CBC Records is proud to announce Ovation: Volume 2, the next set of the multi-volume project documenting the emergence of a generation of pioneering professional composers that have established Canada’s place on the world’s musical map. This distinctly Canadian music is of the highest order but has not had the audiences nor the attention it deserves.

Each disc in this and subsequent 5 CD sets, is dedicated to a single composer; each collects in one convenient place that composer’s most accessible and representative works. Included in this second volume is the music of Violet Archer, known not only as one of Canada’s most creative composers, but also as one of the country’s most respected educators. The disc presents a snapshot of some forty years of composition beginning with her 1944 Sonata for Flute, Clarinet and Piano to the Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello of 1981.

Montreal-born Jean Papineau-Couture was one of the fathers of contemporary music in Canada. His music demonstrates a deep interest in colourful sonorities with great metric freedom and rhythmic force. The same rhythmic force is evident in the opening track on the disc celebrating the music of Oskar Morawetz, whose Carnival Overture is joyful, full of vitality and wonderfully orchestrated. The disc also explores other moods and ensemble sizes in a broader presentation of his music.

Malcolm Forsyth, honoured as Canadian Composer of the Year in 1989, has earned international recognition as one of Canada’s leading composers. Orchestral music and works for brass head the list of Forsyth’s music which also includes works for strings, woodwinds, chorus, voice and piano.

Rounding out Ovation: Volume 2 is the music of internationally acclaimed composer R. Murray Schafer. His achievements are many, not only as a composer, but as an educator, environmentalist, literary scholar, visual artist and provocateur. His diversity of interests is reflected in the enormous range and depth of his works of which only a handful can be presented here.

CD 1:

VIOLET ARCHER

1-4. Sonata for Flute, Clarinet & Piano

5-7. Landscapes

8-11. Four Songs

12-21. Ten Folksongs for Four Hands

22-24. Divertimento for Saxophone Quartet

25-28. Prairie Profiles

29. Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello

CD 2:

OSKAR MORAWETZ

1. Carnival Overture

2. Divertimento for Strings

3-5. Three Songs

6-9. Four Contrasting Moods

10-12. Sonata for Oboe and Piano

13. Overture to a Fairy Tale

CD 3:

JEAN PAPINEAU-COUTURE

1-5. Suite pour piano

6-8. Trois Caprices

9-12. Quatuor a cordes no 2

13. Départ

14. Idée

15. Trio

CD 4:

MALCOLM FORSYTH

1. Jubilee Overture

2-4. Three Métis Songs from Saskatchewan

5-8. Fanfare and Three Masquerades

9. The Kora Dances

10-12. Three Love Poems of John Donne

13-14. Sketches from Natal

CD 5:

R. MURRAY SCHAFER

1-3. Concerto for Harpsichord and Eight Wind Instruments

4. In Memoriam Alberto Guerrero

5. Son of Heldenleben

6. Epitaph for Moonlight

7. East

8. Dream Rainbow Dream Thunder