Steven De Groote
Works By: Hugh Aitken, Aaron Copland, Walter Piston, Paul Schoenfield, Gunther Schuller
Perhaps from the habit of our nineteenth-century parlor-music tradition, perhaps from the frustration of trying to get orchestral works performed, American composers seem to have remained more active in the genre of the chamber sonata than their European counterparts. In America, the genre has received particular attention from composers of a classical or neoclassical bent, as the works on this recording, varied as they are in style and technique, bear out.
In 1945, when he wrote the Sonatina, W…