Echoes of Silence

Echoes of Silence was commissioned by the Albany Symphony Orchestra for the American Music Festival of 2012 as part of the Capitol Region Heritage Commissions project. The work takes as its inspirations the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in Albany, NY, and the Albany Symphony Orchestra. The Troy Savings Bank was founded in 1823 and was one of the more important music halls in early-twentieth-century America. It was honored with performances by many world-renowned artists, such as Vladimir Horowitz, Yehudi Menuhin, and Arthur Rubinstein. The title, Echoes of Silence, refers to the echoes of these and other artists? great performances, which one might imagine still resonate in the hall. If the hall had a voice, it would also sing of the all the wonderful masterpieces that were performed there in the past. The main idea of this piece is to reflect the sounds that were absorbed by the walls of this concert hall during the past century of live performance. Some of the main pitch materials are derived from Alexander Borodin?s Symphony No. 2, a masterpiece that was composed in 1823, the same year as the founding of the Troy Savings Bank. The main thematic materials of Echoes of Silence are developed from many small musical motifs found in Borodin?s symphony. Another source of material is Igor Stravinsky?s Symphony of Palms, composed in 1930, the year in which the Albany Symphony Orchestra was founded. These ?borrowed? materials are used as the main elements in maintaining the structural unity of Echoes of Silence. Because this concert hall has absorbed so much wonderful music from so many great performances, we can imagine even the smallest corner of the hall filling its silence with echoes.