Don Gillis was a populist composer who also was producer of Toscanini's NBC Symphony broadcasts at about mid-century. This LP contains his Saga of a Prairie School (Gillis' Symphony No. 7), which was written for the 75th anniversary of his alma mater, Texas Christian University, where he also taught for some time.
Gillis intended for his music to be light, melodic, and appealing, and he certainly succeeded in this piece. It has a program, which can be roughly determined from the titles of its movements: the Vision, the People, the Dedication, and the Fulfillment.
This performance was recorded in January 1950 in London's Kingsway Hall, only two years after the symphony's premiere. The orchestra is the so-called New Symphony - a nom du disque for a freelance band. The composer conducted.
Gillis' music was very much out of style for many years, but has been coming to light again in recent years through a series of fine new recordings on the Albany label.
7 comments:
I'm surprised that NO one has made a single comment about this interesting, rare old record. So I'll add that while a few of Gillis's pieces, like the symphonic poem "Tulsa" which was recorded around the same time, had some circulation, he was of course well known as a composition teacher (and especially as the long-time producer of the NBC Symphony concerts.) I like *some* of his works but they cannot quite hold a candle to the more secure, interesting pieces by Copland (of course!) or Gould. Here's his musical joke: the Symphony No. 5-and-a-half, from the live NBC Symphony broadcast of September, 1947. The in-house sound records have really hi fi response, but the acetates are a bit rumbly; I haven't yet found the rest of the concert so no editing work has been done on them yet by me.
https://www37.zippyshare.com/v/KlZR41rM/file.html
(16 MB, zipped mp3s)
File expires in thirty days.
8H Haggis
No one commented because I only had a few followers back then and the link is long dead. I think Dutton has revived this recording, but as you know, his results are variable.
Buster, I know this thread is "long dead"; but here is yet another old chestnut by Don Gillis: the early fifties' recording of his 1950 tone poem, "Tulsa", with the so-called 'Viennese Symphonic Ensemble' conducted by H. Arthur Brown, on Remington. I have not been able to verify the exact recording date as the album does not appear in my copies of WERM up to 1955.
The reverse side of the disk had the Rosenkavalier Waltzes; the transfer was sent to me with only the Gillis side, and was done by a friend on the east coast who has the disk. He made an unmodified "stereo" transfer of the mono original, which gave me an opportunity to show a screen cap of my audio editor, which separated out the L-R signal, consisting only of distortion and the ticks and pops! I then removed the noise, converted back to mono, and then back to 2 channel for some "spatial" processing. Years ago I had a commercial transfer of this by Tom Null (Urania? Varese-Sarabande?) with a mild form of artificial stereo to TRY to open up the soundstaging and make the original seem less harsh and congested. I liked what Null did, so I've tried more or less the same kind of thing in the final edit, a lossless FLAC stereo file.
https://www48.zippyshare.com/v/XgFuw1DO/file.html
Expires 30 days after upload date of 9/4/18.
Frankly, as the old record is SO harsh and lacking in modernistic realism, I find that even a band transcription makes a better case for the piece, giving it more impact without the raucousness: so one might try the US Naval Band on YouTube, here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOYcVk1HayE
At any rate, you might find this an amusing walk done "Lp memory lane"...
8H Haggis
Lots of information about Gillis Remington record on following link.
Remington Site very useful.
http://www.soundfountain.org/rem/rembrown.html
Remastered version (Apple lossless):
https://mega.nz/#!TBMEzAqA!-mQz1RMC4X_kkXYumbW7jGmUmAY58lMWCFSCxbT7ibE
Thank you.
Gary
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