Program Notes by Jay Stebley, edited by David A. Jaffe Franz Waxman, one of the many wonderful European musicians who came to the U.S. to escape the Nazis, will always be remembered for his scores to classic movies such as Rebecca, The Bride of Frankenstein, and Sunset Boulevard. Like fellow Hollywood composers Korngold, Zemlinsky and Schoenberg, Waxman was a gifted conservatory-trained composer who was held in high esteem by musicians of the day. Waxman wrote his Carmen Fantasie for John Garfield to "finger-sync" to Isaac Stern's playing in the movie Humoresque. Jasch Heifetz then asked Waxman to enlarge the Fantasy to a concert-piece for a radio broadcast. Waxman managed to create a spetacular and cohesive suite based on Bizet's highly-melodic opera. Befitting Stern's and Heifetz's remarkable abilities, the Carmen Fantasie has all the brilliance and fire of a Gypsy primas on a hot summer night. This fiendishly-difficult work still defies all but the masters of the instrument. In his Rhapsody No. 2 for violin and piano, Bartok uses the traditional sequence of the Gypsy czardas: a Lassu (slow), followed by a Friss (quick). This, along with the Rhapsody No. 1, are among his first attempts at modeling his music on Gypsy music, rather than on old-style folk music. La Gitana is one of dozens of occasional pieces by the legendary violinist, Fritz Kreisler. Remembered for his magnificent interpretations of the great classics, as well as for his beautiful tone and effortless technique, Kreisler was also an ardent admirer of the Gypsy musicians. Pable de Sarasate y Navascuez, one of the great violin virtuosi in the last half of the nineteenth century, is remembered for his astonishing technique, as well as for a handful of showpieces for violin. The most famous of these is Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs), written in Berlin in 1878. Here is the Gypsy temperament captured to perfection with a bittersweet slow melody, followed by a quick and virtuosic two-step czardas. A Basque by birth, Ravel was certainly influenced by the musicians of the manouche. He wrote what is essentially a pastiche on a traditional czardas for the Hungarian violinist Jelly Aranyi, who also inspired Bartok's Violin Sonata No. 1. At a party after a recital she had given in 1922, she entertained Ravel with a seemingly inexhaustible number of Hungarian songs and medleys. The sound never left his ears. Poring over the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies and Paganini's Caprices, he worked in fits and starts for two years, finally producing a startling piece, Tzigane, in which Helene Jourdan-Morhange "could find nothing of the essential Ravel," yet which remains a favorite of violinists (at least the ones who can handle it) and audiences everywhere. The opening is a nervous and brooding song for solo violin, full of spectacular pyrotechnics and excited outbursts. The quick czardas that follows a harp-like piano figure is lit by brilliant flashes of Ravelian light and childlike laughter. Pianist/composer Ilan Rechtman provides three original arrangements of Gypsy themes that together remind us of what the Gypsy musician does best: letting the soul free to soar. Variations on Dark Eyes (Occhi Chornye) is based on what is perhaps the best-known Russian Gypsy melody. Gypsy Nocturne, a lovely and moving Serbian Gypsy song, speaks of the Gypsies' love for their people and way of life. The text, shown below, suggests that a Gypsy would not trade his way of life for any money, because there is no man-made jewelry that is as lovely as the stars. Finally, Czardas Caprice contains not only strains of the Monti Czardas, but also, in its cadenze, references to all the other pieces on this recording.