A Formidable Achievement Music by Newton D Strandberg - heard by PATRIC STANDFORD '... well worth serious acquaintance.'

Strandberg was born in 1921 in River Falls, Wisconsin and died in 2001 after an eventful life that had taken him in 1951 to Paris as yet another student joining the classes of Nadia Boulanger, and in 1967 he joined the music faculty of Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, where he taught and was duly honored well beyond his retirement thirty years later. The four pieces on this CD cover a central part of his creative life quite interestingly. The Essay for String Orchestra is described in the notes as a 'study in grief', an elegy marking as it does the death of his nephew at the age of seven, who was buried on Christmas Eve 1966. The grief is unmistakable in a score that takes its time to unfold and uses the string orchestra expansively -- and at times, wildly, with the sure technical command of maturity...

NAVONA RECORDS

ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

CHAMBER MUSIC

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA