Reviews of Steven Hesla's Recordings
MASLANKA: Piano, Winds, & Percussion Concertos
... The "new order" is apparent in Maslanka's more recent Second Concerto (2002), intended for performance by Mr Hesla with high school ensembles around the composer's home state of Montana. The suite-like work is in five movements. The first ('Dragonfly Delight') is a plaintive memorial to Harold Brodkey, AIDS victim and author of an article 'Dying: an Update' that appeared in the February 1994 issue of the New Yorker. II and III are imaginative fantasies on Bach chorales--a Maslanka obsession. IV documents a dream about a hot metal object that becomes a statue of St Francis, while the jolly finale was inspired by a story about Groucho Marx doing the Charleston on Hitler's grave when he visited Berlin in 1958....
Excerpted from the American Record Guide, Copyright 2006 Record Guide Productions