspect of the work that is particularly audible is the prominent solo violin part in the Waltz which is to be played on a violin that has been re-tuned to a fiddle tuning. The resultant effect is that the retuned instrument’s open strings now resonate in a beautifully evocative A major chord. In performance, the soloist needs to have a second violin prepared in advance to play this solo.
One Sail was also commissioned by The Thirteen String of Ottawa and premiered with cellist, Shauna Rolston, in 1993. This work draws its inspiration from the opening line of a short poem written by Canadian poet, Margaret Avison (1918-2007), whose spiritual poetry often draws its symbolism from the Canadian landscape. The poem is actually titled, “Discovery on reading a poem,” and is just one sentence long: “One sail/opens the wideness to me of the waters/the largeness of the sky.” This text provides a compelling metaphor for the power and relevance of poetry—as a sail converts the wind’s force to achieve motion, so too can a poem capture the spirit of humanity and thereby affect enlightenment in the reader. Both of these mechanisms are revealed to be vehicles of transportation, one physical and the other emotional. The musical interpretation further captures the visual image of the poem in the way that the solo cello charts a course through the textural fabric of the larger string body.
Flanders Fields Reflections was commissioned by Sinfonia Toronto and premiered in 2006. The composition musically interprets five phrases taken from John McCrae’s famous World War I poem. The poem is remarkable in the way that it follows the fixed poetic form of the rondeau (which requires the repetition of the opening phrase at the end of the second and third verses), while simultaneously expressing the extreme emotional gamut of loss, despair, sacrifice, obligation and hope. At times, the music is literal in its representation of the words, as with the wind effects in the first movement’s, “The Poppies Blow,” or the high, bird-like violin solo in the second movement’s, “Still Bravely Singing.” The middle movement’s, “We Are The Dead,” is captured with a slow funeral march while the final movement conveys the sentiment, “We Shall Not Sleep,” with a melody that keeps returning in an extended series of endings. The work’s most expressive music is found in the fourth movement’s realization of the phrase, “Loved and Were Loved.” These few words represent vividly, the individual tragedy that is contained within every single death in contrast to in the stark numerical tallies of war fatalities that can be summarized all too quickly. In this movement, a simple descending line of six notes is maintained throughout, as if to symbolically show that our search for love is perhaps humanities’ most constant desire.
Buy now the Flanders Fields CD
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SINFONIA TORONTO'S MENDELSSOHN/SHOSTAKOVICH/KHACHATURIAN CD
Program Notes
Mendelssohn wrote an astonishing amount of music while he was still in his teens. Between the ages of 11 and 15 he wrote 22 large-scale works: 13 string symphonies, 5 concertos, 4 singspiels, and many shorter compositions including chamber works, pieces for piano and organ, songs, and sacred choral works.
While the first 6 string sinfonias clearly show the influence of Haydn, Mozart and Pleyel, the seventh sinfonia shows that the young composer had already matured enough to study the works of Beethoven. The contrasting themes in the first movement are a new departure for him, and the work as a whole marks his first experiment with a
four-movement structure. The Andante’s lovely melodies are characteristic of the graceful lyricism present from Mendelssohn’s earliest pieces through his last. The Menuetto is terse, with an economy worthy of Beethoven; but it is the Finale, with its dramatic, insistent tone and its startling rhythmic displacements that most strikingly reveals the beginning of Beethoven’s influence on the young Mendelssohn.
Shostakovich composed his Quartet No. 10 in A flat major in July of 1964, during one of his frequent stays at the Soviet Composers’ Retreat in the picturesque town of Dilijan Armenia. Shostakovich had developed a warm bond with Armenia and the many hospitable colleagues there. The quartet was dedicated to another colleague, Moisey Weinberg, a Soviet composer who had often worked with Shostakovich.
The serenity and tranquility of the work’s slow movements flow above a hidden inner tension, which breaks forth into violence and agony in the second movement in a profound lament for the human condition. In the finale the underlying unease is almost, but not quite, resolved. It is a movement highly typical of Shostakovich. Elements from the first movement are reprised, and the long arc of tension ends in an ambivalent, ironically cheerful mood that can be experienced in two ways -- as a happy ending, or as a mocking rejection of happy endings. The symphonic proportions of the work have made it a dramatic addition to the string orchestra literature.
Khachaturian’s musical idiom was strongly marked by his Armenian heritage. His scores are treasured for their sensuous, singing melodies, colorful orchestration and irrestistible rhythms. Best known as the composer of vivid scores for the ballets Spartacus and Gayaneh, Khachaturian also wrote brilliant concertos, several symphonies, a great deal of film and theatre music, works for band, some chamber music and many popular songs.
Khachaturian composed Masquerade in 1941 as incidental music for a production of Mikhail Lermontov’s play of the same title. The Suite soon became a popular concert work. This CD presents the world premiere recording of the string orchestra arrangement by Nurhan Arman, created to celebrate Khachaturian’s centenary in 2003.
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