This volume brings listeners up to date with Barbara Harbach’s symphonic output. It features symphonies No. 7-10, composed between 2014 and 2015. Harbach is an economical symphonist — the works are uniformly short, focused, and efficiently orchestrated. All four symphonies follow a straight-forward 3-movement fast-slow-fast structure. Yet with all these constraints, Harbach shows a great deal […]
Barbara Harbach
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Barbara Harbach: Chamber Music V continues find series
For me, the two works on this collection of Barbara Harbach’s chamber music I most enjoyed were the longest and the shortest. The longest was “The Birth, Life, and Death of Christ” for chamber orchestra. It was written as a musical accompaniment to Alice Guy’s 1906 silent film of the same name. The movie is a […]
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Harbach Orchestral Music — An Appealing Collection
Barabara Harbach is perhaps better known as a pianist and harpsichordist (and a champion of women composers), but this new release shows she’s equally accomplished as a composer — and not just as a composer for the keyboard. Venerations for Orchestra, is, according to Harbach, is a three-movement symphony celebrating “love, beauty, attractiveness and desire” — […]