Wesley Baldwin, associate professor of cello in the UT School of Music, has just released a new CD, featuring works for cello by American Composer Alan Shulman. The first commercial recording of its kind, it features some of Shulman’s most important compositions, including his great Cello Concerto –recorded live with the Hot Springs Music Festival Symphony Orchestra, his Suite for Solo Cello, his Kol Nidrei, and many smaller works for cello and piano.
Released worldwide this month on the Albany label, the recording is expected to substantially raise awareness of Shulman’s solo literature for cello.
For the works written for cello and piano, Baldwin is joined on this CD by Kevin Class, UT assistant professor of collaborative piano.
“I am so grateful for having had the chance to record with Professor Class,” Baldwin said. “He is, in every way, an ideal duo partner.”
This recording project was supported by the School of Music and UT’s Graduate School, through a faculty Professional Development Award.
Alan Shulman (1915-2002) was an American composer, cellist and arranger that studied cello and composition both at the Peabody Conservatory and the Juilliard School. His mentors included Felix Salmond and Emanuel Feuermann on cello and Bernard Wagenaar and Paul Hindemith in composition. He had a prominent career as chamber and orchestral musician in the New York area for decades. As a composer, he wrote for and had his music regularly performed by many of the most prominent soloists of the last century, including Jasha Heifetz, Benny Goodman, and cellist Leonard Rose. Shulman is known today primarily for his Theme and Variations for Viola and Orchestra, a staple of the solo viola literature.
With Baldwin’s new CD release, Shulman’s compositions for cello may now garner much needed attention.