Commissioned by: Plymouth Music Series of MN, Phillip Brunelle, Artistic Director & Founder
Premiere: 5 February 1994 by James Earl Jones & the Plymouth Music Series, Minneapolis, MN under the direction of Phillip Brunelle.
Frederick's Fables is from a collection of the same name by Leo Lionni, whose stories are among the best-loved children's books. Each evokes the traditional feeling of Mother Goose or Grimm, while avoiding the troubling images common to those earlier tales. Lionni's fables typically use talkative animals to deliver a lesson about human nature, but with enough subtlety and humor to be appreciated equally by adults.
In setting these stories to music, my first goal was to preserve the comfortable, innocent quality of the stories rather than impose my own agenda on them. The music recalls the lush colors and textures of Lionni's illustrations, and empathizes with each of the character's situations like a child having the book read to her for the first time. Achieving this theatrical approach requires a very close interaction between the text and the music, so there are fewer long musical interludes than in some well-known works for narrator and orchestra and many sections where the music reacts to the narration quite closely.
Written: 1993
Instrumentation:
narrator;
2(1) 2(1) 22; 2220; timp, 2 perc, hp; stgs
Performance Highlights:
Philadelphia,
Baltimore, Houston, Springfield MA, & Washington DC
Audio Samples: Clip
one, Clip
two 
Publisher: Subito Music Corporation
"The
charm of the two tales... carried the day, and [narrator James Earl] Jones
reveled in his part, showing a puckish side of his personality not often evident
in his film roles. The score was painted in broad strokes, underlining the
narration but not detailing every point. Abels deft orchestration matched
each change of mood and Jones' spoken words carried clearly..."
-- Saint Paul Poineer Press
"These
enchanting tone poems, which mingled wit and harmonic ingenuity with dramatic
savvy and scoring mastery, were ideal family fare. Lionni's lively language
was mirrored in Abels' orchestration in very exciting, evocative ways, reflecting
the action and emotion in the charming tales. In adidtion to his obvious talents
as composer and orchestrator, Abels was articulate in introducing and explaining
his work. Abels' reading of Lionni's stories provided an immediacy and a comforting
"fireside" dimension to the "Fables." Yet his music, though closely tied to
the texts, was organically whole enough to suggest that it might stand quite
well on its own."
-- Springfield (MA) Union-News
Abels
is an imaginative orchestrator with a gift for melody."
--
Minneapolis Star Tribune
