The scenes shown all breathe an air of peace and tranquility. Starting with an evening landscape in Bohemia we move to a lake in the Tyrol to the Museo Vela with it's gesso figures Bavarian craftsmen fashioning glass and the Corniche near Cannes in the South of France. Other scenes include the ancient Chapel of St Sixtus at Eygalieres the Church of St Jakob at Tramin night in Madrid and a nocturnal view of Seville the whole culminating in the great Basilica of St Mark in Venice.

The Places
The Canton of Ticino (German Tessin) is the only Swiss canton to have Italian as its official language. It is bounded on three sides by Italy and boasts spectacular mountain scenery, with waterfalls, rivers and lakes. The capital of the canton is now Bellinzona, but was earlier shared with Locarno and Lugano. A feature of the landscape lies in the great lakes that are within its territory, including part of Lago Maggiore, into which the Ticino and Maggia flow.

The Music
Robert Schumann was born in 1810 in Saxony, studied in Leipzig, lived in Dresden and, in 1850 moved to Düsseldorf as director of music to the city. He died in 1856, after a severe mental breakdown, from which he never recovered. In 1840, in spite of the objections of her father, he married the young pianist Clara Wieck, daughter of his former teacher. It was particularly after this marriage that he turned his attention to larger scale compositions, of which his Piano Concerto is an example, inspired by his wife. The other work heard here, the Intermezzi, Op. 4, dates from an earlier period, devoted in particular to the composition of shorter piano pieces, when a career as a pianist still seemed possible for him.

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: PCM Stereo
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 51 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

GERMANY



The Places
The city of Nuremberg owes its importance partly to its geographical position, which made it a significant centre for trade. In spite of considerable damage, its old medieval city, now restored, remains as a monument to its importance in the late Middle Ages. By the 16th-century Nuremberg had become a centre of trade and of artistic activity. In art it could boast the presence of Albrecht Dürer and in poetry Hans Sachs and the Guild of Mastersingers, later to be celebrated by Wagner.
The Music
The son of Leopold Mozart, the Deputy Kapellmeister at the court of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had grown up at the archiepiscopal court, to be employed there, like his father, in a childhood and early adolescence interrupted by long concert tours as an infant prodigy. He excelled as a pianist, but was also a proficient violinist, and two of the three Violin Sonatas included here date from years in which he tried briefly to escape from Salzburg and find employment elsewhere, with the third written in 1781, when he was first establishing himself in independence in Vienna, where he was to die ten years later.



Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: PCM Stereo 2.0 / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 53 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

The Places - the scenes shown are of the Benedictine Abbey and Church at Einsiedeln, in the Swiss canton of Schwyz. The monastery, in origin dating from the 10th century, was largely rebuilt in the 18th century to designs by Caspar Moosbrugger of Vorarlberg, a former lay brother in the community, and has long been an important centre of pilgrimage to the shrine of the Black Madonna, now in a black marble chapel built in the early 19th century. The impressive interior of the church contains frescos by Cosmas Damian Asam and stucco work by his brother Egid Quirin Asam. The Music - the tour is accompanied by the third and fourth of the four Orchestral Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach and a Concerto for oboe, violin and continuo by Antonio Vivaldi.

The Places: Brittany and Normandy, in Northern France, have a character all their own, preserving, as they do, ancient Celtic traditions in a countryside bounded on one side by a rocky coast-line. The great Abbey of Mont St-Michel remains a centre of pilgrimage and secular interest, and in Normandy we catch glimpses of the Bayeux Tapestry, with it's near contemporary record of William of Normandy's successful expedition in 1066 to conquer England. The Music: The music chosen for this tour of Northern France is the Organ Symphony of Camille Saint-Saens, a work written in memory of Franz Liszt that takes it's name from the use of the organ in it's grandiose final movement. The other music to be heard is an orchestral version of the Belgian-born composer Cesar Franck's Prelude and Chorale, written two years earlier, in 1884, and the Romance in C major, Op. 48, of Saint-Saens.

Germany
Majestic Marches

A Musical Visit to Kulmbach and the Tin Soldier Museum

The Places:
On a hill above the ancient town of Kulmbach stands the imposing 12th century Hohenzollern fortress of Plassenburg. Among various collections on display is the remarkable Tin Soldier Museum, with various figures and dioramas that recreate battles and mirror the great castle itself, with a variety of scenes from all periods of human history.

The Music:
The March has an inevitable part to play in human history. Marco Polo remarked on the use of music by the armies of China to terrify the enemy before a battle. Military music, however, has a more precise purpose, whatever alarm it may strike into the hearts of those who hear it. Drums and trumpets may serve as useful signals, to advance or retreat, to eat or to sleep. The same instruments and their near relations may serve to keep an army moving together, and may serve to inspire feelings of bravery and patriotism. At the same time a march can provide a suitable accompaniment to an occasion of solemnity, a wedding, a funeral or a state ceremony. The music chosen for this tour offers a series of Marches by different composers, culminating in Mendelssohn’s Wedding March.

Picture Format: NTSC, Color, 4:3
Audio Format: DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1, PCM Stereo 2.0
Region: 0 (All Region)

Also available on Blu-ray

Hector Berlioz
BENVENUTO CELLINI

Benvenuto Cellini – Burkhard Fritz
Teresa – Maija Kovalevska
Fieramosca – Laurent Naouri
Giacomo Balducci – Brindley Sherratt
Pope Clemens VII – Mikhail Petrenko
Ascanio – Kate Aldrich
Francesco – Xavier Mas
Bernardino – Roberto Tagliavini
Pompeo – Adam Plachetka
Innkeeper – Sung-Keun Park

Vienna State Opera Chorus
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Valery Gergiev, conductor

Philipp Stölzl, stage director and stage designer
Kathi Maurer, costume design
Duane Schuler, lighting design
Mara Kurotschka, choreographer

Filmed at the Großes Festspielhaus, Salzburg, 5, 10 and 15 August 2007.

Picture format: NTSC 19:9
Sound format: Dolby Digital 2.0 / Dolby Surround 5.0 / DTS 5.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, French
Running time: 164 mins
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

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BERLIOZ Benvenuto Cellini • Valery Gergiev, cond; Burkhard Fritz ( Cellini ); Maija Kovaleska ( Teresa ); Laurent Naouri ( Fieramosca ); Kate Aldrich ( Ascanio ); Brindley Sherratt ( Balducci ); Mikhail Petrenko ( Pope Clement VII ); Vienna State Op Ch; Vienna PO • NAXOS 2.110271 (DVD: 163:35) Live: Salzburg 8/5-10-15/2007


This is an eye-popping extravaganza in which stage business keeps pace with, and too often trumps, Berlioz’s most coruscatingly vibrant and scintillantly compelling score. Cellini appears in a helicopter at the rooftop porch of Balducci’s penthouse, framed against the New York skyline; robots help Teresa with her toilet (including shaving her armpits) as Maija Kovaleska delivers herself of her big aria with virtuosic aplomb; Ascanio, too, is a robot—Kate Aldrich deliciously does her “Tra-la-la” aria with head removed (at stage level); Pompeo is a pimp, and hookers are a significant portion of the Mardi Gras crowd; the wheedling Asian innkeeper brandishes an assault rifle; and so on. The animation of static moments—in terms of staging—is clever, entertaining, and often riveting. The Mardi Gras itself is a credibly incredible triumph of garish color, comic incident, choreographically turned hurlyburly, and drama. Even those who care little for Berlioz’s music will find themselves entranced by the spectacle, while those with some regard for the composer may be alternately delighted and appalled. Berlioz’s conception of the artist as a romantic hero is a major casualty. As Cellini, Burkhard Fritz is in heroic voice and magnificent swagger but portrays his man as a gangster; while, between Mardi Gras and his appearance at his atelier, the director has foisted upon him a gratuitous wound, allowing the camera to make much of his pained expressions and bloodied clothes. Why? Pompeo’s blustering aria, boasting his fencing prowess, has been transferred to Fieramosca, which makes no sense whatever as the latter is—and is played throughout to great comic effect by Laurent Naouri—a sneaking pantywaist. English subtitles render maîtres ciseleurs as “master engravers,” a literal translation that ignores Berlioz’s usage to mean master goldsmiths while making nonsense of the Dionysian hymn he lavished upon Cellini’s foundrymen. We never see the Perseus , the statue Cellini’s been commissioned to cast, instead, the mold he threatens to destroy as Pope Clement rebukes him is a picayune Winged Victory of Samothrace —another disturbing dissonance between Berlioz’s straightforward dramatic narrative and director Philipp Stölzl’s pointless, would-be-clever dinking. Within the often silly parameters just outlined, vocally and histrionically this production is beyond all praise. Valery Gergiev’s direction is surefire, though others—Sir Colin Davis, Sir Roger Norrington—have found deeper resonance through significant portions of the score, while the never less than virtuosic Vienna Philharmonic is massive where Berlioz is lean and sinewy. Nevertheless, one comes to the end stunned, thrilled, and viscerally moved. As the cast took richly deserved bows, I, alone in my hovel, stood and cheered! Naxos’s surround sound lets no detail of this teeming, overfull, overrich score escape, delivering all with overwhelming punch. Despite all caveats, highest recommendation.


FANFARE: Adrian Corleonis

The Places ò the tour of France takes US to Burgundy to the Pays de la Loire to Franche-Comté and elsewhere and includes glimpses of the 17th century Château de Cheverny with it's hunting museum and souvenirs of the chase and the Château d'Arlay with it's site for falconry. The Château de Bussy-Rabutain was rebuilt in the middle of the 17th century by Count Roger of Bussy-Rabutain exiled from the French court after his scandalous Histoire amoureuse des Gaules a literary preoccupation reflected in his collection of pictures. The restored gardens of the Château de Villandry are seen in their formal lay-out. The Music ò the music chosen to accompany the tour of the fertile and varied landscapes of France is by Beethoven and consists principally of his Pastoral Symphony a work that reflects his feelings as he recollects a visit to the countryside.

RUSSIA / UKRAINE / UZBEKISTAN

The Places
Peter the Great founded St Petersburg in 1703 on Swedish territory, a provocation to Sweden, then the most powerful state in the region. Over a few years, he created a new city with an outlet to the Baltic, a city to challenge Moscow and force Russia to face Western Europe. Victory over the Swedes at Poltava in 1709 secured the city’s future. The tour takes in Odessa, in the Ukraine, an important naval base for Russia on the Black Sea, and concludes with a visit to Uzbekistan.

The Music
Mussorgsky was originally an army officer, ending his life in intermittent government service, as addiction to alcohol took its toll. At his death in 1881, at the age of 42, he left much unfinished. His Pictures at an Exhibition was written in 1874 as a set of piano pieces, a translation into music of paintings, designs, models and drawings by his friend Victor Hartmann, who had died the year before, heard here in the colourful orchestration by Ravel. Borodin had a successful career as an analytical chemist, a professor at the Medico-Surgical Academy. His activities as a scientist limited the attention he could give to music, so that a number of his compositions remained incomplete at his relatively early death at the age of 53 in 1887.

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 60 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

• Against the backdrop of St Petersburg’s beautiful Court Capella, Eldar Nebolsin performs the piano concertos of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov with a passion and sincerity as palpable onscreen as live in the hall. With such evident pleasure and seemingly with ease, he transformsthe familiar into something fresh and wonderful. He is seen live with Vladimir Lande and theSt Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra. Bonus material shows Nebolsin as soloist in anintimate and equally engaging performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Sonata.In 2005, Eldar Nebolsin was unanimously awarded the Sviatoslav Richter Prize in the FirstInternational Piano Competition in Moscow, where he was also honoured with the specialaward for The Best Classical Concerto Performance. He enjoys a busy international careeras a soloist, recitalist and chamber-music player, appearing with conductors, orchestras andcolleagues of international distinction.

COATES String Quartet No. 9. 1 Sonata for Solo Violin. 2 Lyric Suite for Piano Trio, “Split the Lark, and You’ll find the Music 2,3” • 1 Kreutzer Str Qrt; 2, 3 Peter Sheppard Skaerved (vn); 3 Neil Hyde, (vc); 3 Roderick Chadwick (pn) • NAXOS 8.559666 (58: 51)


I get the feeling that Gloria Coates does not spend a lot of time worrying about whether or not other people enjoy her music. That is a compliment, not a complaint. Whether or not you like what she does, she does it with a very personal style and with great conviction. The present CD, the fifth of Coates’s music to be released under Naxos’s American Classics imprint, ranks very low on the list of CDs one would play as light background music during a convivial dinner with friends. Coates’s music, this CD included, forces one to consider why we listen to music at all, and to examine what we mean by “entertainment.” To my thinking, entertainment, in the usual sense of the word, is overrated. We need to devote equal time and effort to moving ourselves into new emotional and intellectual territories, even at the risk of causing ourselves a little pain.


Coates is an American who now lives in Germany. In an interview, she describes the German culture as “very serious and formal,” and comments, “One is left alone much of the time unless he plans ahead.” Is there anyone in the United States who is writing music quite like Coates’s? Not that I am aware of. Her music says difficult things—things Americans seem unwilling to say at this point.


This is the world premiere recording of her recent (2007) String Quartet No. 9. The work is in two movements, both of them slow, and both of them making an almost obsessively detailed exploration of texture and sound. The first is a canon and nearly a palindrome, although the materials thus treated are not only melodic but also textural. The long, siren-like glissando, a trademark of Coates’s music from the start of her career, appears six minutes in and produces an unsettling effect. The listener also is thrown off kilter by pitch, because the first violin and the viola are tuned down one quarter-tone. Glissandos occur in the second movement, albeit within a narrower range; imagine listening to the slow movement of a late Beethoven quartet on a turntable whose motor is giving out and from an LP that has been pressed off-center. As Kyle Gann writes in his booklet notes, “The atmosphere is unworldly, creepily dissonant and yet serene, a kind of music of the spheres.”


The Sonata for Violin Solo (2000) allows aspects of Coates’s compositional style to stand out in stark relief. The movement titles—Prelude, Fantasia, Berceuse, and Hornpipe—suggest Handel or Bach, or at any rate more “traditional” composers, but once again, Coates goes her own fascinating way.


One might think that Emily Dickinson would elicit a brighter response from any composer. All of the Lyric Suite’s (1996) seven movements are headed by a fragment from Dickinson’s poetry. The Belle of Amherst was a mystic and a visionary, though, and Coates’s music underscores the notion that much of Dickinson’s work was actually quite strange, considering the time and place in which she lived. Once again, unusual playing techniques, including strings tuned a quarter-tone flat, create a sound world that is eerily beautiful and queasy.


For Coates newbies, any of the discs featuring her orchestral works might be a slightly easier introduction. Nevertheless, I feel that the present CD is an honest representation of who she is and what she does.


The Kreutzer Quartet has participated in earlier Coates recordings, and the quartet’s first violinist, Peter Sheppard Skærved, has championed Coates for her music for two decades. (Neil Heyde is the quartet’s cellist.) It is hard to know what to say about the performances, except that there would be little point in performing and recording this music if one didn’t believe in it. Separately and together, the quartet’s members, plus pianist Chadwick, are committed to the task, and carry it out with deep concentration.


As usual, the cover art is a painting by Gloria Coates, whose visual art looks much like her music sounds. As the saying goes, when God gave out talent, she stood in line twice.


FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle

ZAIMONT Piano Sonata. Calendar Collection: Spring, Summer, Autumn. Jupiter’s Moons. Wizards. La Fin de Siècle. A Calendar Set. Cortège for Jack. Jazz Waltz. American City: Portrait of New York. Hitchin’. In My Lunchbox. Hesitation Rag. Reflective Rag. Judy’s Rag. Serenade • Elizabeth Moak (pn) • MSR 1366 (2 CDs: 155: 36)



ZAIMONT Piano Sonata. A Calendar Set. Le Fin de Siècle • Christopher Atzinger (pn) • NAXOS 8.559665 (65:55)


ZAIMONT Piano Sonata. Jupiter’s Moons. La Fin de Siècle. Hesitation Rag • Joanne Polk (pn) • ALBANY 617 (62:56)


Judith Lang Zaimont, now in her late 60s, has been a consistently and productively active presence on the American compositional scene since the 1960s, and I have followed her work—though not exhaustively—from almost as far back. She has won a generous share of awards and enjoyed a series of academic affiliations, notably on the faculties of the Peabody Conservatory, Adelphi University, and the University of Minnesota. She now lives in Arizona, devoting her time largely to composing. Although I have found her work collectively to be of variable interest, it has always impressed me with both excellent craftsmanship and a basic sincerity of expression, devoid of glitz or mere cleverness. Her basic stylistic roots are in a traditional 20th-century language, though updated in some pieces with sounds and techniques that entered the modern vocabulary after midcentury. But nothing I have heard of hers ever violates sound musical judgment or good taste. But what I don’t hear is a personal stamp, a recognizable voice that proclaims her identity, or a sense that she is sharing her deepest personal feelings. However, while such a recognizable identity often enables listeners to feel closer to a composer, it is not a prerequisite of artistic importance.


A pianist herself, Zaimont has composed a good deal of music for the keyboard. Her piano music represents much of her strongest work, and some pieces—such as A Calendar Set —have attained a well-earned popularity. The three releases discussed here comprise the vast majority of her music for piano solo, with some pieces—the Piano Sonata, for example—addressed on each recording, making comparisons inevitable. Although Joanne Polk’s release doesn’t include A Calendar Set , an Arabesque disc, titled Zones (Z6683), features her performance of that work. In addition I have a Leonarda LP that includes Gary Steigerwalt’s rendition of A Calendar Set . I will say at the outset that making these comparisons was the most difficult aspect of this review, as all three pianists are extraordinarily fine, and all three recordings are distinguished by performances that are both sympathetic and brilliantly virtuosic. Though one pianist may seem to grasp some pieces better, another captures some of the others more effectively. Consumers’ decisions will be based on factors other than excellence of execution. Mississippi-born Elizabeth Moak has been performing Zaimont’s music for decades, and built her doctoral work around it; her two-CD set—the culmination of her years of study and performance—is, of course, both the most comprehensive recording and the most expensive one, and includes the vast majority of her music for piano solo. Christopher Atzinger’s on Naxos features the most important pieces, and is budget-priced. Polk’s on Albany also offers a fine selection, and is full-priced.


Zaimont’s most ambitious work for piano solo is the Sonata (1999–2000). This half-hour work in three movements covers a good deal of expressive territory within the generally modern-traditionalist language. In ways that are hard to articulate, the work doesn’t have the feel of a sonata—a sense of businesslike goal-directedness propelled by an individual treatment of familiar formal designs. The first movement begins and ends atmospherically, and might even be described as improvisatory. However, the central portion boasts a strong assertive thrust—propulsive and quite challenging for the pianist. The second movement, which is described as a reflection on the slow movement of Beethoven’s “Pathétique” Sonata, is really much more than that. Again, much of the music is ruminative and improvisatory in character, although scherzoso portions of the movement provide considerable technical challenges for the pianist. The third movement is rapid and toccata-like for the most part, although this is relieved by some slower passages. All in all, the multiple tempos within each movement make following the basic structure only by ear a little difficult. But on the whole, this is a challenging and provocative work, and one that rewards multiple rounds of concentrated listening. As suggested earlier, all three pianists do more than justice to the work. If forced to select a preference, I would probably choose Polk’s as the one with the greatest technical assurance.


The other major work is the cycle A Calendar Set , which occupied the composer on and off throughout the 1970s, and was her first extended work for piano. As its title suggests, these are 12 character pieces, each associated with one of the months of the year. These subjective associations create an attractive, evocative, and convincing conceit. (More on this later.) Two of the pieces—July and December—are quodlibets that ingeniously weave familiar tunes (patriotic for the former, carols for the latter) into a subtle texture. These pieces are more traditional in style than the Sonata, with undisguised roots in the Romantic piano repertoire represented by Chopin, Scriabin, and company. I have been familiar with these pieces since shortly after they were completed, and I must say, they appealed to me upon initial exposure, and continue to do so today. Again the performances are all extremely good, but if forced to select one I would probably go for Moak, although Atzinger is more effective in some of the pieces, Polk in some of the others, and Steigerwalt in still others.


Interestingly, during the period when Zaimont was working on A Calendar Set , one of her publishers suggested that she compose another set based on the same months-of-the-year conceit, but designed to be somewhat easier to play, and with explicit pedagogical intentions. She fulfilled this request with Calendar Collection —12 pieces that are just as appealing to hear as the concert set, and reward serious musical consideration. Moak includes nine of the 12 on her recorded recital. Let me note here that while a good deal of the music included on Moak’s program was composed with pedagogical intentions and limited technical demands in mind, none of this music is any the less interesting for it, nor are the results so elementary as to be identifiable as student fare.


Jupiter’s Moons is a group of six short pieces, composed in 2000. Each of the pieces draws upon both mythological and geophysical associations from which to anchor its character. At this point I must voice a reservation I noted in my last review of music by this composer: Zaimont has a propensity for fanciful titles, presumably to offer gentle suggestions to guide the listeners’ imaginations. However, with some exceptions—most notably A Calendar Set —I find these titles to be more of a bother than they are worth. In most cases I find myself looking in vain for connections between the music and the images suggested. Rather than facilitating a grasp of the expressive intentions of the music, for me they are more of a hindrance.


The six pieces identified as Jupiter’s Moons generally inhabit a stylistic realm that most would term Impressionistic, with some reminiscences of Debussy, although the first one avoids both tonality and meter. Each piece is both evocative and engaging, and as a group they are delightful. But instead of movement titles such as “The Moons Swim in Orbit, “Europa,” “Leda,” “Io,” etc., I would have been content with “Six Preludes,” period. I have no principled objection to fanciful titles in general, but the associations must be universal enough to engender spontaneous confirmation in the listener—otherwise they are distractions. I find that Polk’s presentations of these pieces are somewhat more exciting and dynamic than Moak’s. If I have a criticism of the latter’s generally fine performances, it is that they tend to be a little understated and bland—especially the more difficult pieces. On the other hand, Moak is somewhat more effective in clarifying the textures, while Polk can sometimes be a little murky.


Wizards is a nine-minute piece in a single movement, composed in 2003. It is a fantasy that presumes to delineate the features of three distinct “Magic Masters.” The style is somewhat reminiscent of late Scriabin, although there is some hand-damping of the strings. Aiming to convey a sense of magic and mystery, the music is again quite challenging for the performer.


The nocturne La Fin de Siècle dates from 1979, and is another one of Zaimont’s most popular and frequently performed pieces. It is also another whose title—or in this case, subtitle—is both limiting and misleading, explicitly suggesting a work of retrospection—a venture into the language of a bygone era. But again, this seven-minute piece is much more than that: For one thing, it is no more alien to Zaimont’s natural language than are many of these other works, its agitated central section embracing a harmonic language that evolved decades after the turn of the century; for another, it is a superb and often beautiful work in its own right—not in the least hackneyed or preoccupied with retrospection, but, rather, spontaneous and improvisatory, although the listener who makes too much of the subtitle may readily overlook its breadth and depth of expression. The nocturne is included on all three discs discussed here, as well as on the Leonarda LP, and all four performances are excellent. Here I find it simply impossible to choose one as the best.


The remainder of this review is devoted to shorter, less ambitious pieces, all but one of which is found on only the Moak disc. Zaimont is fond of the ragtime genre, and has written several. Her Hesitation Rag is the most ambitious of those included here. Composed in 1998, the six-minute piece is quite an elaborate concert work, maintaining the essential elements of the genre, while reaching beyond its limited associations. It is included on Polk’s CD as well; she provides a fuller, more sonorous rendition than Moak, who is more delicate. The other two rags— Reflective Rag and Judy’s Rag —date from the 1970s. They are shorter and less ambitious, but no less delightful and engaging—and are worked out with considerable subtlety.


American City: Portrait of New York is a group of six short pieces that purport to evoke various images associated with New York City. What is most striking and remarkable about them is that five of the six were composed in 1957—when Zaimont was 12! If the prospective listener anticipates being called upon to indulge the composer’s shameless vanity, that listener is entirely wrong. These are mature, sophisticated, entertaining, and pianistically challenging vignettes that in no way betray their youthful origins, and won a number of auspicious awards at the time they were composed. Although she added the movement “Scrapers” in 2010, the composer insists that the five early pieces remain essentially untouched (the few subsequent modifications are indicated in the program notes).


Jazz Waltz is a short movement from a 1996 work called Suite Impressions . It is a pleasantly stylish piece, inventive both melodically and harmonically.


In My Lunchbox (2003) is a suite of five short pieces, with individual titles such as “Swimming Tuna,” “Celery Stalks,” “Dessert—Sugar Rush,” and other items typically found in a child’s lunchbox. It is designed for 11-year-olds who have been playing for at least four years. While its pedagogical intentions are explicit, and the pieces are more manageable technically, they are musically interesting enough to engage the attention of young pianists and those for whom they play.


Serenade was composed on a single day in 2006. Zaimont calls it an homage to big-band music and the film scores of the 1940s, but I do not hear these associations at all. What I do hear is an irresistibly lovely six-minute piece of great appeal and some real beauty. It has been approved for performance in a number of different instrumentations.


Hitchin’ is another short pedagogical piece, composed in 2007, and designed to engage the interest of high-school-age piano students. I am sure that it accomplishes its intentions, as it is infectious and lively. But it is not all that easy to play!


The most recent piece here is Cortège for Jack , written just a few days after Zaimont learned of the death of her former composition teacher Jack Beeson in 2010. She notes that she composed the piece on an involuntary and irresistible impulse. Although it is in triple meter, it has the character of a processional, solemn and poignant.


In conclusion, I note that these shorter pieces are played with considerable subtlety, artistry, and attention to detail by Elizabeth Moak, on what is her debut recording.


FANFARE: Walter Simmons