Program Notes

Symphony for Strings and Percussion was originally written in 1985 and premiered by the Escher String Quartet at the Country Club Christian Church. Kenneth LaFave, music critic for the Kansas City Star, gave the piece a glowing review.

In 2019, Dana revisited the composition enlarging the score.

The Scherzo is an energetic playful piece as Scherzo suggests. When I think about this piece, a visual image comes to mind – George Caleb Bingham’s Little Red Riding Hood. Bingham’s painting has always been an inspiration for me. His painting are dignified, noble and modest at the same time.

The final movement Allegrissimo is raucous with an up beat romantic whirlwind of sound. Sleigh bells in music is always refreshing. Thank you Gustav. Sweeping melodic lines surge and build to an exciting climax.

About the Dana Mengel

Sharing these audio files are a way to introduce conductors and others to the music with the hope it will be publicly performed - music scores and parts are available.

As a composer, he shares his gift of music.

Why Dana Mengel music?

Dana has born to a musical household. His mother Beatrice (Bea) was a prolific piano teacher who had over 90 students taking weekly lessons. The music of Chopin, Bach, Brahms, Beethoven and others filled the house.

Dana’s older brother Phil was in the next door bedroom. Phil was a prodigy violin player and avid classical music lover whose music swelled through Dana’s room. Music became Dana’s true first language.

When 9 years old, Dana looked at Phil’s violin setting on Bea’s piano. Dana told himself: “I can play that.”
His mother immediately enrolled Dana in violin lessons at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music under the strict disciplined teaching of Dorothy Rendina.

After his first lesson, another brother Leslie recalls Rendina remarking: “This scares me. I can have Dana playing the Mendelssohn violin concerto in a year.”
One year later, Dana was playing in Kansas City Youth Training orchestra and was a featured soloist playing Vivaldi’s Concerto in A Minor.

At 11, Dana was the featured soloist performing Mozart’s Violin Concerto #4 in the Independence Symphony. At 12, he played Mendelssohn’s Immortal E Minor Concerto for his music class at Bridger Junior High. The teacher considered Dana a “genius”; Dana thought himself another stupid kid.

At this point, Dana began composing music with the assistance his brother Phil and his mother. During the evening, Dana would turn out the lights in his room and play Phil’s classical records especially Brahman’s symphonies conducting the pieces as a great maestro while dancing to the enthralling sound.

He began contemplating composing as a potential career.

At 15, Dana talked to his UMKC composition teachers. They discouraged him from composing encouraging him become a violinist. The composition department focused on 20th century music. Dana left the conservatory and began teaching music at his parent’s home. When not teaching students, he composed.

Other UMKC teachers admired Dana’s vision and perseverance. He studied music theory, harmony and counterpoint with Dr. John Swaney who loved Dana’s melodies. He was introduced to Cynthia Siebert, founder of the Friends of Chamber. She in turn introduced Dana to the famed composer and music critic Virgil Thomson who grew up in Kansas City.

Dana asked Thomson what advice he would give to a budding composer. His one world response was: “Compose.”

Dana fervently began composing music while freelancing as a violinist and teaching to support himself. In 1987 he married his wife Tammy and settled in Independence.

In 1990, one of his sacred choral pieces was published. More soon followed.
Over the next 20 years Dana had roughly 1,000 anthems published while receiving ASCAP awards each year.

Then in 2011, Dana return to his composing roots creating new pieces string orchestra and percussion. 

And these are the pieces now being shared publicly. 

Brent Schondelmeyer - April 2020