Big Happenings with Amy Beach’s music!!
The Munich Symphony (Münchner Symphoniker), led by Joseph Bastian, has released a new all-Amy Beach recording, featuring her monumental Symphony op. 32 “Gaelic” and also three world premiere recordings: her concert arias Maria Stuart: Eilende wolken, Segler der Lüfte, op. 18 and Jephthah’s Daughter (C.L. Mollevant), op. 53, and her song Extase (Victor Hugo), Op. 21, no. 2, in Beach’s own orchestration. This brilliant and much-needed recording is bound to take the world by storm, and is already trending on the leading streaming sites! Here is the Naxos catalog listing, and here is the Munich Symphony’s announcement (in German). Not only is only the second recording devoted to Beach’s orchestral music, it is also the first commercial recording entirely based on our music publications, carefully edited by Chris A. Trotman.
This weekend (Sun. April 6), one of the Beach rarities, concert aria Jephthah’s Daughter, op. 53, is featured in this amazing concert by the Boston-based Horizon Ensemble featuring Massachusetts Voices – two new works by local composers, and one by Leonard Bernstein. Sung by soprano Hannah Shanefield, this will be only the second performance ever of the moving and powerful Jephthah’s Daughter, as was discussed here, the premiere (of the orchestrated version) received an outstanding review in the Boston Globe, here, (or paraphrased here if you would like to avoid the paywall). If you can’t make it in person, there will be a YouTube livestream! Pay-what-you-can Tickets here, and more information is here on the Horizon website.
Asiya Korepanova, photo credit Emil Matveev
And then on April 19 in New York City, Pegasus:The Orchestra and soloist Asiya Korepanova take on Beach’s Piano Concerto. Korepanova enthuses: “People say ‘let’s perform more music of women-composers’ – yet the magnificent Amy Beach piano concerto is still almost never played! Only reasons I can see are it is technically demanding and it is scored for a big orchestra with intricate writing and many solos, but we got that covered with Pegasus: The Orchestra! … Please help us spread the word about it – my dream is to make the Beach concerto the number one performed Romantic American concerto – it has everything in it to take this role!” We agree completely!
And remember to visit our website www.amybeach.org to learn more about Amy Beach, including our editions!