Composer, pianist and educator George Walker achieved an important series of African American “firsts” in his long career: A graduate of Oberlin College Conservatory, the Curtis Institute, Doctor of Musical Arts from Eastman – and the first black composer to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He was the first black instrumentalist to appear with the Philadelphia Orchestra, playing Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3, and the first African American composer to receive a Pulitzer Prize (1996). His autobiography, Reminiscences of an American Composer and Pianist, was published in 2009.

Walker has spent most of his professional life teaching at music departments around the country, including Smith College, Colorado University, Rutgers University and the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University; he also toured extensively as pianist in Europe.

Walker was an unashamed neo-romantic, having lived for nearly a century that saw countless developments in musical style from Schoenberg to Cage – and back. He was a prolific composer, whose works are reminiscent of those of Samuel Barber. The Lyric for Strings originated from the second movement of Walker’s String Quartet No. 1, composed in 1945. In a certain sense, it is a doppelgänger of Barber’s Adagio for Strings, which was also extracted from a string quartet. Both works are tonal and spin out a single melody in free variation. 

Program notes by:
Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn
www.wordprosmusic.com