Lowell Liebermann Lowell Liebermann (born February 22, 1961 in New York City) is an American composer, pianist and conductor. Life and career At the age of sixteen, Liebermann performed at Carnegie Hall, playing his Piano Sonata, op. 1. He studied at the Juilliar ...

’s Symphony No. 2, Op. 67 (1999) is a

symphony A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning com ...

for large orchestra and

SATB SATB is an initialism that describes the scoring of compositions for choirs, and also choirs (or consorts) of instruments. The initials are for the voice types: S for soprano, A for alto, T for tenor and B for bass. Choral music Four-part harm ...

chorus, with texts adapted from the poetry of

Walt Whitman Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among t ...

. It is about 40 minutes long, and arranged into four movements to be played without a break. It was commissioned by Ford Lacy and Cece Smith for the

Dallas Symphony Orchestra The Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO) is an American orchestra based in Dallas, Texas. Its principal performing venue is the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in the Arts District of downtown Dallas. History The orchestra traces its origins to a ...

and Chorus’ centennial celebration. The work was premiered in 2000, with

Andrew Litton Andrew Litton (born May 16, 1959, New York City) is an American orchestral conductor. Litton is a graduate of The Fieldston School. He studied piano with Nadia Reisenberg and conducting with Sixten Ehrling at the Juilliard School of Music in New ...

conducting the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. The Second Symphony was very favorably received at its premiere, with TIME describing it as, “Now brazen and glittering, now radiantly visionary...the work of a composer unafraid of grand gestures and openhearted lyricism.” However, the symphony has since received harsh criticism due to its exceptionally free embrace of

tonality Tonality is the arrangement of pitches and/or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, attractions and directionality. In this hierarchy, the single pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is call ...

and its distinctly optimistic outlook. Scott Cantrell in particular has denounced the Second Symphony as "foolhardy" in the "cynical" environment of today.Kenaston, Karen S. "An Approach to the Critical Evaluation of Settings of the Poetry of Walt Whitman: Lowell Liebermann's ''Symphony No. 2''," pages 112-113. University of North Texas, 2003. The Second Symphony was recorded in 2000 on the Delos International label with Andrew Litton conducting the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

Notes

Compositions by Lowell Liebermann 1999 compositions

Liebermann Lieberman, Liebermann, or Liberman are names deriving from ''Lieb'', a German and Jewish (Ashkenazic) nickname for a person from the German ''lieb'' or Yiddish ''lib'', meaning 'dear, beloved'.Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges, ''A Dictionary of Surn ...

Musical settings of poems by Walt Whitman {{symphony-stub