Product Overview
Although the word Anishinaabeg, best translated as “those whence descended” or the “noble people,” refers to many of the numerous Algonquin indigenous peoples of North America, it is here used specifically in reference to the Ojibwe of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It was here that the composer spent many summers and it was those memories that allowed the Anishinaabeg Rhapsody to come into being.
This particular composition is a symphonic tone poem which, unlike the majority of orchestral music which is able to stand alone as pure musical thought, evokes historic, pictorial or literary subject matter. In other words, the composer paints images and thoughts through sound.
The Anishinaabeg Rhapsody, which is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets in Bb, 2 bassoons, 4 horns in F, 2 trumpets in C, 2 trombones, tuba, timpani, tam tam, bass drum, glockenspiel, harp and strings, conjures images of the wind gently blowing through the pines, the purling of meandering streams, the rippling and waving of grasslands, the thunderous waterfalls crashing hundreds of feet over cliffs into Lake
Superior; in short, it portrays Nature itself.
It was written and dedicated to the composers father, Robert P Piotrowski, in honor of his 100th birthday.
