Orchestral Music

CHICAGO SKYLINE for Brass and Percussion (1991)

Chicago Skyline is a short celebratory piece commissioned by Chicago’s Fine Arts Radio Station WFMT for performance by the Chicago Symphony in December 1991, honoring the station’s fortieth anniversary. When I began composing the work, it seemed natural to select the brass and percussion section of the orchestra for a fanfare-like utterance. As…

CONCERT PIECE FOR PIANO AND ORCHESTRA (1970)

In retrospect, twenty-one years later, it seems that 1960’s and 1970’s bashing has become a favorite past time activity for a great many composers at this…

CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA (1986)

CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA is the latest in an ongoing series of compositions began in the mid 1970’s in which an exploration, at least on one level, of the relationship between a given work’s formal/dramatic essence and its chosen instrumentation is a…

LEGENDS for Orchestra (1992–93)

Like the finest of music, certain words in every language seem to have multiple layers of meanings, associations, interpretations. One such word is legend, which, to my mind, seems to evoke a wide range of images and possibilities. On the most obvious level there is, of course, the idea of a story being…

THE SHOW GOES ON (Ha’hatzaga Nimshechet) Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra (2008)

For many years the clarinet has played a special role in my music, its huge range of possibilities and powerful dramatic potential allowing for fresh explorations in a variety of contexts, its “soul” having been intertwined with important aspects of my compositional “voice.” In a single movement, my Clarinet Concerto can be heard…

SUPPLICATIONS for Chorus and Orchestra (2002)

SUPPLICATIONS was composed in response to a commission made in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel of a work for chorus and orchestra that would center around texts from the Book of Psalms. To me, one of the striking elements in the Psalms (Tehillim), in addition…

SYMPHONY (1989–1990)

Vast spaces, traversing a broad range of emotional states, their point of origin a singing legato melody played by the horn, and from there on to ever more. From the passionate to the intimate; from the tumultuous and jangling to the celebratory. A wide array of themes and motifs, diverse characters clashing, evolving, vying for…

VESSELS OF COURAGE AND HOPE for orchestra (1998)

Composing VESSELS OF COURAGE AND HOPE was, from its very inception, a most unusual and thought-provoking challenge for me. In my purely instrumental, “abstract” music, I have tended to avoid what might be called overtly programmatic writing. Here, however, I was confronted by a specific historical moment…

VIOLIN CONCERTO (2002–3)

My Concerto for Violin and Orchestra is a work of some 30 minutes cast in three movements. Each movement explores certain facets of the violin’s complex personality, or “soul.” The classically proportioned first movement, taken as a whole, is rather mercurial in character, ranging the gamut from the lyrical and deeply expressive to…

VOICES Concerto for Flautist with Orchestra (1999–2000)

My having been commissioned by the National Flute Association for a flute concerto in celebration of that organization’s year 2000 convention was, for me, a much-relished opportunity to further explore the direction I found myself pursuing in two earlier compositions — EAST WIND for solo flute (1987), and MIRAGE for five instrument (1991)…

YEARNING for solo violin and strings with cello obbligato (1995/2016)

When violinist Edna Michell first spoke to me about the theme of her project to honor the late Lord Yehudi Menuhin on the occasion of his 80th birthday, I found its core idea more than a little daunting: in tribute to Menuhin’s own life and aspirations, compose a short Romance-type piece that would…