Summer Dreams: American Piano Duets by Beach, MacDowell & Barber Emma Abbate & Julian Perkins

• Edward MacDowell (1860 - 1908): 3 Poems, Op. 20:
• 1 MacDowell: 3 Poems, Op. 20: I. Night by the Sea 04:25
• 2 MacDowell: 3 Poems, Op. 20: II. A Tale from Knightly Times 03:25
• 3 MacDowell: 3 Poems, Op. 20: III. Ballad 03:30
• Moon Pictures, Op. 21:
• 4 MacDowell: Moon Pictures, Op. 21: I. The Hindoo Maiden 02:21
• 5 MacDowell: Moon Pictures, Op. 21: II. Story of the Stork 01:38
• 6 MacDowell: Moon Pictures, Op. 21: III. In the Tyrol 03:33
• 7 MacDowell: Moon Pictures, Op. 21: IV. The Swan 02:53
• 8 MacDowell: Moon Pictures, Op. 21: V. Visit of the Bears 01:41
• Hamlet and Ophelia, Op. 22:
• 9 MacDowell: Hamlet and Ophelia, Op. 22: I. Hamlet 07:09
• 10 MacDowell: Hamlet and Ophelia, Op. 22: II. Ophelia 06:22
• Amy Beach (1867 - 1944): 3 Movements:
• 11 Beach: 3 Movements: I. Allegro Appassionato 01:42
• 12 Beach: 3 Movements: II. Moderato 02:53
• 13 Beach: 3 Movements: III. Allegro con Fuoco 03:33
• Summer Dreams, Op. 47:
• 14 Beach: Summer Dreams, Op. 47: I. The Brownies 03:27
• 15 Beach: Summer Dreams, Op. 47: II. Robin Redbreast 01:48
• 16 Beach: Summer Dreams, Op. 47: III. Twilight 02:16
• 17 Beach: Summer Dreams, Op. 47: IV. Katy-Dids 00:53
• 18 Beach: Summer Dreams, Op. 47: V. Elfin Tarantelle 01:51
• 19 Beach: Summer Dreams, Op. 47: VI. Good Night 03:36
• Samuel Barber (1910 - 1981): Souvenirs, Op. 28:
• 20 Barber: Souvenirs, Op. 28: I. Waltz 04:13
• 21 Barber: Souvenirs, Op. 28: II. Schottische 02:36
• 22 Barber: Souvenirs, Op. 28: III. Pas de Deux 03:53
• 23 Barber: Souvenirs, Op. 28: IV. Two-Step 01:46
• 24 Barber: Souvenirs, Op. 28: V. Hesitation-Tango 03:46
• 25 Barber: Souvenirs, Op. 28: VI. Galop 02:57
• Total Runtime 01:18:07

Info for Summer Dreams: American Piano Duets by Beach, MacDowell & Barber

Both Beach and MacDowell were formidably accomplished pianists who wrote concertos in barnstorming virtuoso style, for themselves and their contemporaries to play, but they could also turn their hand to the lucrative domestic market for piano-duet music. In doing so they also tapped into the 19th-century, Romantic preoccupation with childhood which Schumann had encapsulated in his Kinderszenen of 1838.

MacDowell wrote his Moon-Pictures Op.21 in the winter of 1884–5 and subtitled them ‘after H.C. Andersen’s Picture-Book without Pictures’, referring to an 1848 collection of short bedtime stories. Published in 1901 and dedicated to the composer’s niece, the six duets of the album’s title collection, Summer Dreams by Beach, are shorter and technically simpler than the Moon-Pictures, but they are prefaced by literary quotations which once more indicate that this is not music for children so much as music for adults to play to children, and for adults to play at being children. In any case, simpler means and fewer notes need hardly imply naivety of expression, and Beach’s self-taught technique was too rigorous to allow anything less than the most deftly fashioned work to escape her desk. Composed in 1883, Beach’s brief 3 Movements for piano duet are the work of a prodigiously talented teenager who knows her early-Romantic piano literature – including Kinderszenen – inside out, but who also understands at this stage how to emulate rather than merely copy her models. In the following year of 1884, the 23-year-old MacDowell wrote his 3 Poems Op.20. Strictly speaking, Hamlet and Ophelia is the outlier in this collection, since MacDowell composed it in 1894 as a tone-poem for orchestra in the Lisztian manner, and then made this two-piano transcription rather than leaving the work to the kind of professional arranger habitually commissioned by publishers for such work. Nevertheless, he took the kind of care over it that Brahms did in arranging his symphonies, and the piano-duet version retains the brooding tension of the opening and effectively transfers the violinistic surges of Hamlet’s main section to the keyboard. The album’s final collection takes a chronological leap forward to 1952, but its nostalgia-drenched mood belongs to an intermediate age. ‘One might imagine a divertissement in a setting of the Palm Court at the Plaza Hotel’, Barber explained in a letter to his publisher, ‘the year about 1914, epoch of the first tangos. Souvenirs – remembered with affection, not in irony or with tongue in cheek, but in amused tenderness.’ Barber, it should be noted, would have been four years old at the time, and so these are ‘souvenirs’ in the manner of sepia-tinted postcards.

Emma Abbate, piano
Julian Perkins, piano

Emma Abbate
Described as 'an amazingly talented pianist' by Musica, Emma Abbate enjoys a demanding career as a piano accompanist and chamber musician. She works with some of the finest singers and instrumentalists of her generation and has performed in duo recitals for international festivals and concert societies in Austria, Portugal, Italy, Poland and the USA. In addition to broadcasts on BBC Radio 3, appearances in the UK include the Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre, Royal Opera House, St John’s Smith Square, St George’s, Bristol and the Aldeburgh Festival.

Emma's latest release is Tournament for Twenty Fingers featuring piano duets by 20th-century British composers together with Julian Perkins for BIS Records. Her varied discography also includes a series of acclaimed recordings devoted to Italian vocal chamber music, the latest of which is Sera d'inverno: Songs by Ildebrando Pizzetti with mezzo-soprano Hanna Hipp, and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Shakespeare Sonnets with bass-baritone Ashley Riches, both on Resonus Classics.

A keen advocate of contemporary music, Emma has released two discs devoted to works by Stephen Dodgson that include his piano quintets with the Tippett Quartet. Other world-première recordings include works for cello and piano by Algernon Ashton and Krzysztof Meyer with Evva Mizerska. Emma also cultivates an active interest in historical keyboards, and has performed and recorded on a range of original instruments for the Finchcocks Charity, at Hatchlands Park and the Russell Collection. She has released Weber's complete keyboard duets with Julian Perkins, with whom she has also recorded Mozart's complete keyboard duet sonatas on period instruments.

Based in London, Emma is a professor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, a staff coach at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and has taught at the Verbier Festival Academy. Following her graduation from the S. Pietro a Majella Conservatoire in Naples and an Advanced Diploma from the S. Cecilia Conservatoire in Rome, Emma studied in London with Yonty Solomon. She completed her studies with Geoffrey Pratley as a scholar at the Royal Academy of Music, from where she graduated with distinction. She was also awarded an Italian Literature and Culture degree cum laude from the Federico II University in Naples, and has been elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in recognition of her ‘significant contribution’ thus far to the music profession.

Julian Perkins
enjoys a busy and varied career as both conductor and keyboard player. Described as 'exuberantly stylish' by the Sunday Times, he loves bringing his experience as a leading performer on period instruments to his work with both period instrument ensembles and modern orchestras and to singers of varied performing backgrounds. He is Artistic Director of Cambridge Handel Opera and the Founder Director of Sounds Baroque.

Shortlisted for the 2021 Gramophone Award for his recording of Eccles’s Semele with the Academy of Ancient Music and Cambridge Handel Opera, Julian Perkins has been praised as both conductor and keyboard soloist for his 'demonic intensity' (BBC Music Magazine Recording of the Month), 'fluid and natural pacing' (Gramophone Editor's Choice) and 'verve and suavity' (Classical Music), conducting 'as if every bar means the world to him' (Opera Disc of the Month), and giving 'performances that reach to the heart of the music' (International Record Review).

With Sounds Baroque, Julian Perkins has directed many acclaimed performances, working alongside singers such as Rebecca Evans, Dame Emma Kirkby, Mark Padmore, Christopher Purves, Ashley Riches and Carolyn Sampson. The numerous instrumental groups he has directed range from the Academy of Ancient Music to the Northern Chamber Orchestra, while he has led over twenty Baroque projects with the Southbank Sinfonia and opera productions for the Buxton International Festival, Cambridge Handel Opera, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Kings Place, Netherlands Opera Academy, New Chamber Opera, New Kent Opera and Snape Maltings. A unique feature of his work with Sounds Baroque is his co-creation with librettist and critic Stephen Pettitt of carefully crafted pasticcio operas, evolving what was a common eighteenth-century practice for the modern age. So far they have created Casanova (2016) and Dinner with Handel (2021), both received with much acclaim.

As a keyboard player, Julian Perkins performs regularly at the Salzburg Festival, Edinburgh International Festival and BBC Proms, and has given concerto performances with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Florilegium and the Orchestra of The Sixteen. Passionate about singers and singing, he has appeared as solo harpsichordist for the Royal Opera, Welsh National Opera and Northern Ireland Opera. He features regularly on BBC Radio 3’s Early Music Show and In Tune and has performed as a soloist at many prestigious venues, including London’s Wigmore Hall, New York’s Lincoln Center and Sydney Opera House. An avid recitalist, Julian has broken new ground at over a dozen international festivals by giving solo clavichord concerts, including programmes featuring complete performances of J. S. Bach’s two books of Das wohltemperierte Klavier. Duo recitals include appearances for the Mozart Society of America, the Oxford Lieder Festival and the Royal Opera with singers including Dame Emma Kirkby, James Bowman, Helen Charlston, Anna Dennis and Anna Stéphany, violinists Bojan Čičić and Peter Sheppard Skærved, keyboardists Emma Abbate and Terence Charlston, flautist Rachel Brown and gambist Reiko Ichise.

Julian read music at Cambridge University, before pursuing advanced studies at the Schola Cantorum, Basle, the Royal Academy of Music, London, and privately with conductor David Parry and harpsichordist Trevor Pinnock. Research is an essential element in his performing career, and his written articles have been published by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Rhinegold Publishing. Historically informed musicianship also inspires his work as a visiting coach at the Royal Opera as well as the masterclasses he gives for the National Opera Studio, music colleges and universities in the UK and abroad.

Booklet for Summer Dreams: American Piano Duets by Beach, MacDowell & Barber