Album Notes

-PROGRAM-

-The Garden of Eden

-This suite for solo guitar, represents a description of the Garden of Eden. The music is at times programmatic, as in Serpent and The Voice of the Lord God, romantic, as in East of Eden's Garden, optimistic and joyful as in Adam and Eve and musically absolute as in the first movement Life. Every movement represents some part of life in the Garden of Eden as we have read about it, heard about it or imagined it.

-The Daedalus and Icarus Journey

-This guitar and vocal work was originally set on the Robert Frost poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, and was written for part of a lecture series at Boston University given by Lukas Foss entitled 'Words on Music". Some years later I set out to publish the work only to find that the estate of the late R. Frost frowned upon this particular practice. After two failed attempts to get permission to use the poem, I wrote my own verse for this composition, (my first actually) using a familiar subject, the story of Daedalus and Icarus Journey to freedom.

-Wishes for a Beautiful Life

-I was almost sixteen when I composed this work and many years later decided it was an important part of my compositional life. Driven by instinct and motoric impulse I wrote Wishes with the guitar in my hands. The work still sounds fresh and vivid in my ears, as it supposes to be by a sixteen year old, the programmatic title helped me to maintain its fast pace and the minor tonality to express maybe a concern...

-Lament for the Balkans

-For guitar, strings and mezzo soprano. The initial idea and inspiration came to me after the tragic events in the former Yugoslavia. In this piece the guitar plays a narrative role, here and there supported by the string orchestra expressing visions of grief. Toward the end of the piece a lone soprano voice is heard, from almost far away, lamenting the victims of another war. The tragedy of all wars in this world is very compelling for me, and as a creator and performer I express my views and feelings through music.

-Etudes I

Etudes I unfolds through a series of variations, opening theme in a minor key, that it returns to at the end transformed into major. It is a lyrical and nostalgic work with moments of agitation and a Greek flavor to it.

-Life of Death - Guitar Concerto No. 4

-Death is a serious matter for most of us, one that has intrigued and inspired me for the last ten years. In this work I'm able to explore it artistically while satisfying again a long held desire to perform as the soloist in a concerto that I have written. In the NY premiere in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, the orchestra started without the soloist on stage. The lone guitarist, dressed as the Grim Reaper, joins the orchestra in the first movement as he returns home after a hard days work (collecting souls) to indulge in his favorite pastime, playing with his orchestra of handpicked musicians that he keeps all for himself. Toward the end of the last movement the narrator and solo violinist call "Death" back to work. He leaves slowly and the concerto ends as it began without him.

-The Lament for the Balkans and The Life of Death were recorded live on June 11, 2002

Anthony Paul De Ritis - Conductor

Apostolos Paraskevas - Guitar
Del Lewis - Narrator
Anna H. E. Paraskeva - Voice
Brenda van der Merwe - Violin I
Kaveh Saidi - Violin II
Mark Berger - Viola
Guy Fishman - Cello
Irving Steinberg - Double bass

Audio Supervision/Editing for Garden, Etudes, Wishes,
and Daedalus by Anthony Di Bartolo
Cover Photo: John Canaris

Cover graphic detail: Michelangelo
The Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden (1509-10)

© Clear Note - 2005