Album of the Day is Benjamin Lees' Symphony No. 4: Memorial Candles, part of Naxos Records' brilliant project of selling cheap CDs of every American composer (though Lees was born in China of Russian parentage) who hummed a line. It's a patchy affair: some of the composers are lost geniuses (genii?), others are fairly humdrum. Yet there's something brilliantly democratic about giving everyone a chance to be heard, at £6 per CD.
Lees is still alive, in his 80s, and his music is firmly in the classical tradition, rather than part of the experimental (i.e. largely tune-free) movements of the twentieth century. This isn't to say that he's old-fashioned or derivative - he draws on the more interesting of the late Classical and Romantic composers like Prokofiev and Bartok, whose music is brilliant and challenging, and does interesting things with rhythm and sound, influenced by his maverick teacher, George Antheil.
Symphony No 4: Memorial Candles was commissioned to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Holocaust, specifically its Jewish victims, and features a solo female voice and violinist. It's utterly terrifying, saddening and finally resigned. As it should be.
Here's the melancholy 3rd movement. Ignore the sunshine.
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