Ea a OO Marimba When... Leigh Howard Stevens plays the great Albums for the Young Schomann Children's Commer (14:50) Album for the Youre. Op. 6§ 1 | iggy 7] poctor Gradus ad Parmassom(2:49) CF) rremamine Some (81 [7] serenade forthe Doll (3:06) C5) soldier's March «98 65) the Snow is Dancing (3:13) 2) The Wid Rider (20) [2 The tthe Shepherd (2:27) 22 mech apres (200) 5) Goltiwogg’s Cakewalk (2:50) Max Sweet Min (1.54) Roandeday (245 key es Album for the Young, Op. 39 (16:56) No. 20 (untitded) (21) £2) song of the Lark (:57) Remembrance (2:29) C7 morning (1:56) No. 30 (untied) (5:15) [2] the Hobby Horse (57) Khachaturian (7) itatian Song (:48) ‘The Adventures of Ivan (11:14) 10] German Song (1:11) C2 dnan sings (143) C7) watt (1:28) Bl nan can Go out teats (45) £77] neapotitan Dance-Song (1:20) BI) pan stu 02) z Mazurka (1:41) C2] ivan Goes to a Pary (22>) ea $1] van and Natasha (1:25) The New Doll (:43) E2) nan is Very Busy (1:39) (5) nursery Tale (:57) [5] sweet Dreams (1:32) Toral Playing Time: 61:00“The world’s greatest classical marimbist.. Stevens has revolutionized the playing of the instrument. In his hands, che marimba has gone from being a useful but limited foot soldier in the percussion battery to a beguiling melodic instrument. Marimba when...we were young? he marimba is one of the oldest and one of the newest musical instruments. While the first concerto for marimba and orchestra wasn't composed until the mid-1930s, the marimba dates back thousands of years and may actually be the oldest musical instrument known to man. A seven note lithophone, or “stone marimba’ was discovered in Vietnam in 1949 by French pre-historian Georges Con- dominas. It is estimated to be 5,000 years old, which makes it the oldest known musical instrument specimen in the world. The bars of this marimba-like inscrument, which range from 40 to 26 inches in length, were perfectly tuned to a Javanese pentatonic scale by the deliberate chipping and flaking of some ancient instrument maker. Similar inseru- ments have also been found in the burial chambers of Egypt, and in other parts of Africa. The wooden variety of this family of instru- ments appears to be indigenous to many prim- itive cultures in Asia and Africa. The masimba is differentiated from the xylophone-like inscruments by the addition of a separate acoustic amplifier for cach note. The idea of adding an identically tuned hollowed our gourd or other veisel to amplify and enrich cach tone bar of the instrument was a stroke of genius of some unidentified primitive mind. It appears that the marimba came to Central and South America with slave trade, bypassing Europe until North Americans brought the instrument to the Continent sometime in the second decade of the 20ch century. (The xylo- phone, essentially a marimba without res- onators, tuned to have a short, brilliant tone, had a separate development in Europe, being played by roving Gypsy musicians .) The cvolution of the marimba from a lap- held, crudely uuned instrument of a few notes to today’s 9-foot long, five-octave concert marimba came about strictly in the Americas. The change from one diatonic to two chro- matic rows of tone-bars, arranged like a piano, occurred about 1880. The perfection of the tuning of the bars, the addition of metal tubu- lar resonators for greater volume, and thetunable resonators for weather tI accomplished in North he century the concept 0 compensation were al ‘America. By the cura of d frarimba was poised co make its Presence Frown to the wor'd ac large, and its North “American debut was scheduled for the Pan- ‘american Exposition in Buffalo in 1901. Bur history intervened: on that very day in that very city, President McKinley was assassinated, and the concert was canceled. ‘The instru- ment’ eventual impact, however, was resound- ing in 1933, one hundred marimbas were assembled for a concert at the Century of ress Exhibition in Chicago (performing, among other things, an arrangement of Dvo- rak’s New World Symphony), and two years later the 100-member International Marimba Symphony Orchestra toured Europe and per- formed at Carnegie Hall. Like any new arrival on the serious music scene, the marimba was an instrument in search of repertoire, One of the first com- posers to take up the challenge was the Ameri- can, Paul Creston, who wrote a marimba concerto in 1935; Darius Milhaud wrote a concerto for marimba and vibraphone in 1947, and Robert Kurka a marimba concerto in the late 1950s. Among the most recent of the genre is the concerto by Raymond Helble, commissioned and perform : ed Howard Stevens in 198) of oe 1 Denver Symphony. Even as composers are stimulated ra a “new” instrument by the emereee merge twoso player, another rich nee lies in transcription, and Stevens = this gold mine with superb results on the present : of avi. Pettory Plumbed The works . piano literature, are a case in point te and the artist makes the following commen the process: S about isk, all transcription “Something should be said atthe ourcer the difference between arrangemen sage scriptions. The very word ‘ranseripan implies faithfulness to the original nave fey asecne| Gani iee eet have been taken with the original mater These changes can take many forms nesk acondensation, an addition of new meeenzt See taeencn ieee album, none of these changes has taken ols In most cases, nothing at all has been denen the original; the same exact notes that would. be played on the piano are merely tranceribed for the marimba. Most of the changes that have been made are due to the different rang of marimba and piano: a few extremely high