Clurman Conducts Christmas Choral Works

A Season's Promise: Choral Music by Oquin, Rorem, Hume, Morris and Bolcom, Paulus, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Larsen, Thomson, Lauridsen, Lasser, Higdon, Cabaniss, Conner, and Horne. Margaret Kampmeier, piano; Melanie Feld, oboe; Susan Jolles, harp; Lois Martin, viola; The New York Concert Singers; Judith Clurman, conductor. (New World Records 80592)

Judith Clurman, Juilliard's director of choral activities, has recorded one of the most interesting and attractive CDs of the holiday season. A Season's Promise contains 15 choral works by American composers (including five from Juilliard), many first performed at—and commissioned for—the annual Lincoln Center tree-lighting ceremonies, for which Clurman was music director from 1992-2001.

Clurman, who is director of the Juilliard Choral Union, received her master's degree in voice from the School in 1978 and has been on the faculty since 1989. In A Season's Promise, she conducts the 25-voice New York Concert Singers, a top-notch professional ensemble founded by her, in joyous and reverential music by such composers as Ned Rorem, Joan Morris, Stephen Paulus, and Virgil Thomson.

Clurman's two previous CDs with the Concert Singers for New World Records are also rewarding, offering fresh repertoire led with skill and flair. Divine Grandeur (80504) comprises recent sacred choral works by eight American composers including Robert Beaser, Stephen Paulus, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and Aaron Jay Kernis. Clurman's other choral CD contains William Bolcom's The Mask (80547) as well as works by Virgil Thomson and Castelnuovo-Tedesco, an imaginative choice of music.

Programmed with taste and originality, Clurman's newest CD, A Season's Promise, is a Christmas album that can be returned to again and again, one that can be listened to with pleasure throughout the year.



Peter Schickele Presents P.D.Q. Bach

P.D.Q. Bach: The Ill-Conceived P.D.Q. Bach Anthology. The Greater Hoople Area Off-Season Philharmonic; Turtle Mountain Naval Base Tactical Wind Ensemble; Peter Schickele, conductor and narrator. (Telarc CD-80520)

Peter Schickele will present "P.D.Q. Bach Strikes Back" at Avery Fisher Hall December 26 and 27, continuing a 38-year tradition of holiday lecture-concerts devoted to newly exhumed compositions by "the last (and least) of the sons of J.S. Bach." A student of Vincent Persichetti and William Bergsma, Schickele received his master's degree in composition from Juilliard in 1960 and subsequently taught at the School.

Mining a rich vein of musical humor paying homage to Spike Jones, Anna Russell, and the London-based Gerard Hoffnung Music Festivals, Schickele has now compiled a CD titled The Ill-Conceived P.D.Q. Bach Anthology, which contains lowlights of his six prior P.D.Q. Bach recordings for the Telarc label, four of which have been Grammy winners.

An excellent introduction to the music of P.D.Q. Bach, the anthology contains samples of such unique and frequently hilarious works as the "1712" Overture, the oratorio Oedipus Tex, and The Short-Tempered Clavier ("in all the major and minor keys except the really hard ones"). Schickele is also an accomplished composer in his own right, as demonstrated by a recent CD of his Piano Quintet No. 1 and two string quartets, performed by Schickele with the Audubon Quartet (Centaur CRC 2505).

Some observers have had the temerity to suggest that P.D.Q.'s compositions were actually written by their discoverer, Professor Schickele himself, and have been so crass as to allege that the initials "P.D.Q." stand for "Pretty Darn Quick" Bach. However, this reviewer, after exhaustive research in European baptismal records and music archives, has uncovered convincing evidence that P.D.Q. was named in honor of hitherto-unsuspected French ancestors. As a contribution to musicology, I offer a solution to the riddle of the composer's initials: Befitting P.D.Q.'s French heritage, they stand for "Pas De Quoi," which, loosely translated, is "Not At All" Bach!

Michael Sherwin, marketing manager of the Juilliard Bookstore (bookstore.juilliard.edu), has written for High Fidelity and Musical America.