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Contact: Tod Kollenbach at (860) 726-9740, x102 or email todk@dk-advertising.com
New Britain Symphony Orchestra Brings Connecticut Composer’s Family Story Full Circle
November 20 concert …To Freedom will feature works inspired by the story of Albert Hurwit’s family immigrating to New Britain in 1901, and a 2016 world premiere that appeals for world peace.
September 29, 2016 – NEW BRITAIN, CT – The New Britain Symphony Orchestra 2016-2017 season will open with the main stage concert …To Freedom on Sunday, November 20 at 3pm in Welte Hall at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain. The concert program includes music that celebrates the American experience, including works by composers John Williams and Anton Dvo?ák. Of significance to the Connecticut community and history, the highlight of the concert is the world premiere of Are There Still Bells by Hartford native and retired-physician-turned-composer Albert Hurwit. This new piece for orchestra and chorus was inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Christmas Bells. Also being performed is the Remembrance movement of Hurwit’s Symphony No 1, which won the 2009 American Composer Competition. Remembrance was inspired by the story of Hurwit’s family immigrating to New Britain in 1901.
Event: …To Freedom performed by the New Britain Symphony Orchestra
Date, Time & Place: Sunday, November 20, 2016, 3-5pm, Welte Hall, New Britain, CT
Program:
Liberty Fanfare
John Williams
Adagio for Strings
Samuel Barber
Adagio from Symphony No. 1, Remembrance
Albert Hurwit
Are There Still Bells World Premiere
Albert Hurwit
Symphony No. 9, From the New World
Antonín Dvorák
Ticket Information: General admission tickets are $20 for adults and free for children and college students (with ID). Tickets may be purchased at the door or in advance by contacting the Symphony Office by email at office@newbritainsymphony.org or by telephone at (860) 826-6344. Welte Hall is located at Central Connecticut State University, 1615 Stanley Street, New Britain, CT.
LEARN MORE ABOUT ALBERT HURWIT AND HIS WORKS BELOW. For interview requests and photos, please call (860) 523-7233 or email hurwit@comcast.net.
Symphony No. 1, Remembrance
The music of Remembrance was inspired by the history of composer Albert Hurwit’s family: Jews who for centuries were forced to move eastward across Europe to avoid persecution.
For 100 years, they settled in Russia but then were again terrorized by sword wielding Cossacks during the pogroms of the late 1800’s. Fearing for their lives, the younger members of the family were urged by their elders to flee. Left with no other choice, starting in 1901 they gathered up their children and immigrated to New Britain, Connecticut to find a better life, knowing full well they would never see their parents and grandparents again.
Are There Still Bells – World Premiere
Hurwit's new composition Are There Still Bells started as a short, original Christmas carol inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem "Christmas Bells." The composer has now extended the lyrics into a universal plea for world peace and expanded the music into an eleven-minute composition for chorus and chamber orchestra. The work features a segment in which the chorus sings "Peace on Earth" in Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and many modern languages spoken around the world.
About the Composer
Hurwit, a retired radiologist, was born in 1931 in Hartford, Connecticut, where he still lives. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Tufts Medical School. Except for three years of piano lessons when he was a child, the composer has had no formal musical training.
Hurwit began writing Symphony No. 1 in 2000. Movement III (Remembrance) was performed by the Hartford Symphony Orchestra in 2002.
The symphony was recorded by the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Michael Lankester, former Hartford Symphony Orchestra Music Director) and the CD was released in 2005.
The West Hartford Symphony Orchestra gave the full composition its world premiere in 2006. Hurwit was selected as the winner of the 2009 American Composer Competition. His piece, the Remembrance movement of his Symphony No.1, was chosen from a field of 124 entries, later narrowed to 15 finalists. In addition to winning a cash prize, it was performed by the Columbia (Maryland) Orchestra in December 2009.
The Laredo (Texas) Philharmonic Orchestra performed the full symphony in January 2010.
In 2013, Hurwit was honored at Lincoln Center when the nationally broadcast PBS special “LIFECASTERS” was given its world premiere. His 20-minute segment, entitled “The Gambling Man,” relates the remarkable story of a physician, who without formal musical training, worked for many years to create a well-received and national award-winning symphony.
More Background Information
(Excerpt from a Hartford Magazine article, December 2009)
Writing a critically acclaimed symphony is quite an accomplishment for any composer, let alone for a man with no formal musical training, save for a few years of piano lessons as a child.
While most composers begin at a very young age, study music for years, master at least one instrument and devote their lives to practicing their craft, Hurwit’s exposure to classical music was very limited.
He took piano lessons between the ages of 8 and 11, but only to satisfy his parents, not because he loved to practice. “I was lazy, but I was blessed with a good ear, and I bluffed my way through.”
He did love music, however. At 10, he worked in his father’s hardware store on Park Street in Hartford. In lieu of pay, he asked for some 78 RPM classical records that someone had dropped off at the store, “and I loved to listen to them.”
Once, his father took him to The Bushnell to hear a classical performance. He remembers that one particular section electrified him, and literally sent shocks up his spine. “I thought there was a spring sticking out of the seat behind me and actually turned to feel around for it. But it really was the thrill of the music.” To this day, he remembers almost exactly what seat he was sitting in.
At 16, he suffered an injury in a football game and while recuperating, began picking out increasingly complex songs on a piano. But he never imagined that a song he wrote during that period, composed by ear, would find its way into the fourth movement of his symphony more than 50 years later.
After high school, he was admitted to Harvard, hoping to major in music. The head of the music department interviewed him and liked the music he had composed. But before being accepted he had to pass a sight-reading test, which he totally failed. He was told to take piano lessons for one year and reapply. So, he became a doctor instead.
After graduating from Tufts Medical School in 1957 and four more years of post-graduate training in Boston, Hurwit moved back to Hartford where he launched a most successful career as a radiologist. Throughout those many years, he continued to dabble in music and occasionally entertained his family with impromptu performances. But now, “the music really started to radiate out of my soul,” Hurwit said.
By 1986, Hurwit had come to a fork in the road. He knew he couldn’t do justice to medicine and music at the same time – and the music wouldn’t wait any longer. Despite the great fulfillment and joy he received from his practice, he very reluctantly decided to retire. He was also keenly aware of the odds against him being able to succeed as a composer.
He had composed short pieces of music through the years, preserving them through a variety of methods – ranging from elementary music recording systems, to scribbles on paper, to a self-created numbering system that substituted numbers for musical notes.
He later replaced those simplistic systems with sophisticated computer software, synthesizers and recording equipment, creating a musical study on the second floor of his Hartford home. He spent long days in the study, teaching himself to use the technology that had come on the market at just the right time.
In 1997, Hurwit passed along a digital recording of a five-minute Adagio he had written to Michael Lankester, who was the music director of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. A few weeks later Lankester, whom Hurwit had never met, called Hurwit to his office and told him that the Adagio would be played by the full orchestra on two nights in the 2,800-seat auditorium of The Bushnell.
After the 1997 performance of the music, professionals and critics encouraged him to write a longer piece. Hurwit knew there was a symphony inside of him, waiting to get out.