aworks :: "new" american classical music

Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano (1973). Benjamin Lees

I'm listening to the CD of the violin works of Benjamin Lees, played by Ellen Orner (first violin for the Baltimore Symphony) and Joel Wizansky, piano. The violin part throughout the Second Sonata is forceful and intense. In the liner notes, Orner describes the third (and almost zealous) movement:

The writing is virtuosic for both instruments, and the violin shows off some wild glissando effects in single and double stops.

Steve Schwartz via Jeffrey James Arts Consulting discusses the CD:

Summary for the Busy Executive: Not for the complacent or faint of heart... The second movement seems to lead directly into the third, where all that pent-up energy finally explodes in a biting, angry, and quick rondo, full of violin "special effects." The effects always make an emotional point, reinforcing the menace, and the two instruments generate great power.  This music grabs and shakes you. 

An aworks post from 2003 on Lee's Symphony No. 4, which had been nominated for a Grammy.

Symphony No. 5 "Kalmar Nyckel" (1986). Benjamin Lees

Benjamin Lees' Symphony No. 5 was nominated for a "Classical Contemporary Composition" Grammy.  Albany Records released it as part of a 2-CD set with the American Stephen Gunzenhauser conducting (more overview here).

Steve Schwartz, writing at www.classicalcdreview.com, wrote as follows: Benjamin Lees' concertos have tended to crowd out his symphonies from public attention... Lees' shapes are fantastic, in the sense of odd. While one can (and Lees does) talk of near-sonata form, one almost always finds the architecture subservient to a rhetorical or dramatic pattern. Nevertheless, no matter how unusual the result, one always gets the impression of great coherence in a Lees work... The fifth symphony of 1998 celebrates the first (and short-lived) Swedish settlement in the New World (present-day Delaware, they think). The symphony transcends the circumstances of its commission...

Lees was interviewed at the time of his Symphony No. 4  being released on Naxos:

I had a piano teacher for about nine years. He was adequate but not awe-inspiring. New York was light years away in the 1930s and no one suggested I go there to attend Juilliard. Besides, it was in the Depression era and there was hardly money for essentials...

I've heard and liked several concertos by Lees.  I would also recommend the CD of complete violin works .

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Dominick Argento's Casa Guidi won the Grammy. 2/8/04