Search - George Walker, Edwin London, Cleveland Chamber Symphony :: George Walker: Orchestral Works

Although George Walker was the first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize in music (for his Whitman-inspired cantata Lilacs in 1996), his compositions are not nearly as well known as they deserve to be. This release of orchestral selections--much like the 1994 compilation Portrait--offers an inviting entrée into Walker's musical world. It includes the piece that marked the composer's debut in 1946, Lyric for Strings, along with examples of more recent projects, such as the tone poem-cum-narrator Orpheus from 1994. Walker's music is often a rich amalgam of formal design with disparate elements--folk idioms, serial techniques, jazz rhythms, unusual collages of timbre--that are fused into a highly personalized, questing voice. Lyric, with its hint of Samuel Barber, seems to announce a gently guarded elegiac quality that recurs in various guises within subsequent compositions, such as the lovely Poème for Violin and Orchestra. Orpheus draws on one of music's central myths for a tautly constructed musical narrative adorned by Walker's imaginatively fluent orchestration. An excellent example of Walker's modus operandi can be found in the Folk Songs for Orchestra. These moving transformations of simple melodic elements--encased like gems within Walker's sensitive, original, meditative settings--into far-ranging statements invite repeated listening. --Thomas May