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- David Amram
Theme and Variations on Red River Valley (1996)
- C.F. Peters Corporation (World)
Programme Note
In 1990, the Kerrville Texas Music Festival commissioned me to compose a piece for Texas flute virtuoso Megan Meissenbach and string players from the San Antonio and Austin Symphonies, and it premiered at the Quiet Valley Ranch where the festival took place.
The festival wanted a theme that reflected the beauty of indigenous Western folk lore in the same way that Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Borodin, Dvorak, Bartok, Ives and Gershwin has celebrated their respective cultures by incorporating elements of the folk music that they grew up with.
In 1976, I had spent a memorable afternoon in Lukenbach Texas (population 7) with Hondo Crouch, Lukenbachs' indefatigable founder, owner, mayor, actor and full-time host.
As the day, afternoon and night of merrymaking took place, Hondo and I improvised a half hour version of "Red River Valley."
It stayed in my mind for years, and 14 years later, when I was asked by the Kerrville Festival to compose a piece for flute and strings based on a Western theme, I knew which one to use.
From the composition's stately beginning through the various statements of the theme and ensuing variations, I tried to paint an orchestral picture of the remaining beauties of the Western United States. For artists like Jack Kerouac and myself, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas were magical places we could only dream of seeing some day when we were growing up in the 1930s during the Great Depression and watching old Western movies. We were both lucky to be able to see and live in them later on in our lives.
The renowned flutist Julius Baker recorded Theme and Variations on Red River Valley for Newport Classic Records in 1990. A few years later, I conducted the piece at the Kennedy Center with the National Symphony as part of a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the chamber music concert version of Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring, and the concert was broadcast nationally. The piece began being played on classical music stations all over the country.
In 2012, I was invited to premiere a concert and recording of THIS LAND: Symphonic Variations on a Song by Woody Guthrie as guest composer and conductor in Denver with the Colorado Symphony.
We included Theme and Variations on Red River Valley for flute and strings as a companion piece to THIS LAND for the Newport Classic CD with flute soloist Ellen Brook Ferguson.
It was also recorded by Karen Large in a reduction for flute and piano in a CD of my flute orchestral compositions , all published by C.F. Peters.
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Features
- Catalogue Classics: Samuel Barber – Adagio for Strings
- Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber is one of the best-known and most beloved concert works of all time. Derived from the middle movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11, it was premiered in 1938 by Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra. As the US struggled to emerge from the Great Depression and the prospect of war in Europe loomed, Adagio for Strings provided its audiences with a space to access their emotions, through radio broadcasts and performances across the Americas.