Selections recorded in May and Decemeber 1995.

REVIEWS:
Billboard (11/27/99, p.54) - Recommended

Classical Music

'Valis' is based on a novel by Philip K. Dick.

Classical Music

The ensemble Hexagon (Susan Rotholz, flute; Alan Kay, clarinet; Matt Dine, oboe; Chris Komer, French horn; Michael Finn, bassoon; and James Winn, piano) begins its French odyssey in a most unusual way. Are these six players eating dessert before dinner by beginning their program with a trifle they often use as an encore, the last movement from Jean Françaix's L'Heure du berger? Well, perhaps: the remainder of the music on this disc is frequently of a much more serious bent, but the ensemble plays with such élan, so elegantly and yet with such a spirit of fun that you can't help but be swept up in the parade. The concluding Saint-Saëns Tarantella is delivered with similar good cheer and a light touch, nicely book-ending the disc.


But what comes between is no less impressive. The raucous opening and closing moments of the Poulenc Sextet echo the mood of the Françaix (and also show off the group's fantastic technical skills), and the players never lose the emotional threads of the middle Divertissement, though they twist and turn through segments that are alternately dreamy and sharp-tongued. Saint-Saëns' Caprice, written while the composer was on tour in Russia for the czarina, is a strange, meandering piece that never quite manages to cohere--but it still offers the players a chance to show off that lovely, creamy tone.


The Poulenc trio features some impressive performances, particularly Finn's extraordinarily crisp delivery in the opening Presto, Dine's gracefully singing tone in the Andante, and Winn's spiky jabs in the concluding Rondo. Albert Roussel's Divertissement flows beautifully, played at a wistful tempo and with seamless lines. The sound is ideally balanced between the players, something of a feat considering how tricky it can be to mike winds. I wish that these powerhouse players had a more expanded repertoire at their disposal; this recording is a real treat.
--Anastasia Tsioulcas, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

This enterprising disc contains all of Hindemith's chamber music featuring solo cello either alone or in combination with piano. The pieces cover a wide stylistic range, from the spiky, dissonant neo-classicism of the early sonata Op. 11 No. 3, to the warmer, almost Romantic work written in 1948. The humorous variations for cello and piano on the English nursery tune "A frog he went a-courting" ought to become an encore staple of chamber recitals. A string player himself, Hindemith clearly knew how to show off the cello to best effect. Even the comparatively difficult works have a fluency and musical logic that proves compelling at first listen, and none of them overstay their welcome. A lot of the credit for this music's favorable impression belongs with the cellist, Wendy Warner. Her accurate intonation and warm, singing tone prove a constant source of delight, and she's ably partnered by pianist Eileen Buck. These two superb players demonstrate conclusively that the success of so much of Hindemith's music really depends on sympathetic performance. Bridge's sonics flatter the music and the players. An excellent disc in every respect. [11/30/1999] --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

This selection is Volume 3 of Bridge's Complete Crumb Edition.
This selection received a Grammy Award for "Best Classical Contemporary Composition."

"The Bridge disc features the expert New York chamber group Speculum Musicae, and has an attractive rarity as opener, the Three Poems of Robert Frost, composed in 1942 when Carter was still an obedient, highly effective adherent of the 'open-air' Coplandesque style, but orchestrated with exuberant resourcefulness as recently as 1980...The account of Syringa (1978), the most complex and hermetic of the vocal works, with its superimposition of the soprano's Robert Ashbery poem on a collection of ancient Greek texts sung by the bass, may strike listeners (and especially attentive score-readers) as more careful than inspired. But as it proceeds it conveys the spirit of the work's intricate yet impassioned enquiry into the sources and spaces of creativity very well. Momentum is maintained, and the instrumental detail is clear and precise.

A Mirror on which to Dwell (1976) is less ambitious, though these settings of six poems by Elizabeth Bishop are marvellously refined in sonority the vocal line ranging from lingering lyricism to subtly-patterned declamation. Christine Schadeberg characterizes the texts alertly, especially the tricky syntax of ''O Breath''...

It is indeed gratifying to find record companies so prompt in acknowledging the importance of the Carter phenomenon, and with performances that, if not always ideal in every respect, are for the most part worthy of this extraordinary music."

-- Arnold Whittall, Gramophone [2/1990]

Elliott Carter’s two major string/piano duos – the Cello Sonata of 1948 and the 1974 Duo for violin and piano – here balance six of the short works for one, two or three players, tributes and playful arabesques, which have so unexpectedly thronged his latest decade of creativity. The result is an invaluable, kaleidoscopic introduction to one of the liveliest instrumental minds of our time. Fred Sherry and Charles Wuorinen fluently dispatch the four-movement Cello Sonata, the earliest and apparently most ‘traditional’ work in the collection. Yet this is where Carter first refined his ideas of metrical modulation, conflict and cross-purpose between players: mainstream Americana turning Cubist and many-dimensional. It’s also eloquent, even gabby, and volatile in the sense of forever aspiring to flight. In the single-movement, mosaic-like Duo the torrential discourse continues without any reference to traditional tonality or structure, but Rolf Schulte and Martin Goldray here turn in a far more amiable and beguiling version of this ragged, mercurial work than did Robert Mann and Christopher Oldfather two years ago on Sony. The short pieces, from the guitar study Changes (1983) to last year’s Gra for clarinet in homage to Lutoslawski, aren’t exactly miniatures, but relaxed fantasies of tone colour and technique: ‘tennis matches for the imagination’ is the striking image in David Schiff’s liner notes. Amiably and insistently they test the virtuosity of the individual instrumentalists, and the members of the Group for Contemporary Music rise joyfully to their challenges in nicely realistic, not over-bright sound.

-- Calum MacDonald, BBC Music Magazine

The second disc contains a recording of Cage reading his lecture "Composition in Retrospect."

This disc includes a brief interview (3'51") with George Szell, placed between the two chamber works.

REVIEWS:
Billboard (11/27/99, p.54) - Recommended