Composers on CD LE326,
The Verdehr Trio
Max Bruch (1838-1920) was born in Cologne.
Hailed as a "wunderkind," he won the Frankfurt Mozart Foundation
Prize when he was fourteen with a string quartet he had composed. The
scholarship money assured him four years of composition and piano studies
with Ferdinand Hiller, Carl Reinecke, and Ferdinand Breunung. Bruch
established himself as a music teacher and composer in Cologne in 1858,
producing his first opera that same year. During the 1860s and 1870s
he devoted himself to composition while traveling throughout central
Europe. In 1880 Bruch moved to England. He composed his Symphony
No. 3 for the New York Symphony Society in 1882 and heard it and
his epic cantata Arminius performed in Boston when he visited
the United States in 1883.
He returned to Europe later that year to assume the leadership of the
Orchesterverein in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), leaving that
position in 1891 to join the faculty of the Hochschule für Musik
in Berlin, where he was professor of composition and later vice president
of the school. Max Bruch's long life spanned a period of tremendous
dynamism and a wide variety of musical fashions in Western music. Through
it all, he remained consistent in his own creative output with many
of the conventions of late Romanticism, displaying a fine sense of both
melody and classically-derived yet freely-treated form. Noted in his
time for his many sacred and secular choral compositions, Bruch is perhaps
best remembered today for his works for violin and orchestra such as
the "Concerto in G Minor" and the "Scottish Fantasy."
Leslie Bassett (b.1923): California-born
composer Leslie Bassett has spent much of his life at the University
of Michigan. Early training on piano, trombone, cello, and other instruments
led to Bassett's wartime service in Europe with the l3th Armored Division
Band. He pursued music degrees at Fresno State College and the University
of Michigan and studied composition with Ross Lee Finney, Arthur Honegger,
Nadia Boulanger, Roberto Gerhard, and Mario Davidovsky. Bassett joined
the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1952, chaired the composition
department from 1970 to 1985, and helped found the Electronic Music
Studio there.
Bassett was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 1966 for his Variations
for Orchestra, which represented the United States at the UNESCO
International Rostrum for Composers in Paris that year. Bassett's Echoes
from an Invisible World, commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra
in 1976 for the U.S. Bicentennial, was later chosen by the League of
Composers and the International Society for Contemporary Music to represent
the United States at the 1980 World Music Days in Tel Aviv. Bassett's
many grants, awards, and fellowships include those from the Guggenheim
Foundation, Walter Naumberg Foundation, National Institute of Arts and
Letters, National Council for the Arts and Humanities, National Endowment
for the Arts, University of Michigan, and the Koussevitsky and McKim
Foundations in the Library of Congress.
Charles Hoag (b.1931) is professor of music
theory and composition at the University of Kansas. He also teaches
double bass and has been the conductor of the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra
since 1978. Hoag earned his B.M. at Iowa University in 1954 and his
M.M. at the University of Redlands the following year. He then served
as bassist with the New Orleans Philharmonic before undertaking further
musical studies at the University of Iowa where he was awarded his Ph.D.
in composition in 1962. From 1963 until 1968, when he assumed his current
position at the University of Kansas, Hoag lived in Oklahoma City where
he taught at the University of Oklahoma and served as bassist with the
Oklahoma City Symphony. His recent honors include grants and awards
from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the
Humanities, International Society of Bassists, University of Kansas,
and ASCAP.
Katherine Hoover (b.1937) lives in New York.
She was born in West Virginia and grew up in a Philadelphia suburb.
Hoover has received commissions and awards from the National Endowment
for the Arts, American Academy of Arts & Letters, Ditson Fund of
Columbia University, ASCAP, Meet the Composer, and many other organizations.
Her works have been presented throughout the United States and abroad
by such soloists and groups as John Cheek; Eddie Daniels; the Harrisburg
and Santa Fe Symphonies; Women's Philharmonic; the Dorian, Sylvan, Hudson
Valley and Richards Wind Quintets; Atlanta Chamber Players; New Jersey
Chamber Music Society; Alard Quartet; and the Huntingdon and Verdehr
Trios. As a flutist, Hoover has given concerto performances at Lincoln
Center, performed in all of New York's major halls, and made numerous
recordings. She holds degrees from the Eastman and Manhattan Schools
of Music and has taught at Juilliard; the Manhattan School of Music;
and Teachers College, Columbia University.