Peter Boyer, Festive Fanfare (for Akron’s Bicentennial)
(2025)

This work was commissioned by the Tuesday Musical Association and its Myers New Music Fund, in celebration of the bicentennial of Akron, Ohio, in 2025. It’s always a pleasure to create new music for a festive occasion, and the completion of two centuries is a significant milestone in a city’s history. Making this project particularly special was the fact that the performers would be the brass and percussion players from The Cleveland Orchestra, a greatly esteemed ensemble, and that their renowned principal trumpet player, Michael Sachs, would be gathering his colleagues for an Akron Bicentennial Concert. Being invited to conduct the work’s premiere, followed by a recording session, so that the new work may be heard at future events, was an honor. It is my hope that this fanfare conveys an appropriately festive tone to celebrate this occasion.

-Peter Boyer

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Serenade No. 10
(1781)

The Serenade No. 10 for winds in B-flat major, K. 361/370a, is a serenade by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart originally scored for thirteen instruments: twelve winds and string bass. The piece was probably composed in 1781 or 1782 and is often known by the subtitle “Gran Partita”, though the title is a misspelling and not in Mozart’s hand. It consists of seven movements.

The serenade is in seven movements as follows:

I. Largo. Molto Allegro
II. Menuetto
III. Adagio
IV. Menuetto. Allegretto
V. Romance. Adagio
VI. Tema con variazioni
VII. Finale. Molto Allegro

The work is scored for two oboes, two clarinets, two basset horns, two bassoons, four horns and double bass. The double bass is occasionally replaced by contrabassoon; however, the part is clearly for the former as there are pizzicato markings at points.

-Program Note from Publisher

Andres Soto, Rapsodie Aérea 
(2025)

In 2016, the Costa Rica National Symphony Orchestra commissioned me to compose a seven-movement suite to accompany, in a special concert, the projection of several aerial photographs taken by Sergio and Giancarlo Pucci, which had been compiled in a popular book titled Costa Rica Aérea. The beautiful images made me appreciate the beauty of my country from a new perspective and inspired me to write colorful music with a grand, majestic character. Years later, Carl St.Clair, who premiered that suite, commissioned a symphonic poem that would be easier to program–thus Rapsodie Aérea was born. Its orchestral version was nominated for a Latin Grammy in 2024 in the category of Best Arrangement. Maestro St.Clair has now also commissioned a version for symphonic band, to be premiered by the USC Thornton Wind Ensemble, and  one that can be performed around the world. With this, we’ve created a synthesis of the most meaningful musical moments inspired by the natural beauty of my homeland.

Ultimately, this version for symphonic band comes to light four years after the orchestral version and nine years after the piece’s original conception — so it has inevitably gone through various structural, thematic, and instrumental changes. The apologetic ending of the 2021 version is entirely new material, and I believe it may carry profound, spiritual connotations that I prefer not to reveal, but which relate to the word aerial in a more supernatural sense.

-Andrés Soto

Viet Cuong, Second Nature
(2024)

The term ‘second nature’ typically describes a skill that, while baffling at first, becomes effortless once mastered. Naturally, Second Nature calls for a quartet of saxophonists to tackle the virtuosic demands of the piece and make their efforts look easy. But the virtuosity in their music runs deeper than speedy flurries of notes or sky-high belts. The solo quartet must also play with exacting ensemble coordination as they emulate complex electronic decay effects, which, when combined with thumping four-on-the-floor drumbeats, capture the infectious exuberance of house music. If you see the soloists sweat, I hope that it’s at least in some measure because the music inspires them to move. I personally have never danced so much while writing a piece (and fortunately you’ll just have to take my word for it). Written in three unbroken movements, this concerto exudes pure, unbridled joy.

Indeed, when I think about my own nature as a composer, and the affective inclination of my earlier work, it was at first joy. Improvisation at the keyboard, my first childhood foray into composition, was a happy escape from the labors of piano practice. For many years, composition felt like play, and my music was infused with much more whimsy than gravitas. That changed to a great degree in 2020. My compositions, both by intention and the unconscious intrusions of the wider world, became darker and introspective. I had even come to terms with the possibility that my music would remain in this darker place for a very long time. However, with the brightness of its opening and closing C-major chords, Second Nature is me finding my way back. In that way, ‘second nature’ is less of a description of something that has become effortless, but rather something which is relearned, an inclination rediscovered–nature, for the second time around.

It is with tremendous gratitude that I thank Dr. Sarah McKoin and Texas Tech University for leading the consortium of fifteen university wind ensembles and saxophone quartets who commissioned Second Nature. This concerto is dedicated to the sensational Aruna Quartet, who premiered the piece in early 2024 alongside Dr. McKoin and the Texas Tech University Symphonic Wind Ensemble.

-Viet Cuong

Leonard Bernstein, SLAVA!
(1977)

When Mstislav Rostropovich (“Slava” to his friends) invited Leonard Bernstein to help him launch his inaugural concert as Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra, he also asked him to write a rousing new opening piece for the festivities. This overture is the result, and the world premiere took place on October 11, 1977, with Rostropovich conducting his orchestra at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. The first theme of Slava! is a vaudevillian razz-ma-tazz tune filled with side-slipping modulations and sliding trombones. Theme two, which prominently features the electric guitar, is a canonic tune in 7/8 time. A very brief kind of development section follows, after which the two themes recur in reverse order. Near the end they are combined with a quotation (proclaimed by the ubiquitous trombones) from the “Coronation Scene” of Mussorgsky’s Boris Goudonov, where the chorus sings the Russian word “slava!”, meaning “glory!” In this way, of course, the composer is paying an extra four-bar homage to his friend Slava Rostropovich, to whom this overture is fondly dedicated.

-Jack Gottlieb