Presenting the debut CD of Genetic Harps, a dynamic mother-daughter duo from two of North America’s finest orchestras.Gretchen Van Hoesen and Heidi Van Hoesen Gorton hold principal harp chairs in the Pittsburgh & Toronto Symphonies respectively. Performing with innovative programming, virtuosity, and musicality, their repertoire spans many centuries and styles. Genetic Harps specializes in finding and arranging new and old works for harp duo and has concertized with orchestras in concertos for two harps. Genetic Harps made its debut in 1993 playing for Heidi’s second grade class at East Hills Elementary School in Pittsburgh. Since then they have played extensively throughout Pennsylvania and across the United States.Genetic Harps CD Program NotesAlborada del gracioso ("Morning Song of the Jester") Is from the solo piano suite, Miroirs, by French composer Maurice Ravel. Alborada del gracios was orchestrated by Ravel himself and has become one of his most popular works. This Spanish tour de force, heard here in an arrangement by Christophe Saunière, is melodious as well as rhythmically and musically complicated.Debussy composed the well-known Petite Suite for piano four hands in the 1880's. It was arranged for chamber orchestra by his friend, Henri Busser, a younger composer/conductor. Debussy first performed Petite Suite on February 2, 1889 in collaboration with the pianist-publisher Jacques Durand. The work’s simple lyricism contrasts with much of the composer's later music, which was marked by trend-setting harmonies and color. This arrangement for two harps was done by Gretchen Van Hoesen especially for Genetic Harps and this CD.Reynaldo Hahn was born in Caracas, Venezuela and moved to Paris with his family at the age of three. He is known primarily as a composer of songs, but was also an important music critic, theater director, and salon singer. Three Preludes on Irish Airs was composed for two pianos and arranged for two harps by Gretchen Van Hoesen.Czech-born Jan Ladislav Dussek was an important piano virtuoso and extremely popular composer in the late 1700’s. He toured extensively in Germany, England, Holland, Russia, and France, including at the court of Marie Antoinette. Dussek was noted for a singing, legato tone on the piano due to sustaining pedals, unusual for the time. He was the first soloist to turn the instrument sideways to the audience with the piano lid open to reflect sound outward. The Duettinos were originally published around 1802 for harp and pianoforte.Flutist/composer/pianist/harpist Gary Schocker has written sonatas and chamber music for most orchestral instruments as well as several successful ASCAP award winning musicals. He is on the faculty at NYU, and his music is being performed and recorded widely. The charming Better Than One for two harps was written in 2014. Dmitri Shostakovich, iconic 20th century Russian composer, wrote this Waltz in 1954 as part an East German documentary film, Song of the Great Rivers. No trace of the film or the music currently exists. Gretchen Van Hoesen has arranged Waltz, Op. 95 for two harps from the two piano version.Stephanie Curcio, a harpist, composer, and teacher from New Hampshire, began harp lessons with Lucile Lawrence and later coached with Carlos Salzedo both privately and at the Camden Harp Colony. She has multiple degrees in music (harp and piano) as well as in psychology (human learning). Mischief is a fun example of her prolific idiomatic writing for the harp.Clair de Lune is the third and most famous movement of Suite Bergamasque. Although Debussy wrote the piece in 1890 at the age of 25, it was not published until 1905. By that time it had been partially re-written as well as re-titled. The original was called Promenade Sentimentale, and the new title for the movement came from a Paul Verlaine poem by the same name meaning “moonlight.” John Escosa, harpist and former President of the American Harp Society, did this wonderful arrangement for two harps.Manuel de Falla, one of the most important Spanish musicians of the 20th century, spent part of his career in Paris and Argentina. He composed for many mediums but is perhaps best known for his theater pieces, The Three-Cornered Hat, El amor brujo, and La vida breve, from which the Spanish Dance No. 1 is taken. This arrangement for two harps is by Patty Masri-Fletcher, currently Principal Harpist of the Detroit Symphony. Heidi Van Hoesen Gorton plays castanets and harp simultaneously (!) in this recording.French composer and teacher Darius Milhaud was a member of the group, Les Six, and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. For more than twenty years he alternated years teaching at Mills College in Oakland, CA and the Paris Conservatoire. Early in his career Milhaud spent some time in Brazil and composed works influenced by that country’s popular music, including Scaramouche, a suite for two pianos. The two harpists play all four harp parts of the movement Brazileira in this arrangement by Gretchen Van Hoesen. GRETCHEN VAN HOESEN has been Principal Harpist of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra since 1977 and has appeared as soloist with the orchestra on subscription concerts and on tour under conductors André Previn, Lorin Maazel, James Conlon, Zdeněk Mácal, Sergiu Comissiona, Pinchas Zukerman and Manfred Honeck. She has been active in the performance of new music, giving the New York and Pittsburgh premieres of Alberto Ginastera’s Harp Concerto, the Pittsburgh premiere of Witold Lutoslawski’s Double Concerto for Oboe, Harp and Chamber Orchestra with her husband, former Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Co-Principal Oboist James Gorton, the United States premiere of Suite Concertante for Solo Harp and Orchestra by Manuel Moreno-Buendia in San Antonio, Texas, the North American premiere of Concert Piece, Op. 65 for Oboe/English Horn, Two Harps and Orchestra by Eugene Goossens, and the world premiere of Sir André Previn’s Concerto for Harp. Gretchen Van Hoesen has concertized all over the world and was selected to perform in the Super World Orchestra in Japan, an ensemble made up of key musicians from around the globe. She has been a featured soloist at numerous American Harp Society National Conferences, has served as a judge for National Competitions of the American Harp Society and as President of the organization’s Pittsburgh Chapter. Ms. Van Hoesen served as a coach for the 2015 National Youth Orchestra of the US and is the inaugural Harp Forum Editor for the American String Teacher and harp master class clinician at the ASTA National Conference in 2016.Gretchen Van Hoesen graduated from the Juilliard School, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in harp as a scholarship student of Marcel Grandjany and Susann McDonald. She is also a graduate of the Eastman School of Music Preparatory Department with highest honors in piano and harp, where she was a student of Eileen Malone. Ms. Van Hoesen is a faculty member of Carnegie Mellon and Duquesne universities and also maintains a private teaching studio at her home in Pittsburgh. Her students are regular winners in local, state, and national competitions.Recently hailed by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette as a performer who plays “with a flair that we are coming to know well”, Heidi Van Hoesen Gorton has been described as one of the most outstanding solo, chamber and orchestral musicians of her generation. She has been presented in solo recitals everywhere from New York to Los Angeles, Vancouver to Vienna. She is currently Principal Harp with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and has worked with maestros Manfred Honeck, Valery Gergiev, Sir Andrew Davis, Marek Janowski, Yan Pascal Tortelier, Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos, Gianandrea Noseda and James Levine. Ms. Van Hoesen Gorton has been the featured soloist with several orchestras and music festivals including the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Sun Valley Summer Symphony, the Valdosta Symphony and the Richardson Symphony. She earned two degrees in harp performance from the The Juilliard School of Music under the tutelage of Nancy Allen, and has studied with Gretchen Van Hoesen and Elizabeth Fontan-Binoche. Actively competing in domestic and international competitions, she has won many awards including first place in the Young Professional Division of the American Harp Society (AHS) National Competition in June of 2009. Sought after as a teacher, Ms. Van Hoesen Gorton has presented master-classes in Los Angeles (Colburn & University of Southern California), Pittsburgh (Carnegie Mellon University), New Orleans (Tulane University), Toronto (University of Toronto), Charlotte, Denver, San Francisco, Syracuse, and Milwaukee.