Johann & Josef Strauss: Radetzky-Marsch CD

I recorded these pieces during two days of recording at the newly renovated Helen Hosmer Hall at the Crane School of Music (SUNY-Potsdam) in December 2000, just a few weeks before taking up the baton as Resident Conductor of the Opera Program at the University of Illinois. In October of 2000 I had played what I personally referred to as my 'farewell tour' (that's right, it is my flare for the dramatic that actually makes me quite effective conducting opera! And..of course, it wasn't much of a farewell tour since no one noticed I was gone! HA!!), in a series of concerts that included Schumann's Nachtstucke and the first volume of Liszt's Annees de Pelerinage. In early December, I recorded the Nachtstucke, along with Faschingsschwank aus Wien and Kinderszenen, with the intention of marking my 'departure' from solo playing with some recordings of works that had some meaning, or at least history, to me.

Since my young childhood, I have always been attracted to literature that was, perhaps, not the most standard or widely embraced. I was a teenager when I first discovered Nachtstucke myself, and I've always thought the work, if handled appropriately, can be quite effective. It requires a certain knowledge of style of Schumann, and a bravery to realize that tempo-unity is pedantic and amateurish and simply does not work in many of his compositions. Nachtstucke is senseless if one has not figured this out.

But, more important, there was a poetic imagery that I connected with in the writings of Schumann about this work in particular.