Four American Composer - Daniels - Gideon - Smith - Talma

Quartet For Strings By Julia Smith

Four American Composers
Mabel Daniels - Miriam Gideon - Julia Smith - Louise Talma
The National Federation Of Music Clubs under the Ford Foundation Recording-Publication Program
Recorded by David Jones
Desto Records DC7117

Performed by:
Evelyn Mandac - Soprano
Beveridge Webster - Piano
Kohon String Quartet (Harold Kohon - violin, Isadora Kohon - violin, Eugenie Degel, viola, W. Ted Doyle - cello)

Fortunato Arido - cello
Fritz Jahoda - piano
Karl Kramer - flute
Donald McCord - bassoon
Joesph Rabbay - clarinet
Karl Kraber - flute
Ronald Roseman - oboe

From the back cover:

Miriam Gideon has written extensively in all media and has been performed by leading chamber groups, orchestras and soloists in the United States, Europe and South America. She is the recipient of an award from the National Federation of Music Clubs for her contributions to symphonic music. She is on the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Manhattan School Of Music.

Julia Smith is a native of Denton, Texas where she attended North Texas State University. At the Juilliard School she held a Composition Fellowship with Rubin Goldmark and Frederick Jacobi and studied piano with Carl Friedberg and Lonny Epstein. Her musical compositions include works for orchestra, five operas (all performed), piano, solo, chamber music, band, vocal and educational works. Her compositions have been performed by leading American orchestras and by orchestras in Latin America and Europe.

Louise Talma is Professor of Music at Hunter College of the City University of New York. She is the first woman to receive two Guggenheim Fellowships and the Sibelius Medal awarded to her in London. She has composed in all forms for orchestra, solo, a piano concerto and an opera "The Alcestiad" (libretto by Thornton Wilder) which was produced in 1962 at Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, where it received eight performances.

After a sensation as Liu opposite Birgit Nilsson's "Turandot," Evelyn Mandac was immediately re-engaged for the 1971 season by the Seattle Opera Association. Her recent accomplishments have been a debut with the San Francisco Opera, two recordings with the Boston and Philadelphia Symphonies, Seiji Ozawa and Eugene Ormandy conducting and featured soloist with orchestra of Pittsburgh, Dallas, Boston, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, among others. She will be seen on national network coverage as Lisa in Tschaikowsky's "Queen of Spades."

Born in Pittsburgh, Beveridge Webster, who is universally acclaimed, studied under Isidor Philipp at the Paris Conservatoire, where he was the first American ever to win first prize in piano, and with Nadia Boulanger at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, where he also won first prize in piano. He has played with the major American orchestras under such eminent conductors as Koussevitzky, Rodzinski, Golschmann and Stravinsky and has given recitals in all the leading cities, including several series at New York's Town Hall with programs ranging from Bach and Beetoven to Bartok and Schoenberg. Recently, he recorded for Complete Piano Work by Claude Debussy for Desto Records – "a superb achievement."