Not too many listeners are Dybbuk admirers, and even Bernstein's supporters find this music less interesting than much else that he wrote. The fact that the music resorts to some dodecaphonic and numerological compositional techniques isn't a point in its favor, though in actual sonority it's entirely characteristic of Bernstein, and at this late date it's easy to hear that his personality inhabits every bar. If there's a problem with the piece, it likely stems from the fact that the overall impression it makes is a bit glum, lacking in that special snap that makes his best work so memorable. Certainly the supernatural subject is a dark one, and it calls forth plenty of eerie, atmospheric scoring; but the actual musical material seems stretched thinly over the work's 45 minutes (48, if you're the composer). Bernstein recorded the complete work for Sony, but broke it up into a pair of suites for his DG remakes. I do prefer the original; the music is what it is, and over time it has grown on me--and might well do so for you too.


Fancy Free of course is delightful, and often recorded, but this performance holds its own with the best--and I frankly prefer Andrew Mogrelia to the composer in Dybbuk. He's just that much livelier, and the Nashville Symphony sounds as inside the idiom as the New York Philharmonic of several decades' past. This newcomer also is better recorded than Bernstein's performances either on Sony or DG, and the excellent version of "Hot Stuff" that opens Fancy Free also is a plus. If you're a Bernstein fan, you will certainly want this.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

2019 Grammy Award WInner - Best Classical Compendium


Kenneth Fuchs is one of America’s leading composers. He celebrates his unique fifteen-year recording history with conductor JoAnn Falletta and the London Symphony Orchestra with this stunning release of three new concertos and an orchestral song cycle. Kenneth Fuchs has composed music for orchestra, band, voice, chorus, and various chamber ensembles. His music has achieved significant global recognition through performances, media exposure, and digital streaming and downloading throughout North and South America, Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, and Australia. The London Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of JoAnn Falletta, has recorded five discs of Fuchs’s music for Naxos American Classics. The first, released in August 2005, was nominated for two GRAMMY® Awards (“Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra” and “Producer of the Year, Classical”).

-----

REVIEW:

Now stretching back over the past fifteen years, JoAnn Falletta and the London Symphony Orchestra have been recording the major works of Kenneth Fuchs.

All of the present disc comes from the past six years, the most recent, Poems of Life, completed in 2017. The opening Piano Concerto, in the conventional three movements, was composed at the request of Jeffrey Biegel, who is the soloist on this disc. Often testing his technical virtuosity, the finale calls for prodigious dexterity in the fast flowing finale.

We can admire the London Symphony for the multitude of colours they provide, just as if the play the music regularly, and our gratitude to the conductor, JoAnn Falletta, the composer’s unstinting champion.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

Charles Ives wrote almost two hundred songs. Although his reputation rests on orchestral, chamber and piano music, it is Ives's songs that represent the heart of his creative thinking. The expressive variety encountered is accordingly vast: indeed, the gradual evolution of Ives's songwriting is analogous to the wider evolution of American music during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This new edition includes all the songs that Ives completed. The alphabetic approach ensures that each volume (of which this disc is the fourth of six) contains a representative cross-section.

Arthur Farwell has been called 'the most neglected composer in [American musical] history.' Hounded by accusations of 'cultural appropriation,' he has posthumously fallen prey to changing notions of cultural authenticity. As the leader of the 'Indianists' movement, Farwell believed it was a democratic obligation of Americans of European descent to try to understand the indigenous Americans they displaced and oppressed. To this end, he merged Indian music and lore with Western concert forms - today, a controversial practice. The performances here recorded originated at a landmark PostClassical Ensemble festival at Washington's National Cathedral. The Dakota String Quartet, resident quartet of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra (SDSO), comprises principal string players of the orchestra. First violin Doosook Kim has been concertmaster with the SDSO since 1995 and performs as a soloist and chamber musician in the US and internationally.

Every piece is nearly flawless, exciting, and played with tremendous passion.

…we have music that unfolds comfortably, but there’s enough to arouse curiosity without scaring anyone off. It will not alienate stodgy blue-hair types, but it will still satisfy those who crave creative new music.

- American Record Guide

Sean Hickey – A composer who maximizes the miniature in his savvy travelogues.

…these compositions are substantive and savvy. The aesthetic that emerges here is that of excitable conversation between the instruments – a discourse that never collapses into idle palaver. Fool’s Errand packs a wealth of material into a three-minute masterpiece.

- Gramophone

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

PERRY Jamestown Concerto. SCHUMAN A Song of Orpheus. THOMSON Cello Concerto • Yehuda Hanani (vc); William Eddins, cond; RTÉ Natl SO • NAXOS 8.559344 (72:09)

And here is another side of William Perry. The Jamestown Concerto (2006) begins with a beautiful solo cello segment that sits halfway between solo cadenza and folkish musing, described as a “cello overture” in Douglas Bruce’s notes. Written to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the first permanent colony in America in Jamestown, Virginia (1607), it is a poignant work that integrates Perry’s trademark filmic qualities into a concert framework. It also includes musical material derived from a madrigal published in 1501 by John Milton (father of the poet). There is a detailed program (trumpets in the second movement, “Settlement Along the River,” announce the arrival of Captain John Smith to quell an uprising, for example), but it is one that strikes me as optional. Yehuda Hanani is a most eloquent soloist. My colleague Lynn René Bayley found this work rather wanting in her review ( Fanfare 32:3). I find the work’s almost childlike sense of wonder and its clear impression of ongoing narrative, beautifully scored, rather compelling. The playful “Pocahontas in London” fourth movement is enchanting; the fifth bustles while faithfully evoking time and place. Skillful, eminently musical, and poignant pretty much sum up this piece.

Good to see William Schuman’s music here, too. The rest of the music will get less of a say on the grounds that it appears in the context of an article on Perry, but it is good to hear Schuman’s A Song of Orpheus (premiered 1962), especially prefaced by a reading (by Jane Alexander) of Shakespeare’s “Orpheus with his Lute.” I agree with Bayley on every count here (except that I actually do like the idea of the reading of the poem). Superbly atmospheric music, yet at the same time sophisticated, especially in harmonic terms. Finally, Virgil Thomson’s Cello Concerto, a remarkably strong and powerful work, is given a proud and muscular account here by Hanani (which is not to underplay Hanani’s deftness in the finale).

The placing of Perry here is important. He justly takes his place with two giants of American music.

FANFARE: Colin Clarke

------

PERRY Jamestown Concerto. SCHUMAN A Song of Orpheus. 1 THOMSON Cello Concerto • Yehuda Hanani (vc); William Eddins, cond; Jane Alexander (spkr); 1 RTÉ Natl SO • NAXOS 8.559344 (72:10 Text and Translation)

These three works, tied by their American heritage and syntax, though not entirely by subject matter—the Schuman is, after all, based on verses by Shakespeare—are given intelligent, sensitive, highly musical performances by renowned cellist Yehuda Hanani, conductor Eddins, and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. The only things they really lack are a more clearly focused sound and a bit more excitement.

William Perry’s concerto is the newest, written in 2006 and premiered in January 2007 by Hanani with the Musica Nova Orchestra in Scottsdale, Arizona. It is also, alas, the weakest. There are some splendid moments in all five movements, depicting the embarkation of the Virginia Company from London in 1606, settlements along the James River (including the introduction of Pocahontas), harsh winters of the colony, Pocahontas in London, and Jamestown 400 years later on; yet in each of these movements the music either began or deteriorated in interest for me, evidencing a style I would charitably describe as populist tonal banality. I don’t know if Perry purposely chose this route or if inspiration failed to connect the more imaginative sequences of his work (the third movement, the opening of the first, and the closing pages of the second), but for all its workmanlike qualities I felt it failed to gel.

Also, perhaps, the populist feel of this concerto was too much in contrast to the more serious and imaginative Song of Orpheus by Schuman. I’d almost forgotten what a truly splendid composer he was! None of this music is unattractive, yet none of it can be called easy listening. Not a note or phrase seems banal, prolonged, or unnecessary. Though perhaps more carefully crafted than written in a flash of insight, this concerto was nevertheless finished in only 11 months, premiered by the excellent American cellist Leonard Rose in 1962. The music is very close in concept to Berlioz’s longer and more familiar Harold in Italy , employing long stretches where the orchestra takes the lead and the cello amiably adds its commentary. Schuman wanted Shakespeare’s poem to be either printed in the concert program or recited from the stage. Of course, the brief text is included in the liner notes, but Naxos felt a need to hire actress Jane Alexander to recite the poem anyway. It’s a nice touch but, to me, an unnecessary extravagance.

I found Thomson’s Concerto (sometimes subtitled “Rider on the Plains”) to be perhaps the crown jewel of this collection. Quite in contrast to both the populist (but not popular ) style of his film scores, which I feel are the finest ever written by an American, or the rhythmically dense, polyphonic style of his operas, the concerto strode a peculiar middle ground. Charming if not-quite-catchy melodies based on hymns, circle game tunes, and even a snippet from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 6 were seamlessly woven into a rich tapestry. The cello definitely takes center stage here, with some of the most extraordinary and complex music Thomson ever wrote. At one point he even sends it flying up into the violin range, much like Chopin’s Introduction and Polonaise for cello but for a much longer period of time. Hanani, great virtuoso that he is, handles this with astounding aplomb if not quite the firm control of pitch that Emanuel Feuermann displayed in his Victor recording of the Chopin piece. But how many cellists are Feuermann? Answer: one. Feuermann! (It may also be of interest to note that, in this Concerto, Hanani is playing the same instrument that Paul Olefsky, principal cellist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, used in the 1950 premiere. Emmanuel Feldman also does a splendid job with this Concerto on the Albany label, but the more interesting pairing of the Schuman—not available elsewhere—makes this, for me, a more arresting disc.

This is certainly a splendid release, and should by no means be passed up, despite my few disappointments regarding sound and the Perry concerto.

FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

The competition is full-priced, from Nonesuch, and the formidable Glass-specialist and collaborator Dennis Russell Davies. On sonic grounds, I’d prefer this new Naxos disc of two symphonies from the mid 1990s. Davies is irreproachable as a Glass conductor, but in the case of these works, I find the Nonesuch recordings a touch claustrophobic, with much of the air sucked out of the acoustic. The older Glass/Naxos disc was even more successful in this regard (the Violin Concerto on 8.554568) but this is pretty good sound, captured by Tim Handley in the Concert Hall, Lighthouse, by the busy harbor at Poole in Dorset, England. The bustling, maritime setting seems to infect the music-making, especially for the rousing finale of the Second Symphony, like an Olympic yacht-race through a choppy sea on a bright, bracing morning. American symphonies used to stumble at the finale obstacle (so did symphonies everywhere) but through patient application of his familiar style, and his patented modal, orchestral dynamism, Glass whizzes around the course with no faults or penalties. This should make converts of anyone who enjoys symphonies from Bax to Bernstein.

Elsewhere, the dark and brooding moods are never overplayed or undersold by Marin Alsop. This isn’t the world’s most virtuosic band, but they rarely, and only very slightly sound strained by Glass’s high-lying violin lines. More performances from the big-name orchestras would bring a more expressive, forthright performing tradition, and maybe a faster finale for the Third. Glass’s Indian roots are often on display (there’s an Eastern cut to his thematic jib, here), but expressive results are fruitful. There are some reminders of other symphonists. In the Second it sometimes seems Alan Hovhaness, Lou Harrison, and Bill Schuman have met up for a drink with Sibelius, who is playing the Widor Toccata over there in the corner. Glass’s individual symphonism works, though, in this 43-minute piece, thanks to the skillful manipulation of orchestral contrasts as a structural device, a legacy, maybe, of his film-score experience. The Third Symphony is closer to the Glass mainstream, in four short movements for strings alone. Here, Alsop’s patient approach brings out the meaning in the music, away from the talk of polyrhythm and process. There’s fear, anxiety, and dismay (the world) behind some of those sunny repetitions, and physicality in the dance rhythms. Well-caught pizzicatos in the second movement, too, and an expressive solo display from the violin in the edgy, pulsating third section, which is a major success in this tense, sensual reading.

I wholeheartedly recommend this release (the first of a cycle, I trust), and again salute Philip Glass for doing it his way. The music deserves the widest exposure and popularity, and it deepens with acquaintance. This Naxos CD transformed my opinion of these works.

Paul Ingram, FANFARE

Philip Glass' symphonies are unique among the composer's output for their relative harmonic and thematic complexity. Listeners put off by Glass' endlessly repeated arpeggios will be relieved to find scant evidence of them in these works. Instead, like his opera Beauty and the Beast, Glass spins long melodic lines that go through many harmonic permutations before they are inevitably repeated. Thus, Symphony No. 2's first movement creates an air of expectation, something that Glass maintains through shifting instrumental timbres and stimulating dynamic contrast as the movement builds, Bolero-like, to a grand climax. After the soothing, somewhat meditative sonic environment of the slow movement, the finale breaks in with its agitated dance rhythms. This movement has the least harmonic variety of the three, and listeners unsympathetic to Glass' method may experience repetition fatigue.


Symphony No. 3 is almost radical in its use of traditional forms, including chaconne and rondo. Glass replaces the expansiveness of the earlier work with a highly concentrated thematic process that packs substantially more musical ideas into only slightly more than half the former symphony's duration. The second movement is particularly interesting, with its compound meters and hints of Bartók. Marin Alsop brings her long familiarity with the composer's music to her convincing performances of both works, although she faces strong competition in the No. 3 from Glass specialist Dennis Russell Davies, who leads a slightly more compelling rendition with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. For its part, the Bournemouth Symphony plays keenly, maintaining enthusiasm and rhythmic exactitude even in the more repetitious passages. Naxos' warm and spacious recording presents the music with a compelling impact. [12/03/2004]
--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com

American music is culturally diverse and exciting, mirroring all the best America has to offer. The last two centuries have seen an extraordinary flowering of musical life in the United States. In recognition of the many gifted American men and women of music, Naxos is pleased to present the American Classic Series.

When complete, this series will consist of over 200 titles, exploring the full spectrum of American concert music. All the familiar names are there: Copland, Ives, Grofé, Barber, and Sousa but so are many others such as: Bennett, Dédé, Foote, McKay, and Siegmeister all of whom have contributed to the rich musical tapestry that is American.

All of us at Naxos invite you to journey with us as we set out to discover America.


Click Here for the complete Naxos American Classic Series

Winner of the coveted 2002 Grawemeyer Award and one of the youngest composers ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Aaron Jay Kernis is among the most distinguished musical figures of his generation. Conceived as a concerto for toy piano and orchestra, and with touches of Indonesian gamelan, French lyricism and jazz, Three Flavors appears here in it's final version, adapted by soloist and long- term collaborator Andrew Russo. Commissioned for renowned violinist James Ehnes, the introspective Two Movements (with Bells) is a memorial to the composer's father with echoes of blues singing and improvisatory impetuousness, while the virtuoso Superstar Etude No. 3 is his homage to Gershwin and the blues. The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis (b. 1960) studied composition with American heavyweights John Adams, Jacob Druckman, Morton Subotnik and Charles Wuorinen. He has developed a truly eclectic musical language over time, initially rigorous but evolving toward a new transparency and emotional eloquence. He incorporates influences of Latin rhythms, jazz and rap into his work as willingly as the harmonic worlds of the Romantic masters, the Renaissance and Hildegard von Bingen.

FAIROUZ Tahwidah. 4 Chorale Fantasy. 2 Native Informant: Sonata for Solo Violin 3. Posh. 4 For Victims. 2,5 Jebel Lebnan 6 • 1 Mellissa Hughes (sop); 1 David Krakauer (cl); 2 Borromeo Str Qrt; 3 Rachel Barton Pine (vn); 4 Christopher Thompson (baritenor); 4 Steven Spooner (pn); 5 David Kravitz (bar); 6 Imani Winds • NAXOS 8.559744 (78:22 Text and Translation)


This exceptionally varied and complex album features five first recordings of works by young American-Arabic composer Mohammed Fairouz (b. 1985), whose Piano Sonata impressed me when I reviewed the DVD by pianist Steven Spooner. I bristled, as I always do, to read the dreaded and hackneyed words on the CD insert that Fairouz “is one of the most frequently performed, commissioned, and recorded composers of his generation ” (italics mine). Well, what the heck generation could he possibly be part of but his own? Did you expect him to be the most frequently performed and recorded composers of his father’s generation?


But promotional semantics aside, Fairouz is a remarkably talented and highly original composer—no more so than some others nowadays who, living in America, combine the music of their ethnic cultures with European and/or American classical structures, but certainly one of the most interesting and communicative of such composers, which I suppose is what moves him to the top of his profession. Certainly, any CD that displays the combined talents of such well-known and/or outstanding talents as the Borromeo Quartet, Rachel Barton Pine, Steven Spooner, and the Imani Winds—all of whom, incidentally, are on my short list of favorite performers whose recordings I try to seek out for review—is testimony enough to the high quality of Fairouz’s music.


We begin this journey with Tahwidah, the setting of a poem by Mahmoud Darwish for soprano and clarinet. The text—which, surprisingly, is actually included in the booklet (along with all the other sung texts on this disc)—concerns the lullaby of a mother to her son, only to discover at the end that she is singing this at his funeral. The music is thus lyrical but strangely dissonant, beginning with exotic and difficult runs and trills on the clarinet, into which the soprano voice intermixes in a surprising and interesting fashion. Thank heavens, Mellissa Hughes has a pure, radiant voice, devoid of unsteadiness or wobble, and her singing is extraordinarily well phrased and emotionally moving. As in the case of so many modern-day sopranos, however, her English diction is exceedingly poor. Without the text to follow, you won’t be able to make out a single word. A small but important criticism, not meant in a mean-spirited way, but Mellissa, please work on your diction!


This is followed by Chorale Fantasy, which the composer describes as a song that combines the Arabic mode maqam “with gentle counterpoint,” leading from a songlike melody to a whirling dance. It was commissioned by the Borromeo Quartet, which plays it here. Perhaps not so curiously, the Solo Violin Sonata—commissioned by and played by Rachel Barton Pine—almost sounds, in its first movement, like an extension of the quartet, so lyrical and songlike is its melodic structure.


I was stunned here by the extraordinary range of colors that Pine extracts from her instrument, ranging from bright, sharply pointed passages reminiscent of Heifetz to warm, rich playing in the mid and lower ranges that sounded like Oistrakh. The second movement, “Rounds,” is a vigorous Arabic round dance (as per the composer’s notes), played with tremendous passion and energy, following which is a lament for the civilian victims of the Egyptian Revolution. This movement, which begins and ends very high up in the violin’s range, moves down to mid-range chordal passages which later incorporate microtonal slides (probably Arabic influenced) and, as in so much of Fairouz’s music, an exceptional singing quality that I feel is related to the song tradition of such composers as Ned Rorem. The composer describes the fourth movement as “just plain fun,” based on “the retro spirit of New York’s cabaret music,” supposedly emulating Gershwin and Porter, but I heard this music as oddly related to Eastern European folk-dance music and Eastern European-American forms, yet with an Arabic accent. At one point, Pine is required to play pizzicato counterpoint to her own top line on the violin. The final movement, which combines the feeling of both a lullaby and a lament, is titled “Lullaby of the ex-Soldat.” Fairouz says that he also conceived this movement as a tribute to Pine’s baby daughter Sylvia Michelle as a “celebration of birth and renewal.” With the possible exception of the first movement, I’d say that Fairouz has accomplished a Herculean task here, writing a sonata for unaccompanied violin that doesn’t owe much to the solo violin sonatas and partitas of Bach. I can only hope that it becomes a staple of the violin repertoire. This is, by the way, also the longest work on this disc.


Following this is Posh, a short song cycle (three pieces totaling 8:22) based on poems by Wayne Koestenbaum. These poems are not intended to “tell a story,” but merely to give an indication of a life: one song (poem) of a baby and his inability to cope with life without help, of “deadbeat dads” and dreams of the future; the second of a hapless adolescent searching for Ned Rorem songs; and third of an adult whose father “brings to mind the self-slaughtered Walter Benjamin.” This cycle is sung by “baritenor” Christopher Thompson, who has an unusual velvety timbre and, yes, qualities of both baritone and tenor. His diction is also superb, in sharp contrast to Hughes, and in the second song he makes one smile with his unusual way of bringing humor out when he sings. As usual, Spooner’s playing is also excellent, albeit subdued in this particular role as accompanist. Fairouz’s scoring for the piano here is primarily that of gently rocking notes and/or soft chime chords.


For Victims is described as “a dramatic scene for baritone and string quartet” based on two poems of David Shapiro, but although there are two movements only the second includes the sung poems. Here the Borromeo Quartet plays with a sense of sadness combined with drama, the music in the first movement vacillating between Eastern and Western modes, occasionally juxtaposing themes rather than engaging in actual development. As it turns out Shapiro’s poems, like many similar works, are about the Holocaust, the first a memorial to its victims and the second a personal memory of his grandfather emerging “in a synagogue” with his “sweet tenor coloratura” while he wonders if the dead are “permitted to sing.” Here the quartet’s role is more subdued and subservient to the vocal line. Baritone David Kravitz, unfortunately, has a woofy and tremulous voice, and his diction is only occasionally clear, which is very unfortunate as the music is exceptionally interesting and well written.


The last work, Jebel Lebnan, translates as Mount Lebanon, and is a lament for the lives lost at the massacres at the Sabra and Shatilla Refugee Camps caused by Phalange Party chief Bashir Gemayel. An interlude for flute is followed by a funeral march entitled “Ariel’s Song,” then a “reawakening” musically described by a celebratory dance to the resilience of the Lebanese people. The final movement, “Mar Charbel’s Dabkeh,” is yet another Arabic round dance. Since I am a huge fan of the Imani Winds, perhaps I am prejudiced in favor of nearly all their performances, which I always find to be rhythmically incisive, colorful in their manipulation of timbre and accent, and emotionally involved in every respect, thus I was immediately rapt by their extraordinary treatment of the opening passage, described by the composer as “a wild scream” for clarinet and piccolo. The music here, punctuated by interjections from the horn and clarinet, is continually underscored by a staccato ostinato figure played by the bassoon. The solo flute interlude is lyrical, yet with telling pauses in the musical line possibly indicating thought or meditation on the part of the flutist. It has a particularly forlorn sound that, to me, indicates such emotions. Interestingly, the solo bassoon line which opens “Ariel’s Song” sounds like a continuation of the flute lament. The other instruments of the quintet enter and exit, either singly or in pairs, but the bassoon generally dominates this lament. (I would also like to point out, for the benefit of those who don’t know, that the Imani Winds are four-fifths women musicians, which I believe is somewhat unique in the classical world.) The dance movement, surprisingly, also starts out slowly, only gradually increasing the tempo within the first dozen or so bars. It’s a cheerful little piece but not terribly uptempo—more of a relaxed dance than a frenetic one. After a short pause in the middle, Fairouz switches gears to his “little song,” which is more meditative and reflective than celebratory. This, in turn, leads into the “Dabkeh” or round dance, which begins with meditative passages played by the flute but then moves into a very sprightly dance rhythm. An Arabic round dance this may indeed be, but to my ears it has a great similarity to a horah!


Despite my small reservations on the diction of two of the singers and the singing voice of a third, I consider this one of the most interesting, varied, and engaging classical albums of the year so far, and one I shall undoubtedly be putting on my Want List.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley