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Track 5 - Lil' David Play on Yo' Harp Composer: EDWARD JOSEPH COLLINS (1886-1951)
This important recording is the second in a proposed five disc series devoted to the music of American composer Edward Joseph Collins. The first disc - Volume III - is also available for request from ClassiQuest.
Collins was born in 1886 to Irish-American immigrants, in Joliet Illinois. He steamed to Europe and studied in Berlin with Bruch and Humperdinck. Just before WWI he served as assistant conductor of the New York City Century Opera Company (at the time a competitor of the Metropolitan Opera) and again ended up in Germany as assistant director for the Bayreuth Festival. Collins served as a translator in the US Army intelligence during WWI, eventually winning an award for bravery. After the war he wrote a musical, acclaimed at its Paris premiere attended by such notables as President Wilson. Collins was a much sought after recital collaborator with renowned artists such as the contralto Ernestine Schumann Heinck. He carried on a four-decade long career as a virtuoso pianist, winning continual plaudits for his technical virtuosity and expressive performances. Much of this time he spent composing during the summers at his family cottage in Cedar Lake and, later, at a home/studio near Fish Creek, Wisconsin. He performed with and conducted major orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra - his compositions grabbed the attention of and were performed often by Frederick Stock and the CSO. In 1939 he was awarded the David Bispham Prize for his one-act opera Daughter of the South, joining Herbert, Hanson, and Gershwin; subsequent winners included Menotti and Weill. Select company, indeed!
This volume presents the sylistically early, yet important, First Piano Concerto. Considering Collins's training in composition and his success as a concert pianist, the urge early on to tackle a piano concerto was not surprising. This first effort, which pianist William Wolfram describes as a 'pastoral' work, came before influences had jelled for Collins into something more personal. The work was begun in 1922, progressed in fits and starts and was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Stock in 1925.
Hibernia is the fullest realization of Collins's thoughts on the Irish folksong "O! The taters they are small over here!" a tune he used in several compositions between 1927 and 1932. The composer's imagination, his gift for orchestral tone painting and his ability to establish reflective mood are all lovingly in evidence.
Collins thoroughly enjoyed American spirituals and arranged several of them. The rendition of Lil' David Play Yo' Harp came to life becuase of the composer's association with Alfred Wallenstein, former cellist in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and in New York under Toscanini. Wallenstein was also music director of WOR in New York and seems to have requested this arrangement from Collins.
Finally, Lament and Jig was written in response to a commission from the CSO on the occasion of their Golden Jubilee in 1941.