British conductor and pianist Wayne Marshall, OBE, leads a performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue from the piano!

Fleisher Discoveries - February 2024: Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue at 100

Fleisher Discoveries - March 2024: Marianne Martines

Riccardo Chailly conducts the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in our featured performance of Symphony of Psalms (1930).

Fleisher Discoveries - April 2024: Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms

Fleisher Discoveries - May 2024: Brahms Academic Overture

2002; 2.2.2.2-2.2-1perc-str. 22′. Commissioned by the Lehigh Valley Chamber Orchestra, Donald Spieth, Music Director, and premiered by them on February 15th and 16th, 2002, at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa.
1. Lumen ad revelationem
2. Passer invenit sibi domum
3. The Lord God is a sun and shield

Symphony: Lumen ad revelationem

Fleisher Discoveries - June 2024: Kile Smith Symphony

We go back to the beginning and the Symphony Club's first concert in 1912. Fleisher Discoveries features Romance (1881) by Johan Severin Svendson (1840-1911), Petite suite (1892) by Ole Olsen (1850-1927) and the Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, op. 26 (1866) by Max Bruch (1838-1920).

Fleisher Discoveries - July 2024: The Symphony Club's First Concert

Karen Arnheim (b. 1970)
*Bestiary (2005-2009) (selections)
    I. Phoenix; III. Idyll; IV. Griffin; VIII. Parade
*Symphony of Seasons (2000) (selections)
     I. Autumn: Anthem and 7 variations
*Eye of the Phoebus (selections)
     I.Prelude; II. Passacaglia; III. Badinerie	
*Little Nemo in Slumberland 		
     I. Fanfare (Dreams of Little Nemo	
     II. The Clock Strikes Nine/King Morpheus/Morpheus’ Message/Little 
     III. Nemo/Flip
     IV. The Princess
     V. Doctor Pill
     VI. Nemo’s Adventure
     VII. The Clock Strikes Eleven
     VIII. Farewell Little Nemo

Fleisher Discoveries - March 2025: Karen Amrhein

Drop, drop, slow tears,
And bathe those beauteous feet,
Which brought from Heav’n
The news and Prince of Peace.

Cease not, wet tears,
His mercies to entreat;
To cry for vengeance:
Sin doth never cease.

In your deep floods
Drown all my faults and fears;
Nor let His eye see
Sin, but through my tears.

Phineas Fletcher

Drop, Drop, Slow Tears (strings/harp)

Orders open end of January 2018.

The recordings of Gaelic Psalm singing presented in the release are among the best ever captured. They document a living tradition, a form of religious singing from the Hebrides in Scotland, which is still practiced in Lewis. In Gaelic psalm singing, a precentor leads, and from here voices follow, moving together like the murmurations of birds. These recordings of Gaelic Psalm singing were originally made over two evenings in the Back Free Church on the Isle of Lewis in October 2003. The singing was spontaneous and totally unrehearsed. The recordings are now presented on vinyl for the first time by Arc Light Editions.

This is music that is transcendent and together, about the individual and the earth, movingly spiritual with or without belief. The sound comes in great waves, swells of sound that break and roll around the space. The texture relies on the individuals: this is group singing where the individual is preserved, elevated, but together.

A precentor leads off with the first lines of a psalm, and the congregation follows, some faster than others, and each one remains discernible. In his notes to the original release, Calum Martin writes that the form, called precenting (where one person puts out the line and the congregation responds) while not exclusive to Gaelic free church traditions, is in Lewis particularly influenced by the pibroch style of free ornamentation. It’s through this, he says, that the distinctive emotional swell of sound emerges. The sound relies on the congregation’s individual responses to the melody and the individual precentor’s leading. The musical term is free heterophony.

Arc Light Editions has worked directly with DR Macdonald at the Bethesda Hospice and Calum Martin on this release, and we thank them for their time. A portion of the profits from this release go directly to Bethesda Hospice, in accordance with the original release.

Official release date:
2 February 2018

Salm: Volume One

Salm: Gaelic Psalms from the Hebrides of Scotland – Psalm 16 8-9

A gradually unfolding triple fugue in which each subject is in a different time signature

Symphony: Lumen ad revelationem

kilesmith