NEC Wind Ensemble + Robert Spittal: Stravinsky, Harbison, Spittal, Strauss

Igor Stravinsky | Octet

Sinfonia
Tema con variazioni
Finale

John Harbison | Three City Blocks

Fervent and resolute
Tough, driving
With relentless energy

Program note

Over the radio, in the early fifties, came sounds played by bands in hotels and ballrooms, now distant memories that seemed to a seventh-grade, small-town, late-night listener like the true pulse of giant imagined cities.
     Years later, these sounds -- layered with real experience of some of their places of origin: magnified, distorted, idealized and destabilized -- came into contact with other sounds, some of recent origin, and resulted in these celebratory, menacing, Three City Blocks, completed in the fall of 1991 at Nervi, near Genoa, on the Mediterranean coast of Italy.
     Three City Blocks was commissioned by the wind ensembles of the New England Conservatory, the University of Cincinnati, Florida State University, Ohio State University, the University of Michigan, the University of Southern California, and The United States Air Force Band.

- John Harbison

Robert Spittal | Concerto for Wind Ensemble (2023)

Richard Strauss | Serenade in E-flat Major, op. 7