Southwest Chamber Music continues it's vibrant association with the musical life of Mexico with Aroma Foliado. A musical portrait of composer Gabriela Ortiz, five important works are represented from her colorful and diverse output ranging from 1991 to 2010. Funded by Mexico's FONCA, Aroma Foliado is a unique and rare collaboration between a Mexican composer and an American ensemble.

Clariphonia

Daniel Pollack first garnered the music world's attention when he became a prize-winner in the First International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition held in Moscow in 1958. This disc is worth it just to be able to read Pollack's essay called "Moscow Recollections" in which he details the trials and tribulations he had during this competition. You see the person he was in direct competition with was another American - Van Cliburn. To read about Pollack's account of learning five Russian pieces for the first round competition, instead of one out of five (because he had language problems and did not get a proper translation of the contest rules) or to read about his having to learn the Tchaikovsky First from memory in five days, is a fascinating read about music. Pollack made his debut with the New York Philharmonic at the age of nine, performing the Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School where he studied with Rosina Lhevinne, herself a gold medal graduate of the Moscow Conservatory. He continued his graduate studies at the Hochshule fir Musik in Vienna and in Siena, Italy. He was also selected as one of 12 pianists internationally to participate in a special Beethoven Master Class with the late Wilhelm Kempff in Positano, Italy. Pollack has held several visiting faculty positions including at Juilliard, Columbia and Yale's School of Music. Today he is on the faculty of the University of Southern California.

WILLIAM CORBET-JONES, PN - NIX

Here is as exciting a series of discs devoted to contemporary, American chamber music, as has appeared on any label in quite some time. Beautifully performed and recorded, this bargain priced set puts the lie to those who claim there is nothing much happening in the world of recorded music today. Think of it! A whole disc devoted to the music of Mel Powell! Southwest Chamber Music was founded in 1987 and is one of the most active chamber music ensembles in the United States. It presents series at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, Herbert Zipper Concert Hall at the Colburn School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles, and a celebrated summer festival at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino. The ensemble also provides weekly music education in the Los Angeles and Pasadena Unified School Districts. All the works heard on these twelve CDs have been performed by the ensemble prior to their recording; some a number of times. This accounts for the high artistic quality of this set which is indeed a remarkable achievement.

Includes work(s) by Morton Subotnick. Ensemble: Southwest Chamber Music Society.

Includes work(s) by Wadada Leo Smith.

Warren, E.R.: Legend of King Arthur (The)

Still, W.G.: Folk Suites Nos. 2-4 / Miniatures / Vignettes /

SCHONTHAL Canticles. Gestures. Self-Portrait. LIEBERMANN Piano Sonatas: No. 1; No. 2, op. 10, “Sonata Notturna” • Margaret Mills (pn) • CAMBRIA 1094 (58:30)


Ruth Schonthal’s Canticles (1987) is an imaginative piece that takes Hieronymous Bosch’s triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights as inspiration, replacing the pained symbolism with musical symbolism. There are three (untracked) sections: “Creation,” which includes high dissonance as well as upper-register pianissimi thirds representing the angels; “Garden,” a shimmering section that leads to “Hell,” the work’s battle scene (between the forces of Darkness and Light). I enjoyed Schonthal’s Sonata Breve on the Meditations and Overtones disc. This confirms her stature as an imaginative force in music. Mills gives a powerful and committed reading of the piece.


The work titled Gestures (1978) certainly lives up to its name. It is actually 11 short sound etudes. Musical material is shorn down to the very minimum. Occasionally the effect is Webernian; sometimes the musical surface is more fleshed out. This is certainly the most challenging of the pieces by Schonthal that I have encountered and one of the most rewarding. The Self Portrait of the Artist as an Older Woman dates from 1991. Schonthal attempts to illustrate both herself as a person and as a composer in this nine-minute piece, as well as injecting some of the frustrations she felt during the aging process (hence the anguished outbursts in the midst of plateaus of sweet serenity). Mills plays the nostalgic section toward the end with an almost music-box quality that is most affecting.


Lowell Liebermann actually studied with Ruth Schonthal for several years before attending the Juilliard School, so the present pairing of composers makes complete sense. These two sonatas have also been recorded by David Korevaar for Koch. Mills hits just the right tone for the gentle darkness of the Second Sonata (the “Sonata Notturna,” composed in 1982–83 for the pianist Stephen Hough and heard first in playing order here). The composer sees the work as a companion to his First Symphony. The feeling is of a music that is remarkably fragile, if not vulnerable even. Fugue plays a part, too (the second theme is a two-voice fugue derived from the first theme). Mills sustains the held-breath intensity well throughout.


The First Sonata dates from some five years earlier (1977), when the composer was a tender 15 years old. He himself premiered it at the Carnegie Recital Hall. Later, the work was dedicated to Stephen Hough. It begins with an Adagio (the sound world is distinctly related to that of the Second Sonata), but contrast comes in the form of the tricky little (1:07) scherzo, delightfully dispatched here by Mills. A shadowy Lento, well shaded by Mills, precedes the helter-skelter finale.


FANFARE: Colin Clarke

Tailleferre, G.: Violin Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2 / Pastorales /

BENNETT, R.R.: Violin Concerto / A Song Sonata / HELM, E.: C

Taylor, V.: Caribbean Suite / Still, W.: Breath of A Rose /

Piano Recital: Pennario, Leonard – ROTA, N. / LEGRAND, M. /

PROKOFIEV, S.: Oboe Quintet, Op. 39 / Overture on Hebrew The