|| Burn-on-demand CDs of this CRi reissue are available at our website: www.newworldrecords.org/products/wallingford-riegger ||

The history of American music abounds with "forgotten men," but Wallingford Riegger seems more forgotten than most. Or, to put it another way, it is difficult to-find a figure of comparable importance who has been so unfairly neglected in recent years.

When Riegger died, after an unspeakably absurd accident near his home on Manhattan's Upper West Side, his passing was reported on the front page of the New York Times and he was rightly hailed as one of the great American Modernists. But performances of Riegger's music have been rare in the following decades: even his centennial year (in which every composer's stock rises) came and went with barely a notice.

It is to be hoped, then that this CRI compact disc reissue will help introduce a generation of composers, musicians, and listeners to Riegger's work; those who already know and love these knotty, powerful and original compositions now have the opportunity to hear them in digitally remastered sound.

One fact is paramount: a crucial figure in American music is again represented in the recording catalogue, his work easily available to all. Our collective understanding of our musical history cannot but be enhanced.

Elliott Carter, whose music resembles Riegger's in its uncompromising intensity, paid tribute to the older man in an article for the 1952 Bulletin of the American Composers Alliance. "Riegger has followed the dictates of his own personality and musical instinct unobtrusively for years," he wrote, without caring whether he was or was not in step with the fashions of the time, or, apparently, whether he would become known or his music performed."

"While Riegger has been quietly writing music, a host of aggressive younger composers has appeared, most of them more impatient than he to gain acclaim," Carter continued. "So he was generally overlooked in favor of composers more determined and skillful about personal promotion. However, a number of still younger musicians, feeling the need for a change from points of view prevalent in the 1930s have recently found him out and begun to take his music with the seriousness it deserves."