Craig Morris, former principal trumpet player of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has recorded brilliant solo trumpet versions of three Philip Glass classics. Morris’s new recording features works ranging from Glass’s constantly shifting ‘Melodies’ (1995) to the driving minimalist rhythms and figures of ‘Gradus’ (1968) and ‘Piece in the Shape of a Square’ (1967). ‘Melodies’ was written as incidental music for a play based on the novel, Un Captif Amoureux (Prisoner of Love) by the French author Jean Genet. Glass’s thirteen melodies cover a wide range of emotion, from touching and introspective to joyous and dancing. The visual element of ‘Piece in the Shape of a Square,’ is much more a part of the composition than it is in ‘Gradus.’ The music is set up in a roughly 10’ square, with one performer on the inside of the square and one performer on the outside. The performer on the inside moves around the square in a clockwise direction, while the performer on the outside moves around in a counterclockwise direction. Virtuoso trumpeter Craig Morris plays both parts on this fascinating recording.

Classical Music

Born in Buenos Aires in 1916, Alberto Ginastera lived to become unquestionably the most significant figure in Argentine music in the 20th century. This CD combines Ginastera's deep interest in the authentic folk music of his country alongside the more radical compositional techniques which gave his music such individual personality. Commissioned in 1941 for Lincoln Kirstein's Ballet Caravan, the 1943 Suite made from Estancia became the piece that launched Ginastera's international fame - the spectacular Danza Final is perhaps Ginastera's most celebrated essay in the style of the Malambo - an exhilarating explosion of kinetic energy. Also in 1943, Ginastera composed his Overture to the Creole Faust, and it is, in a way an appendix to the Estancia dances, since it again deals with the life of the gauchos. Ollantay is nearly a symphony. Composed in 1947 for Erich Kleiber, the three movement work takes its inspiration from a poem from the early Incan period. Pampeana No. 3 is even closer to the symphony that Ginastera never wrote. Pampeana No. 3, like Ollantay, is also in three movements. The title recalls rhythms and melodies of the Argentine pampas, and the second movement contains one of the most extraordinary rhythmic tours-de-force in all of Ginastera's output. The Odense Symphony Orchestra continues their new series on Bridge with this outstanding recording. Bridge discs which also feature the Odense Symphony Orchestra include: Bridge 9129 (Villa-Lobos Symphonic Music), Bridge 9122 (Poul Ruders Edition, Vol. 3) and Bridge 9100 (Nielsen Violin Concerto).

GERSHWIN Rhapsody in Blue. Rhapsody No. 2, “Rhapsody in Rivets.” Variations on “I Got Rhythm.” Piano Concerto in F • Anne-Marie McDermott (pn); Justin Brown, cond; Dallas SO • BRIDGE 9252 (72:53)


Gershwin’s four works for piano and orchestra fit so comfortably on a single CD that it’s surprising how rarely they all show up together. Currently, arkivmusic.com lists only two direct challengers: Sony’s compilation of Levant’s classic but dim-sounding recordings (with the preludes as a bonus) and a Conifer disc with performances by Michael Boriskin, which was tepidly reviewed by Michael Ullman in 22:5. This new Bridge issue, therefore, fills a significant if unexpected discographic gap. Even when held up against less complete collections, though, these classy performances stand high.


On the whole, the performances are characterized by a light (even Gallic) touch, not only on the piano but also in the orchestra, where the brass and percussion are generally kept under control. I don’t want to suggest that McDermott is tame or aloof: with her imaginative articulation and dynamics, coupled with her willingness to tease the rhythms and tone (listen to the Debussian colors before rehearsal 10 in the Concerto’s second movement), she invests the music with plenty of personality. But mercurial though it may be, that personality tends to be suave rather than aggressive, deft rather than determined, snappy rather than assertive. Rarely does she reveal the claws beneath her velvet paws. Thus, for instance, she sets out the big tune in the Rhapsody in Blue with a tenderness that nimbly sidesteps the self-indulgent gush that drowns, say, Leonard Bernstein’s performances; she dances through the climaxes of the Concerto, more apt to impress us with a wink than with a whack; she turns the Second Rhapsody, pushy even under Levant’s sophisticated fingers, into a delectable tin-pan soufflé. Justin Brown is a sympathetic partner, and the orchestra gives us considerable detail without a hint of pedantry (try, as but one example, the nifty upward arpeggio on the bassoon three measures before 7 in the middle movement of the Concerto). Frothy but sassy, these performances will lift your spirits.


I wouldn’t quite say that McDermott sweeps the field. Any lover of Gershwin will want to consider the Levant, too, as well as the Earl Wild/Arthur Fiedler recordings of the Concerto, the Variations , and the Rhapsody in Blue . Jon Nakamatsu’s intently modernist version of the Concerto on Harmonia Mundi (31:1), in state-of-the-art SACD sound, is also well worth knowing. But McDermott’s solidly engineered performances are surely among the front-runners. Enthusiastically recommended.


FANFARE: Peter J. Rabinowitz

Praised by The New Yorker as “a fresh and vital young participant in what is a golden age of American string quartets,” the Daedalus Quartet has established itself as a leader among the new generation of string ensembles. The Daedalus Quartet has won plaudits for its adventurous exploration of contemporary music, most notably the compositions of Elliott Carter, George Perle, György Kurtág and György Ligeti.

This release is volume 1 in a series devoted to the string quartets of George Perle (1915 - 2009).

"The sound and surface of his music is marked by a relative simplicity which is actually the underpinning of a rich and complex language based on principles he has developed and which owe much to the thinking of Bartók, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Berg. He has eschewed serialism, however, and his compositional approach is one which differs fundamentally from most post–Schoenbergian practice." - Paul Lansky, Princeton University

Includes work(s) by George Crumb. Ensemble: Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Thomas Conlin.

Voices From The Morning Of The Earth: A Cycle of American Songs from North and South, East and West (2008) is the sixth of seven American Songbooks that occupied George Crumb for most of the millennium’s opening decade. This recording (Volume 17 of Bridge's Crumb Edition) completes Bridge's cycle of Crumb's American Songbooks. The seven songbooks are approximately five hours in length, and constitute George Crumb's magnum opus. Also on this CD is Crumb's Idyll for the Misbegotten. The composer writes that “flute and drum are to me those instruments which most powerfully evoke the voice of nature. I have suggested that ideally (even if impractically) my Idyll should be “heard from afar, over a lake, on a moonlit evening in August.” The Sleeper with words by Edgar Allan Poe, transforms Poe's lugubrious meditation on a dead beloved (“Soft may the worms about her creep!”) into a haunting ode to a woman slumbering beneath the “mystic moon.”

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

Garrick Ohlsson completes his survey of Beethoven's monumental thirty-two sonatas, a project that the great American pianist has been working on for more than a decade. (Volume 3 of this series, won the 2008 Grammy for "Best Instrumental Performance".)

This imaginative recording project offers virtuoso treatment of folk music from Hungary and Taiwan, illuminating many aspects of the respective cultures. Winners of both the First Prize and Amadeus Prize at the London International String Competition, the Formosa Quartet was hailed as "spellbinding" by BBC Music Magazine. They have given critically acclaimed performances at the Ravinia Festival, the Caramoor Festival, and many other esteemed venues. Formed in 2002 when the four founding members came together for a concert tour of Taiwan, Formosa Quartet is deeply committed to championing Taiwanese music and promoting the arts in the land of its heritage, as well as exploring diverse and adventurous mediums for string quartet. In 2013 the members of Formosa Quartet founded the annual Formosa Chamber Music Festival, where they continue to serve as artist faculty.

Classical Music

Volume 4 of Bridge’s Fred Lerdahl series offers music composed over a span of four decades. Three recent pieces, Spirals, Three Diatonic Studies, and Imbrications, are recorded here for the first time and two earlier works, Wake and Fantasy Etudes, are re-issues. Spirals is scored for an orchestra of double woodwinds, two horns, two trumpets, percussion, piano, and strings. The two movements are of equal length, the first fast and brilliant, the second slow and lyrical. Three Diatonic Studies originated in a commission from the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival to write a variation based on the “Aria” of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Lerdahl later added two other diatonic studies to form the present suite. The brief Imbrications was written in 2001 in honor of the composer Andrew Imbrie’s 80th birthday. The inspiration for Wake came from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. The work was composed at the request of the legendary soprano Bethany Beardslee and was composed while Lerdahl was in residence at the Marlboro Music Festival. Lerdahl composed Fantasy Etudes in 1985. The piece is in one movement and is scored, like Imbrications, for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, and piano. The stunning performance here is by three-time Grammy-winning ensemble, eighth blackbird. Fred Lerdahl’s music is highly esteemed for having developed original harmonic syntaxes and formal processes, presented with expressive depth.

Includes work(s) by Brian Ferneyhough.

For Christian Wolff is one of Morton Feldman's final compositions, and stands alongside the four-hours-plus For Philip Guston, the 70-minute For John Cage, and the six-hour String Quartet II. Writing about hearing this work, Christian Wolff says that "I found the experience of listening to it beautiful and interesting - it moves away partly from our (Morty's, John Cage's and mine) original preoccupation with just sound and sonority into areas of self-awareness about listening, being a listener, as such, because there's so much time to be thinking of this and that as well as just listening." The California EAR Unit's performances of Feldman's For Philip Guston (BRIDGE 9078A/D) and Crippled Symmetry (BRIDGE 9092A/B) have received high praise from the international musical press.

The superb Horszowski Trio is heard here in their debut recording. The Horszowskis (Jesse Mills, violin, Raman Ramakrishnan, cello and Rieko Aizawa, piano) draw their name from legendary pianist, Miecyslaw Horszowski, who made one of his specialties the repertoire of the three composers presented here.