"The performance on this disc by John Salmon is of the highest caliber. He plays beautifully, both with precision and expertise, and pulls the most out of each note. His facility at the keyboard is wonderful. If a better performance of these works can be done, I would be amazed... this disc is truly excellent. The music is a joy. The performance is exquisite. Very highly recommended."
-- Patrick Gary, www.musicweb.uk.net

"This fine disc of [Brubeck's] more formal piano pieces was born from long years of dedication by American pianist John Salmon...Throughout the disc, Salmon plays with rhythmic strength and remarkable digital clarity."
-- Bradley Bambarger, Gramophone

Elliott Carter makes his Naxos début with an ear-catching programme

It’s very good news that Naxos has added Elliott Carter to its American Classics series, beginning with a strong programme of rarely heard pieces, and juxtaposing Carter in early populist vein with Carter the 1960s’ avant-gardist in full cry.

The wartime muscularity of the Symphony No 1 (completed in 1942 but heard here in its 1954 revision) is clearest in passages which echo, or anticipate, Copland’s more extrovert orchestral scores of the same period. But that triumphalist spirit is most productively on show in Carter’s splendidly brash Holiday Overture (1944). The Symphony as a whole is less straightforward, more varied in style and character, and the slow movement in particular moves from hymnic meditation into more ambiguous regions of expression in a manner that might not be completely convincing. It is certainly distinctive, however, and fits well with the balance between restraint and exuberance that typifies the work as a whole.

By the mid-1960s, when the Piano Concerto was composed, Carter’s language had shed its tonal roots, and his forms were far more distant from those traditions that are still traceable in the Symphony. Textures are immensely elaborate, yet the music is uninhibitedly dramatic, depicting all kinds of conflicts and attempted reconciliations while subjecting the basic concept of the concerto to penetrating critical scrutiny.

The power of the drama emerging from the constantly fluctuating confrontations between soloist, main orchestra, and a mediating concertino-group of seven players is rather muted in this recording, which (I suspect) is not the result of a preparatory series of public performances. Ursula Oppens, with Michael Gielen, managed to convey rather more of the music’s inherent fire and tumult. But Mark Wait shows a finely gauged technical command, and although Kenneth Schermerhorn and his Nashville players are occasionally underpowered and inclined to play safe, the jubilant conclusion of the Holiday Overture sweeps any interpretative reservations aside. With the symphony not otherwise available, this disc is a thoroughly recommendable addition to the Naxos American canon.

-- Arnold Whittall, Gramophone [3/2004]

One of America' finest and most widely recognized composers, John Corigliano has won several Grammy Awards, the Pulitzer Prize and dozens of other honors. His hauntingly beautiful Chaconne and virtuosic the Red Violin Caprices, both based on his AC.

This is the third major-label monograph of diverse music of Michael Daugherty (b. 1954), the University of Michigan faculty member known for his engagement with pop-culture subject matter. The first, of his Superman-inspired Metropolis Symphony and other works, made a splash. Another brought us a series of sound-gags, including the bassoon concerto Dead Elvis. There’s also a release of his opera Jackie O and scattered works on numerous compilations, as well as a symphonic band version of UFO and other works on the Klavier label. This is his first Naxos release, part of the terrific “American Classics” series.

Philadelphia Stories, considered by the composer his Third Symphony, was commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra, which premiered it under David Zinman in 2001. The work is in three movements, as much a triptych of tone poems as an abstract symphony—an urban La mer. The titles of the movements indicate the gist: “Sundown on South Street,” “Tell-Tale Harp,” “Bells for Stokowski.” The piece is just under half-an-hour long, each of the first two movements being about seven-and-a-half minutes and the third about 14.

If you know anything of Daugherty’s music, much of what’s here won’t surprise you for the most part. Daugherty frequently draws on pop and kitsch music archetypes in building up evocative larger forms. I can’t pin down any specific paraphrases in the first movement, but the several different kinds of orchestral pop, jazz, and Latin jazz conjure the atmosphere of Philly’s South Street, a byway of the musical night life where Daugherty himself had performed jazz and experimental music. The movement is a fantasia for two solo harps and orchestra, the title referring to The Tell-Tale Heart, which Edgar Allan Poe wrote in Philadelphia. Daugherty likens the somewhat gas-lit mood of the movement to Poe’s lyric poetry. The big shadow to go along with Stokowski’s in the last movement is Bach’s, alluding of course to the conductor’s famous orchestral transcriptions of Bach’s music. Daugherty begins the movement with a solo violin theme (arguably in the style of Bach), which serves as a basis for wide-ranging variations, Daugherty writes, “in my own musical language.”

The second work, UFO (1999), is a five-movement concerto for percussion and orchestra, written for soloist Evelyn Glennie and the National Symphony and conducted at its premiere by Leonard Slatkin. The five movement titles are as evocative as those in Philadelphia Stories: “Traveling Music,” “Unidentified,” “Flying,” “???,” and “Objects”; each concentrates on different percussion instruments. There are a few neat moments, but from the subject matter one expects a more imaginative (Lachenmann-like? Messiaen-ish?) orchestral experience than one gets. Deft, but largely predictable—as in Philadelphia Stories. The latter, though, is a far more satisfying work; it suffers less from a desperation solely to entertain. (The symphonic-band instrumentation of this piece was created in 2000; it was commissioned by a consortium of university bands and recorded by Glennie and the University of North Texas Wind Symphony, Eugene Migliaro Corporon conducting.)

Daugherty is a good composer from the standpoint of his ability to get what he wants out of his materials, but it’s hard to put one’s finger on what his true voice (that “my own musical language” of the above quote) might be beneath the busy surface of style-dropping. It could be argued that style isn’t something that can be heard from moment to moment, necessarily—that the whole of the work, the choices the composer makes in his gleanings from others, his extramusical impetus, are the style. Daugherty definitely has a taste for particular kinds of borrowings.

The performances are excellent. Marin Alsop obviously knows the Colorado Orchestra well and leads them with confidence through this often tricky music; they seem like they’re having fun. Glennie is outstanding as usual as a performer, but once again, she’s playing a commissioned piece that remains a little flat. Still, this disc is all in all a good and inexpensive introduction to Daugherty’s work. This Naxos series is invaluable.

Robert Kirzinger, FANFARE

A subscriber to Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts at the turn of the century would have known the name of Arthur Foote. A leading member of the group of composers called the Boston Classicists, Foote's works were programmed regularly in Symphony Hall and one of them, the genial E Major Suite for Strings, was recorded memorably there by Serge Koussevitsky. Derivative in nature, his music evokes comparisons with Mendelssohn, Schumann or Brahms. As Boston Symphony program annotator John Burke wrote: "his art has no concerns to shake the world. It no more than searches the beauties of certain tonal combinations within the suitable confines of an accepted form."
This is one of two discs of Foote's chamber music, part of Naxos' laudable American classics series. It includes his early G Minor String Quartet and C Major Piano Quartet as well as his most popular work, the mildly evocative "Night Piece" which begins his Nocturne and Scherzo for Flute and Strings. The performances feature the Colorado-based Da Vinci Quartet, recorded with varying ambiance at the University of Denver's LaMont School of Music.

The first real school of American composers arrived in the last quarter of the 19th century and were known as the Boston classicists. Comprised largely of well-to-do New Englanders who were trained in Europe by way of Harvard and worshipped Brahms, they were a pretty conservative bunch all around. Prominent among them was Arthur Foote of Salem, Massachusetts. His studies with John Knowles Paine at Harvard culminated in the first graduate degree in music ever granted by an American university and though he did not go on to study in Germany, he spent the following summer at Bayreuth soaking up the rays before returning to Boston to teach, compose and serve as choirmaster and organist of the First Unitarian Church.
Foote's chamber music is strongly influenced by Mendelssohn and Brahms, neoclassical in outlook, graceful and lyrical with little hint of storm or stress. This disc, featuring the Piano Quintet along with the Op. 32 and Op. 70 string quartets, is one of two of all-Foote releases which are part of Naxos' admirable American Classics series. The recordings feature the Da Vinci Quartet, a very good Colorado-based ensemble which has undertaken the performance of all of this composer's chamber works.

William Henry Fry (1813-64) was the first native-born American to write for large orchestral forces (and the first to compose a grand opera), and was a vociferous supporter of music home-grown in the good old U.S.A. That's not to say Fry's music didn't contain European influences: traces of Berlioz, Wagner, and Verdi all show up in his work; but he also manages to include elements of (then) American popular song. For example, the Santa Claus Symphony of 1853 (really more of an extended symphonic poem) features "Rock-a-bye Baby" played on a soprano saxophone. Actually, Santa Claus makes only a brief appearance in this narrative-derived piece, which among other things depicts a lost traveler dying in a snowstorm and the birth of the Savior, before ending with the strings intoning "O come, all ye faithful". Fry's orchestral writing is vividly picturesque, with much imagination lavished on the score's fantasy elements.


An even more graphic portrayal can be found in the 1854 Niagara Symphony, which after a rumbling introduction roars out a big unison theme that mimics the Tuba mirum from Mozart's Requiem. The Overture to Macbeth (1864) contains some pretty exciting passages as well, and here's where the Berlioz influence is particularly strong (especially in the witches' music). Lastly, Fry's The Breaking Heart (a work once believed to be lost) shows his love for Italian bel canto in its many lyrical and "operatic" passages. All told, this is a highly compelling album of some first-rate 19th century orchestral music, enthusiastically and stylishly performed by Tony Rowe and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and recorded in top-drawer sound--another winner in Naxos' spectacular American Classics series.
--Victor Carr Jr., ClassicsToday.com

Fuchs’s distinctive voice, flair for orchestral colours and sheer lyricism shine through.

Kenneth Fuchs is fortunate indeed to have not one but two discs of his music recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra. The first, in 2003, was nominated for two Grammys in 2005 and the second, recorded in 2006, should do well too, such is the quality of both the music and music-making. Holding it all together in the orchestral pieces and the mixed quintet is conductor JoAnn Falletta, who made such a strong impression in her recent disc of Respighi (review).

United Artists, the first item on the disc, was written specifically for the LSO as a gesture of thanks for their earlier recording of Fuchs’s works (Naxos 8.559224). At its core is a four-note motif, presented first in the Coplandesque opening fanfare. But this isn’t derivative music; indeed, the composer’s distinctive ‘voice’ is evident from the outset, and his flair for orchestral colours and sheer lyricism shine through in this atmospheric opener.

Quiet in the land is another of those vast musical landscapes that might provoke comparisons with Copland, yet Fuchs’s evocation of the Midwestern Plains just as the Iraq war was beginning is rather more complex and ambiguous in its sentiments. As the composer writes in the liner notes, ‘I wondered how quiet the spirit of our land might be’.

Even without this programme the opening bars hint at harmony, subtly undermined by vague discord - just listen to that quiet, agitated figure that begins at 1:30, beneath the more lyrical and expansive melody above. It is such lucid, ‘hear-through’ writing, yet it’s full of warmth. The members of the LSO manage to bring out both these aspects of the score, blending precision with feeling. And what a haunting close, too.

The recording venue – St Luke’s in London’s Old Street – is very well captured by the engineers, with no hint of brittleness or edge. The musicians seem ideally placed, too, which is particularly welcome in Fire, Ice, and Summer Bronze for brass quintet. Subtitled an ’Idyll ... after two works on paper by Helen Frankenthaler’ the first movement yokes together two eternal opposites – fire (the restless first section) and ice (the more muted second section).

There seems to be an underlying creative tension in some of these pieces, perhaps an attempt to reconcile musical and emotional extremes. For instance, in Summer Bronze the music is strangely mercurial – now lyrical, now dissonant, now both. But it’s that other dichotomy, between outward virtuosity and inner feeling, that these seasoned players – always secure, always poised – convey so well.

Based on a painting by Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm does contain some jazzy snippets, but the emphasis seems to be on sonorities, with long, lyrical melodic lines and, at times, a quirky bass. It is a strangely ‘in-between’ piece; to use the autumn analogy, summer is not quite done, yet winter is on its way. In his notes Fuchs describes how the two states are drawn together and, indeed, how one becomes the other: ‘An unusual aspect of this composition is that in its final section the flute, oboe, and clarinet metamorphose into their lower – perhaps autumnal – counterparts, the alto flute, English horn, and bass clarinet.’ It’s a remarkable sleight of hand, deftly constructed and seamlessly executed.

Canticle of the Sun – a hymn tune based on 13th-century texts by St Francis of Assisi – is built on a four-note motif. Written for the LSO’s principal horn player, Timothy Jones, this 20-minute gem has a radiant, all-embracing optimism that is just irresistible. Indeed, it is not unlike a stained glass window, all those fragments of high colour glowing in the light behind. But at the centre of it all is Jones’s supple and passionate playing, surely as seductive a performance of this piece as we are ever likely to hear.

As with Respighi’s Church Windows, Falletta displays a sense of line and phrase that is most welcome in this music. And while I’ve grumbled about the sound on some Naxos releases I’m prepared to eat humble pie on this one. The engineers have done an exceptional job capturing the sound of the LSO at St Luke’s; what a pleasant change from the dry-as-dust Barbican.

Early days, I know, but this could be one of my discs of 2008.

Dan Morgan, MusicWeb International

G. COATES Symphonies: No. 1; 1 No. 7; 2 No. 14 3 ? Jorge Rotter, cond; 1 Siegerland O; 1 Olaf Henzold, cond; 2 Bavarian RSO; 2 Christoph Poppen, cond; 3 Munich CO; 3 Raymond Curfs (kd) 3 ? NAXOS 8.559289 (65:47)


First, this is Gloria Coates (b. 1938) not Eric. Second, we have a welcome addition to a still-too-small discography of one of the most original living American composers. I will confess this is my first encounter (far too late) with her music, but I have been primed by word of mouth, above all by former Fanfare critic Kyle Gann, who praises her lavishly in his American Music in the Twentieth Century. And the advance word has been confirmed by the music I?ve finally heard.


Coates is definitely a composer in the mold of the American ?ultramodernists? of the early 20th century. The listener will immediately sense an adventurous, uncompromising, cantankerous spirit in her work that is a descendant of such as Ives, Ruggles, Cowell, and Crawford. Her most distinguishing technique is that of the string glissando, which in lesser hands can be a cheap symbol of modernist instability, and a passport to aural seasickness. Not here. Coates is careful to place her sliding tones at the service of larger processes: canons in particular, or ?additive/subtractive? lines that expand and contract the range of the glissando over time and in perceptible patterns. She?s a wonderfully paradoxical composer because, on the one hand, the music is highly experimental in its surface technique, but on the other hand, classical in its attention to form and development within the symphonic argument. She?s a very conceptual composer, as both the titles of movements (Symphony No. 7?s movements are ?The Whirligig of Time,? ?The Glass of Time,? and ?Corridors of Time?) and her attachment to strict processes, nowadays called algorithms, may suggest. But no matter how idealistic the music, it always carries a visceral impact, or in good old American terms, a real wallop.


The three works on this program nicely cover the composer?s entire symphonic cycle (up to this point), dipping into the start, the middle, and end. Symphony No. 1 (1972?73) is her best-known work, also referred to as ?Music on Open Strings.? The work begins with an alternate pentatonic tuning of the instruments, and in the third movement incorporates the scordatura (retuning) of the strings back to the conventional tuning into the real-time performance fabric. Not all the sounds are just the five pitches, though, as Coates inserts all sorts of glissandos that enrich the texture, even if they don?t establish other firm pitch centers. It?s a highly original work, and a bracing combination of both minimalist and modernist practices.


The Symphony No. 7 (1990; a tribute to ?Those who brought down the Wall in PEACE,? though there is little I hear that?s programmatic in the actual music) is the most European sounding of the three works: not a surprise, as the composer has lived her mature artistic life in Germany, another marker of her ?outsider? status. It?s highly abstract in its materials, and verges on being the work whose glissandos wear out their welcome. But just when I started feeling the music was becoming predictable (in the first and third movements), it marshals its forces to create overwhelming climaxes that simultaneously sound surprising yet natural. I don?t know exactly what the technique is, but I suspect Coates has deep processes at work that lead to a culmination one desires but can?t easily predict. The relentless growth and impact of the piece, a storm in sound, is similar to Xenakis?s Jonchaies for orchestra, though I don?t claim it?s quite as great a work.


The final work, Symphony No. 14 (2001?02, ?Symphony in Microtones?), is by far the most American-sounding piece, for at least two obvious reasons. First, the piece (for strings and timpani?only the Seventh uses full orchestra on this collection) divides the string orchestra into two halves, tuned a quarter tone apart. Some of the music is so dense one doesn?t really perceive the differences, but in cases of the hymn quotation discussed below, it can be striking. The effect is the most Ivesian of this set and, in particular, I think of the composer of the Robert Browning Overture as an antecedent here.


Second, the first two movements quote pieces by Supply Belcher (a late 18th-century Maine hymnodist) and William Billings, the Boston Revolutionary-period composer who was himself an aesthetic revolutionary of the first order. The Billings choice is particularly apt, as it is ?Jargon,? his completely atonal (though better stated, it could be called ?non-functional,? as all the intervals are consonant, but they don?t make up traditional tonal chords) choral work, a message from another universe to the 18th century. In both movements, the antique sources emerge from Coates?s swirling textures like apparitions, an effect that is magical and unnerving. In the Billings movement, after appearing, the source is then stated with the quarter-tone difference, which feels like a true enrichment rather than a mere distortion.


In short, this is remarkable music. At times it can seem too crude and obvious, spurning standards of polish and taste, and then at the next moment it blindsides you with the power of its vision, a balanced match of manner and substance, form and content, style and idea. And on top of it all, if the booklet?s cover is any guide, Coates is a talented visual artist as well, in the tradition of Ruggles.


The sonic standards of the disc are variable: Symphony No. 1 is a recording from 1980, with more surface noise than we?re now accustomed to, and No. 7 comes from a concert recording of the world premiere. Only No. 14 has the clarity and crispness listeners have come to expect. At the same time, this doesn?t bother me, as none of the earlier sonic flaws are too distracting, and the music overcomes any such obstacle on its innate strengths. There is one serious competitor to this disc, cpo 999 392, which includes Nos. 1 and 7, substituting No. 4 for No. 14. I have not heard it, but I note from its online data that No. 1 is also a live recording from the same year as the Naxos (1980), and No. 7 was recorded in 1991, so I suspect at the very least there are similar sonic issues involved. I have a hunch that, based on repertoire, the Naxos disc will be preferable as an introduction, providing a broad sweep of the composer?s career. But based on what I?ve heard, I also suspect if you are hooked on Coates, you?ll probably need to get the cpo eventually.


This may well reappear on my 2006 Want List.


FANFARE: Robert Carl

Morton Gould's music is the quintessential definition of the American sound. Along with composers like Aaron Copland, he was remarkably influential in producing homegrown American musical works. Composing in a wide variety of musical idioms, Gould was brought to international recognition by his easy-listening melodies and vivid orchestral works.
This Naxos release celebrates several works that brought Gould to critical acclaim, beginning with 'American Ballads' composed in 1976. Including such notable themes as the "Star Spangled Overture" and "Amber Waves," the six-movement work captures tender themes and melodies close to the soul of any patriot. The 'Stephen Foster Gallery' suite also represents those uniquely American themes in an exquisite arrangement of songs. Gould's most famous work, 'American Salute' (based on the melody "When Johnny Comes Marching Home"), shows Gould's unmatched ability to create a synthesis between concert and popular music. Militaristic percussion and brass are accented by the soft, weaving harmonies of the woodwinds and strings.
Under the direction of conductor Theodore Kuchar, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine offers a sensible, yet light-hearted rendering of the music. Firmly grasping the essence of Gould's American spirit, the orchestra communicates the music's strong nationalism with great skill and plausibility.

These days, Roy Harris is remembered as the composer of a famous 3^rd Symphony, who wrote a lot of other Symphonies, but whose other music is hardly known, let alone heard. There is a school of thought which believes that beyond the 3^rd Symphony most of his work isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Certainly there appears to be a lack of self-criticism on Harris’s part which allowed less well constructed and written works out into the public arena. Works such as the Concerto for Piano, Clarinet and String Quartet, op.2 (1927), String Quartet No.3, Four Preludes and Fugues (1937), Violin Sonata (1941) and the chamber cantata Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight (1953), not to mention the orchestral works When Johnny Comes Marching Home: An American Overture (1934), the Violin Concerto (1949) and the 1^st (1933) and 7^th (1955) Symphonies show a composer of real stature. The chamber works could so easily be programmed but they’re not and our not hearing them is our loss, and a significant loss at that.

None of the pieces on this disk could be claimed to be major works but there are some very attractive and interesting things nonetheless. The two sets of American Ballads use folk-tunes, such as The Streets of Laredo and When Johnny Comes Marching Home, and are delightful suites with some nice quirky turns of phrase. In feel they are reminiscent of Barber’s Excursions for piano and would enrich any recital of modernish piano music. The early Sonata is a tersely argued work in four succinct movements, and it’s easy to see why the original scherzo wouldn’t have fitted into Harris’s scheme of things. The Piano Suite is another strong work; the first movement is bold and brassy, demonstrative and forthright, the middle movement pensive and the finale a French flavoured gigue.

For the rest we have six miniatures. The Toccata contains elements of both the headlong rush you’d expect from such a work, and short reflective interludes. The Variations on an American Folksong, True Love Don’t Weep starts in a most serious manner, becomes lighter then just as you think it’s going somewhere it stops! Untitled is, I believe, the earliest piece we know by Harris and it’s very strange, questing and angular, almost tuneless and imbued with an otherworldly feel. Little Suite is fun, this could almost be a teaching piece. A Happy Piece for Shirley is a delightful tribute. Orchestrations, a strange title for a solo piano piece, especially from someone as adept at orchestration as Harris, is very serious and profound.

Whilst most of these works have been recorded before, it’s good to have them collected together on one disk, and although none of them can claim pretensions to be a lost masterpiece, they are more than mere chippings off the block of genius. The performances have an air of authority about them and the recording is clean and clear. The notes, if not exhaustive, are helpful. Essential for anyone investigating the Symphonies which Naxos is in the process of recording and there are works here which pianists should be investigating when seeking something piquant for their recitals.

-- Bob Briggs, MusicWeb International

Enjoyable and entertaining ... the strong personality of Locklair's music is projected successfully ...

This is, as the liner-notes suggest, a CD of attractive and colourful music. Though most of the works are very recent, Locklair writes in an idiom that is perfectly accessible to anyone who has even a quite limited knowledge of 20th century music. His influences are fairly easy to discern – not only Copland, but other more international voices such as Martin? and Shostakovich occasionally shine through. However these soon fade from the attention, as Locklair has his own strong stylistic personality.

The Symphony of Seasons is, naturally, in four movements, proceeding from a ceremonial opening ‘Autumn’ to a warm and expansive ‘Summer’, via the longest movement, ‘Winter’, and a sprightly ‘Spring’. Locklair uses some well-known melodies along the way, notably the Lutheran chorale Nun danket alle Gott, which is heard in ‘Autumn’, and the round Sumer is icumen in, which duly appears in the finale.

The most striking section for me is ‘Winter’, an extended slow movement cast in the form of a Chaconne, that is to say variants over a repeated harmonic sequence. Though I could probably have done without the wind machine - especially after the summer we’ve had in the UK - I nevertheless found this a powerfully atmospheric movement. Also striking is the restraint with which ‘Summer’ is treated; it begins in a magically hushed vein, with a fine, broad melody, and, though Sumer is icumen in brings life and dance rhythms into the music, it dies away in an atmosphere of mystery.

The earliest work on the disc is Lairs of Soundings, a three movement piece for soprano and strings dating from 1982. Movements 1 and 3 are settings of parts of poems by Ursula Le Guin, and are both fraught, nervous pieces. They are offset by a strikingly lovely slow central section, in which the voice is wordless, the ‘text’ being pure vowel sounds. Attractive music, though the work as a whole seems a little short – perhaps it needs one more movement. Janeanne Houston is the soloist, well able to deal with the very high tessitura, but slightly unsteady in tone and intonation here and there.

Phoenix and Again is a short, straightforward occasional piece, while In Memory – H.H.L. is an elegiac movement for string orchestra paying tribute to the composer’s mother. Like all the music on the disc, it is well crafted and carefully planned. To claim, however, as the disc’s conductor Kirk Trevor apparently has done, that this is a ‘worthy successor to the Barber Adagio’ is the sort of wild assertion that really does the piece no favours at all, and does call the conductor’s musical judgement somewhat into question.

The concluding item on this enjoyable and entertaining disc is the three movement Harp Concerto, delivered with great aplomb by Jacquelyn Bartlett. This is a charming work, with a beautiful central slow movement, Variants, in which the soloist often provides a soft yet sumptuous accompaniment to woodwind and string melodies. This underlined for me the impression that Locklair is most himself in his slow music, where he often achieves a rarefied atmosphere that is very affecting.

To be fair to Kirk Trevor - having taken him to task above! - he does a fine job of steering the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra through this inevitably unfamiliar music. They mostly play very well, with some excellent woodwind playing. The brass occasionally show the strain, particularly in more demanding parts of the Symphony, and the strings sound as if they could perhaps do with a couple more desks in each section. But these shortcomings are not serious, and the strong personality of Locklair’s music is projected successfully throughout.

-- Gwyn Parry-Jones, MusicWeb International

Barbagallo is every bit the piano-bard that MacDowell could have wished for...the recording communicating, however, the energy and range Barbagallo can deliver in person. I could listen to this fine player in just about any repertory he chooses
- American Record Guide

If you're encountering the late American, New York born composer Elie Siegmeister for the first time, skip the first five tracks for now. Cue up Track Six to his gritty, uncompromising 1964 Second Sonata. The one movement work commences with stabbing, isolated pitches. These work their way into petulant clusters and stark, flickering triads. Leaping rhythmic patterns forge a grim, motoric path of no return, on which teasing jazz flourishes and starburst, two-handed arpeggios provide breezy relief. Siegmeister's predilection for granitic sonorities and bleak lyricism informs both his early 1932 Theme & Variations and his notey, rigorous Third Sonata from 1979. Five movements from the 1985 suite "These Shores" depict a quintet of American writers, whose identities are difficult to decipher without a score card. Yet this composer could write simple, accessible music too. Turn now to the opening "Sunday in Brooklyn" suite, a five movement work laced with wistful tunes and gentle, wrong-note Gershwinisms. This is music that deserves to be played much more than it is. One regrets that the composer, who died in 1991, didn't live to hear pianist Kenneth Boulton's dynamically charged, fiercely committed, and brilliantly virtuosic performances. He would have been delighted.--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington DC, Roberto Sierra's Missa Latina "is remarkably organic in its expression: if it is music that sets out to be liked—perhaps loved—it is also a unified and, one suspects, deeply felt utterance of the heart...the Missa Latina will bring pleasure to a great many listeners. (Indeed, the ‘Sanctus’ could almost be turned into a pop song.)...I can't imagine anybody who starts listening to the Missa Latina wanting to turn it off before it is over."

- The Washington Post

One of the first truly American-born and -bred composers, Leo Sowerby wrote organ music that came straight from the heartland. From his early studies in Grand Rapids, Michigan to his successful career in Chicago, Sowerby revitalized organ music with a body of work rivaling Bach in terms of both quantity and quality.
Sowerby was fascinated by traditional forms, and his 'Classic Concerto' explores many of these structures. Within its three brief movements, it gives an excellent introduction to Sowerby's playful sense of harmony. 'Medieval Poem' and 'Pageant,' both written earlier, also delve into traditional themes.
'Festival Musick' is an audience favorite, bright and playful. Its sense of humor is evident to occasional listeners as well as those more intimately versed in organ music. Composed during a single week in summer, it is one of Sowerby's last compositions.
Both organists involved with this album have the remarkable technical skill and performing panache to bring Sowerby to life. The rich sound of the organ at St. Bartholomew's Church in New York City and accompaniment of the Fairfield Orchestra have been captured masterfully. WORKS FOR ORGAN AND ORCHESTRA is a well-performed and expertly engineered recording.