2015 GRAMMY Award Winner: Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance

American new-music sextet eighth blackbird, which won Grammy Awards for each of its last three Cedille Records albums, continues to connect with genre-spanning, cutting-edge composers on FILAMENT, a CD of world-premiere recordings of works by Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, and Son Lux, plus a Philip Glass classic.

The ensemble’s album, FILAMENT, was produced by Dessner, a Brooklyn-based composer, guitarist, and member of the Grammy-nominated, Billboard-charting indie rock band The National. The 16-page CD booklet features original artwork, photography, and design by New York-based artist and architect Karl Jensen.

Premieres include Dessner’s Murder Ballades and Muhly’s Doublespeak, both written for eighth blackbird, and Son Lux’s To Love and This is my Line, a remix created from the album’s other tracks.

Dessner, on guitar, and Muhly, on organ, join eighth blackbird for a live-in-concert recording of Glass’s mesmerizing Two Pages at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

The album’s title, FILAMENT, is a metaphor for the fiber of friendship, collaboration, and mutual influence connecting the composers and performers on the album.

REVIEWS:

Eighth blackbird has proven themselves quite the new music ensemble, selecting their works carefully, and bringing to the public music that is challenging and memorable. This release is no exception. It’s called “Filament” because it attempts to link friends and collaborators, and to a lesser extent, their influence on one another. I might also title it “A Tribute to Minimalism”, because without the influence of this much-misaligned genre, this music would not exist. This is a glorious album in glorious sound, marred only by the short playing time. Conceptions this good deserve more—maybe a sequel? – Audiophile Edition (Steven Ritter)

An invisible “filament” connects the experimental, Chicago-based sextet Eighth Blackbird with their composer friends Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, Philip Glass and Ryan Lott, known by his stage name Son Lux. Dessner’s Murder Ballades reflect the violent, pulsating energy of their title. Muhly’s Doublespeak is a retro blast of fast-slow minimalism in homage to Philip Glass. Glass’s Two Pages takes a single line to zany extremes, and Lux’s short To Love and This Is My Line pull all together with electronic remixes from the rest of the album. Neatly done, with wit.

-- The Guardian (Fiona Maddocks)

Lili Boulanger (1893-1918), younger sister of the more famous Nadia Boulanger, was a brilliant and precocious French composer who dazzled the world of European music at the beginning of the 20th century. At age 19, Lili Boulanger became the first woman to win France's Prix de Rome. In her short career, Boulanger advanced the impressionism of her era, finding her own voice in music that's expressive and luminous, moving and enchanting. Debussy descriptively described her music as "undulating with grace."

To place Boulanger's music in context, the CD offers songs by prominent French composers who had a connection to her music: Fauré, Ravel, Debussy, Messiaen, and Honegger.

Ursula Oppens has been a steadfast and masterful champion of Elliott Carter's music for more than three decades, and her recital encompassing the prolific 100-year-old composer's complete piano music clearly is a labor of love. What is more, her interpretations have evolved. For example, Oppens' 1998 Night Fantasies recording (Music & Arts) abounds with dead-on accuracy and drive. However, it sounds relatively earnest and literal next to this far more flexible, overtly contrasted, and color-conscious remake. Oppens also has rethought and internalized "90 +" to the point where her detached and legato articulations now are more sharply profiled and truer to Carter's written dynamics.

In her vivid, incisive performance of the early Piano Sonata Oppens particularly relishes the grand sonorities and overtones resulting from the composer's imaginative use of the sostenuto pedal, although her softest playing ultimately lacks Charles Rosen's magical tonal allure. Two recent works appear in their first recordings: Oppens imparts a strong sense of line via her precise yet unhurried handling of Caténares' rapid repeated notes (shades of Ravel's Scarbo); conversely, she forges a welcome, multi-dimensional tonal landscape from Matribute's continuous single-line texture. Superb production values (thanks to producer Judith Sherman and the Academy of Arts and Letters' marvelous acoustics) and informative booklet notes add further value to a significant release for Carter's centennial year, or any other year for that matter.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Franz Clement's name has come down to us as the dedicatee of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, but a year previously, in 1805, he wrote his own Concerto in D, and it's a major find. This is no orchestrally challenged, formally dysfunctional, tasteless virtuoso vehicle, but rather is a full-blown classical concerto nearly as long (40-plus minutes) as the Beethoven. The melodic material is consistently attractive--and just as importantly, equally interesting harmonically. Deftly scored, and of course wonderfully written for the violin, its lyricism clearly anticipates Beethoven's own work of 1806. If it has one defect, it's that the phrasing turns a little bit square now and then in the outer movements. But let's face it--by the standards of your average early-Romantic concerto (think Spohr and his crowd) this is a masterpiece.

It goes without saying that Rachel Barton Pine plays the work with the style and elegance that it deserves. While attentive to the opportunities for fireworks (and she plays her own excellent cadenzas both here and in the Beethoven), what stays most in the mind is her beautiful singing tone. It's the sort of sound that Beethoven must have had in mind when he wrote--as he so often did--"cantabile", and it makes both slow movements particularly memorable. Both here and in the Beethoven, however, I can imagine a bit more muscle in the first movements, a touch more oomph from trumpets and drums, and more fire in the Beethoven finale (the Clement strikes me as just about perfect). José Serebrier is one with Pine in adopting her highly lyrical, somewhat dreamy approach, though it's to both artists' credit that the music never bogs down or turns self-indulgent.

As we heard in Pine's previous, superb coupling of Brahms and Joachim concertos, the sonics are ideally warm and natural, and Cedille offers this set at two discs for the price of one (85 minutes of music in all). I would dearly love to give this release a highest rating simply for the discovery of the Clement, which every violin lover should hear both for its historical and real musical interest; but competition in the Beethoven concerto is just too stiff. Then again, no other label or violinist offers such an attractive and innovative coupling. So buy for the Clement, and consider the Beethoven a very serious bonus.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The reputation of Franz Clement (1780–1842) has come down to posterity on the two legs of his having been the dedicatee and first performer of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and of his having performed, between the first and second movement, a composition of his own devising, on the violin turned upside down (a “myth” that Clive Brown, who edited his Concerto for publication and has provided Çedille’s notes, puts to rest: the program mentions this trick having taken place during the program’s other half). The triviality of the one underpinning of his reputation balances the other half somewhat unfavorably. The emergence of his Violin Concerto in D Major therefore sheds new direct light on Clement as a composer, indirect light on Clement as a violinist, and lots of light of both kinds on Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. If some commentators have noted a connection between the style of writing for the violin in Beethoven’s Concerto and that of Giovanni Battista Viotti, the precise nature of that connection will almost certainly be reexamined as Clement’s Concerto becomes more familiar. Moments in the first movement will seem like déjà vu, even for those only passingly familiar with Beethoven’s Concerto, although similarities with Viotti’s détaché still abound. That first movement, although it’s marked Allegro maestoso, may lack Beethoven’s high moral seriousness and monumentality, but in the self-confident strutting of its first movement and in the cheerful gaiety of its finale (with solo passages erupting suddenly from the orchestral texture, as in Beethoven’s work), it is still obviously a country cousin, not at all unrelated. Brown notes that the two composers employed the same instrumentation (although not throughout). That might account for some of the similarity in sound; but the interrelationships penetrate farther below the surface, and aren’t limited to a few passages that might be taken as echoes. Clement’s second movement, longer than Beethoven’s, engages in rapid passagework in its central section. In eschewing outright display, Clement’s Concerto seems less like a violinist’s virtuoso showpiece than a forerunner of the symphonic concertos that would dominate so many pianists’ concerto-writing for the violin.

Rachel Barton Pine plays this newly published Concerto with an aplomb equal to its own, drawing a consistently strong and attractive tone from the 1742 ex-Soldat Guarneri del Gesù, a tone that the engineers have set a bit in front of the orchestral mass, without disturbing the overall still balance. Her own boldly violinistic cadenzas enhance the first movement especially, and also the finale (a Rondo, like Beethoven’s), although some might find that cadenza somewhat long for its context. However much light Clement’s Concerto may shed, then, on Beethoven’s, it’s attractive enough to hold the stage on its own, especially in a performance as convincing as Pine’s, with enthusiastic collaboration of Serebrier and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Pine and Serebrier change gears for Beethoven’s Concerto, in which the same instrumentation sounds more massive and similar passages for the violin more like definitive statements. Serebrier seems to make fairly frequent rhetorical micro-pauses in the tuttis and to energize their already stormy majesty. Pine plays the first movement with a lyricism that complements Serebrier’s more brooding orchestral pronouncements. (A related balance of musical ideas may be heard in Vadim Repin’s performance with Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic, 31:4.) Once again, Pine provides her own cadenza, in this case a long, sonorous, technically complex, and by the standards of the later 19th century, an idiomatic one. She’s also written a brief, transitional one between the second and third movements and an ingenious, more developed one for the finale, which she plays with aplomb. If Pine’s performance of Beethoven’s Concerto lacks the drive of Heifetz’s, the geniality of Francescatti’s, the nobility of Milstein’s, or the convincing rhetoric of Stern’s, it nevertheless offers mellifluous, sweet-toned violin-playing and thoughtful musicianship throughout.

For those who know Beethoven’s Concerto well, and for those who wish to explore its origins, the combination of these two Classical concertos should prove well nigh irresistible. Recommended.

-- Robert Maxham, Fanfare

Violinist Rachel Barton Pine, “an exciting, boundary-defying performer” (Washington Post) known for her “bravura technique and soulful musicianship” (New York Times), headlines a groundbreaking album of blues-influenced classical works for violin and violin and piano by 20th and 21st century composers of African descent.

World-premiere recordings include Noel Da Costa’s ‘A Set of Dance Tunes for Solo Violin,’ based on American fiddle tunes; Daniel Bernhard Roumain’s ‘Filter,’ which conjures the sounds of electronic dance music and psychedelic guitar; Errollyn Wallen’s ‘Woogie Boogie,’ a humorous and inventive reimaging of the boogie woogie blues dance; and Billy Childs’s ‘Incident,’ a single-movement violin sonata / tone poem written as a response to a fatal shooting by police. Another premiere is Wendall Logan’s violin and piano arrangement of Duke Ellington’s 1935 composition, ‘In a Sentimental Mood.’ The album’s title track, Dolores White’s improvisational ‘Blues Dialogues,’ draws on classical, jazz, and country music, as well as African-American vocalizations and a blues harmonic language. David N. Baker’s gospel-tinged ‘Blues (Deliver My Soul)’ evokes the ecstatic energy of a Black church service. Charles S. Brown’s ‘A Song Without Words’ was inspired by bottleneck guitar player and gospel blues master Blind Willie Johnson. Each movement of William Grant Still’s ‘Suite for Violin and Piano’ evokes the work of a different African-American visual artist. Clarence Cameron White’s ‘Levee Dance, Op. 26, No. 2,’ a favorite of violin virtuoso Jascha Heifetz, surrounds a traditional African-American spiritual with a playful, syncopated dance. Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s ‘Blue/s Forms’ and ‘Louisiana Blues Strut’ befit a composer with a legacy of achievements in the classical, jazz, modern dance, and pop music worlds.

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REVIEWS:

What a fascinating, beautiful disc… The disc’s title is valid: these really are ‘dialogues’ in the most creative and stimulating sense…Need it be said that Pine plays everything here gloriously… Listen to how unaffectedly she outlines the melody of Still’s central slow movement. In passages of virtuoso display, she’s as sure-footed and as agile as an acrobat.

– Gramophone

This is a superb CD, clearly one of Barton Pine’s real masterpieces. Highly recommended to any other classical violinist who wants to tackle these works, and listeners who enjoy jazz and blues-influenced classical music.

– The Art Music Lounge

This is an amazing disc. Barton Pine and partner Matthew Hagle are to be commended for such a thoughtful, gracious, and inspiring program, recorded in Cedille’s typical robust and clear sound.

– Audiophile Audition

The latest entry in Cedille's very worthy African Heritage Symphonic Series offers the most interesting repertoire yet. The four works included here, all by living composers, demonstrate a wide range of styles and compositional techniques that place their respective authors squarely in the mainstream of contemporary music. Whereas earlier issues focused on the process of "assimilation", of artists coming to grips with a musical culture that labeled them outsiders and aliens, and while even here prejudice and stereotyping to some extent determined the career options open to the two older composers (David Baker and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, born in 1931 and 1932 respectively), these works all project the feeling of having been written from the "inside".


The reason for this impression probably results from two factors: increased acceptance of African American composers as writers of "classical music", and probably more importantly, acceptance of African American popular music idioms (especially jazz) into the language of so-called "art" music. Baker's Cello Concerto and Perkinson's Sinfonietta No. 2 make this process very clear. The first work, written for the composer's friend and teacher Janos Starker and commandingly performed by Dutch cellist Katinka Kleijn, remains a gritty and harmonically dense piece in which the soloist communes with various sections of the orchestra in sustained dialog. It's chamber music writ large, its improvisatory feel pointing more powerfully to the composer's extensive jazz credentials than to his facility for more overtly popular elements. On the other hand, Perkinson's piece combines various folk songs with the famous BACH motive to create a Bartókian synthesis quite unlike anything else.


William Banfield's Essay for Orchestra reveals a touch of Sibelius in its accumulation of incident over long-held pedal tones, but its thematic material and interesting orchestral garb, with extensive percussion commentary accompanying all of the other instruments, create a very distinctive impression. The first work on the disc, Michael Abels' Global Warming, refers both to the environmental phenomenon and to the emotionally contrasting idea of improved relations among nations, and the music illustrates this dichotomy beautifully, with an opening (and concluding) evocation of heat and stillness enfolding a dance section in which imitation Irish folk music rubs shoulders with something vaguely Middle Eastern. It's delightful. The Chicago Sinfonietta's amazingly assured performances of this wildly diverse assortment enjoy perfectly balanced, warmly focused recorded sound. This is a very satisfyingly executed project that makes its points in the only way that ultimately matters: by offering excellent interpretations of interesting, thoughtful, and enjoyable music. [2/8/2003]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

VIOLIN LULLABIES • Rachel Barton Pine (vn); Matthew Hagle (pn) • ÇEDILLE 90000 139 (68:35)

BRAHMS Wiegenlied. YSAŸE Rêve d’enfant. REBIKOV Berceuse. BEACH Berceuse No 2. SCHWAB Berceuse Ecossaise. RESPIGHI Berceuse. GERSHWIN Summertime. FALLA Nana. FAURÉ Berceuse. SIBELIUS Berceuse No. 6. VIARDOT-GARCIA Berceuse No. 3. HOVHANNES Oror. STRAVINSKY Firebird: Berceuse. RAVEL Berceuse sur le Nom de Fauré. CLARKE Lullaby. SCHUBERT Wiegenlied. SCHUMANN Cradle Song. DUROSOIR Berceuse No. 4. GRIEG Berceuse. ANTSEV Au Berceau. R. STRAUSS Wiegenlied. SIVORI Berceuse. BERAUD Petite Reine Berceuse. STILL Mother and Child. REGER Wiegenlied

What a beautiful recording this is! It fills a real need as well. A mother or father can put this recording on and relax listening to its clear and present sound while feeding and bonding with the baby. This album also gives us a chance to see how composers from different cultures and different eras handled this particular type of composition. The CD opens with the universally loved Brahms Lullaby , which Rachel Barton Pine says her mother sang to her. You may have had the same experience. Mine sang it to me in German. Johannes Brahms wrote his Wiegenlied or Cradle Song in 1868 to celebrate the birth of a second son to his Viennese friends Arthur and Bertha Faber. Eugène Ysaÿe wrote his Rêve d’Enfant for his own son, Antoine, who would later be his father’s biographer and publisher. In 1913, he actually recorded it, too, at a very slow tempo. Pine and Hagle play the Ysaÿe and Brahms pieces at moderate tempos and with great delicacy of tone. Their notes fall as gently as rose petals. Vladimir Rebikov is a little known composer whose music leads into the compositions of Debussy, Scriabin, and even Stravinsky. Pine plays Amy Beach’s Berceuse (lullaby) using a warm toned mute that evokes daydreams. Listening to her play it is a calming antidote to everyday stress. Ludwig Schwab’s lullaby clothes the baby in an aural tartan coverlet as Pine and Hagle play the composer’s version of a Scottish tune. Pine also renders Respighi’s long-lined melody with a warm-toned mute while Hagle plays the piano part with the fleetest of fingers. We all know the tune of George Gershwin’s Summertime, but Pine gives us her own fascinating take on it. Pine uses a mute with a rather mysterious tone for Manuel de Falla’s Spanish Nana. Its words, “Sleep little star of the morning,” might hit a familiar note with parents! Gabriel Fauré’s pastel tones and Jean Sibelius’s charming melody bring us back to cooler lands and sweet invitations to slumber. Research shows that neither Rebecca Clarke nor Amy Beach had children, so of the women composers represented here only the famous singer and pianist Pauline Viardot-Garcia could have sung her lullaby to her own baby. The music of Alan Hovhaness always had a hint of mystery and this early lullaby is no exception. Pine and Hagle play it smoothly, so that its inventive harmonies fascinate the ear. The Firebird is a ballet based on a folk tale about a magical creature that sings at night and pecks at golden fruit. Its eloquent music spices up the middle of this disc with its unique harmonies.

Maurice Ravel’s music envelopes the listener in its gossamer fabric and its colors dance in the air. Rebecca Clarke was a violist and her contribution makes use of the violin’s lower strings. The delicate radiance of Pine’s rendition holds the listener in thrall. Like the Brahms, Schubert’s Cradle Song is a familiar tune. Here it is rendered in flawless form complete with gorgeous double-stopping. The Schumann Slumber Song is one of his lesser-known pieces. Like the Durosoir that follows, it massages the ears. So do the charming Grieg and Antsev pieces. I hope we get to hear more of the latter’s music. Pine and Hagle’s version of Richard Strauss’s Cradle Song strikes a delicate balance between lullaby and concert aria. Like Respighi, Camillo Sivori wrote his music with the long lines of bel canto and topped it off with a challenging finale that Pine tosses off with ease. Victor Beraud is the pen name of British composer G. Frank Blackbourne. He wrote his Lullaby for a Little Queen for piano. Edward Elgar then arranged it for violin and piano. African-American composer William Grant Still wrote his warm toned and inviting yet intense Mother and Child in 1943. Max Reger’s Cradle Song , a dreamy invitation to sleep, shows a very different side of his creativity. In addition to the music on this CD, there is a download available with three more lullabies: Alexander Iljinsky’s Berceuse No. 7 from the opera Noure and Anitra, Xavier Montsalvatge’s Nana, and Betty King Jackson’s Lullaby. These three show the variety of cultures that lullabies cover. Pine and Hagle play each of them idiomatically with great attention to detail and the ultimate in musical values. This is a truly beautiful disc and I think it will have great appeal to our readers.

FANFARE: Maria Nockin

New-music icon Ursula Oppens, who commissioned, premiered, and made the first recording of maverick American composer Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, a remarkable, monumental set of solo piano variations, has rerecorded that landmark 1975 work to mark its 40th anniversary. This riveting, audience-pleasing tour-de-force is a nearly hour-long set of 36 variations on a popular Chilean protest song from the era of Augusto Pinochet’s repressive rightwing military dictatorship. A bonus is the world-premiere recording of a new Rzewski work, Four Hands, a duet commissioned by and written for Oppens and pianist Jerome Lowenthal, her duet partner on the recording. Fiercely challenging to perform, it leaves the listener “… absorbed and exhilarated…” (New York Times) Oppens’s Cedille Records discography includes two Grammy nominees, Oppens plays Carter and Winging It: Piano Music of John Corigliano, as well as a recording of duo-piano music by Messiaen and Debussy, again with Jerome Lowenthal.

REVIEW:

Frederic Rzewski wrote his monumental variation set based on Sergio Ortega’s Chilean resistance anthem song “El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido” for pianist Ursula Oppens, who premiered it in 1976 and made its first recording a few years later. It’s a fine performance in and of itself, yet Oppens’ stupendous new 2014 recording for Cedille surpasses the earlier version in every respect. 

The opening theme, for starters, is more impassioned at its loud peaks, while the first six variations gain energy and character through Oppens’ heightened sense of voice leading. The dissonant grace note effect of Variation 7’s two-against-three rhythmic patterns is clearer than what many pianists make of it, while Variation 9’s counterpoint benefits from Oppens’ drier, more cogently contoured rethinking.

Variation 10’s splattered, Boulez-like gestures and zigzagging glissandos may not transpire so “recklessly” as the composer indicates, yet the inner logic of his meticulous dynamic markings comes out in Oppens’ faithful rendition. Variation 15’s improvisatory, folk-song-like quality spills over into more elaborate territory in Variation 16. Most pianists (Rzewski included) sustain a similar mood and tone between these two variations. Not Oppens, whose feathery pianissimos and una corda pedal deployment at No. 16’s outset create a magical tonal shift that accurately reflects what’s marked in the score.

Variation 19’s jagged motives, so often pounded out on the same dynamic and emotional level, convey a playful, conversational repartée. Young speed demons who insanely blur their way through Variation 21’s relentless finger twisters have no clue of the wonderful harmonic content that Oppens’ “sanely” fast fingers bring out. However, one can argue that Oppens’ faster and lighter treatment of Variations 26 and 28 plays down the music’s grim, march-like gravitas in contrast to Rzewski’s slower, sharper-edged interpretation. Just before the theme returns, Rzewski gives pianists the option to improvise a cadenza; Oppens’ first recording didn’t include one. Here, the pianist’s short, lyrical, and absolutely lovely improvisation incorporates ideas from Variation 25.

Overall, Oppens’ virtuosity, musicality, and insightful inspiration add up to the most gratifying People United on disc, alongside Rzewski’s own 1986 HatArt label recording (out-of-print on CD, but available as a download). The recorded premiere of Rzewski’s more recent and delightfully inventive Four Hands features Oppens and Jerome Lowenthal relishing the music’s tricky rhythmic hockets, airy contrapuntal traps, fleeting allusions to Romantic fare, and jazzy final fugue with masterful glee. No lover of 20th- and 21st-century piano music should miss this important release.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Lera Auerbach’s music has been compared to that of Shostakovich, and with good reason. She remains committed to a fresh use of tonality, without denying herself the full resources of modern technique. The 24 Preludes for cello and piano follow the traditional journey through all the major and minor keys. There are passionate adagios, a sardonic reference to the Magic Flute Overture (Prelude No. 14), waltzes, scherzos, laments, and giddy allegros. The scoring for cello and piano is clever and handled with a keen ear for color and timbre.

Best of all, the performances are sensational. Auerbach is a superb pianist, and she handles her own frequently virtuosic writing with aplomb. Ani Aznavoorian plays a mean cello, both here and in the Cello Sonata. As Auerbach points out in her notes, the two instruments are equal partners in this latter work, a gripping emotional outpouring that concludes with a lament marked “with extreme intensity”. The preceding third movement is a wild toccata that recalls similar moments in Shostakovich’s Eighth quartet and Eighth symphony. Auerbach also makes evocative use of microtones both here and occasionally in the preludes as well. It’s an interesting addition to her expressive arsenal, particularly when they appear in a tonal context.

The program concludes with a brief Postlude for cello and piano, actually a “deconstruction” of the twelfth Prelude. Grim and eerie, it closes the program on a note of mysterious unease. The sonics are gorgeous, with perfect balances and a very realistic perspective. Fans of good contemporary chamber music will want to own this; it repays repeated listening and reveals Auerbach as a true force in today’s music.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

An unexpected treasure! The first track of this hugely enjoyable survey of the piano music of Mexican composer Manuel M. Ponce (as he is described in Cedille?s presentation: the M is for Maria) is one of those deliciously ?lazy? numbers that haunts the imagination long after it has been listened to; the rendition here of the first of the Canciones mexicanas , Estrellita , also reveals the total dedication of Jorge Federico Osorio.


Ponce (1882?1948) is not a composer to come my way too often, and, if I am honest, not a composer that I would actively seek out. Yet the music recorded here is captivating: a mix of local color and rhythm (not least from Cuba) with something of the salon and an awareness of European models. I suppose Chopin is in there somewhere (well, he is!), an influence that sits very easily with the ?popular? cut of most of the music here, which is disarmingly inventive, wholly unpretentious, and which offers listening that is undemanding and pleasurable, yet varied enough to sustain 75 minutes of playing time. Estudios de concierto revel in technical display, and Osorio plays brilliantly the three pieces that constitute this set, as he does the whole recital, and he clearly loves the music, too, its song and dance, and its heartfelt (and unpredictable) harmonies. This is lovely music, exuberant and intimate, playful and touching.


This isn?t all of Ponce?s piano music, not by any means, for he wrote about 100 works for the instrument (I take this information from Grove ); here, in addition to those works played complete, we are offered four movements from Trozos romanticos and eight mazurkas (of which there are at least 23 examples). All very insouciant, then, and Osorio is the ideal musician to bring this music alive, which he does with a lilt and demonstration that is natural, convincing, and dedicated. Ponce lived in Paris for eight years; the last movement of Suite cubana reminds of Ravel and Debussy without aping either and the two studies dedicated to Artur Rubinstein contrast the slow and intense first one with the nervous and agitated second. The recording quality is first-class: the piano is forward and vivid but without being dry or boxy, and without compromising dynamic variety or color. I am delighted to add this alluring music to my collection, and to share an enthusiastic recommendation with you!


FANFARE: Colin Anderson

NOTABLE WOMEN • Lincoln Trio • CEDILLE 126 (67:20)


AUERBACH Piano Trio. GARROP Seven. HIGDON Piano Trio. SCHWENDINGER C’e La Luna Questa Sera? THOMAS Moon Jig. TOWER Trio Cavany


The Lincoln Trio is touring the United States, Europe, South America, and Asia with the selections played on this compact disc. Of the six women composers whose works they chose to record, two are very well known and their music is often played by symphony orchestras and chamber groups. Jennifer Higdon has won both a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy, while Joan Tower, who has been composing for more than 50 years, is widely accepted as one of this country’s most important living composers. Still, a recording that holds only compositions by women is highly unusual. Higdon and Tower have made fine contributions in any case and their music deserves to be in everyone’s collection. Higdon’s Piano Trio has two movements, titled “Pale Yellow” and “Fiery Red.” Anyone who has ever painted will enjoy the evocation of these very different colors. The yellow has a great deal of white in it and its music as played by the Lincoln Trio is lyrical and tuneful with pastel values. The red, on the other hand, is all but too hot to handle. Its dissonance is controlled savagery. There is another recording of this piece on Naxos, but it was made live and the sound is not nearly as clear and present as on the Cedille disc.


Tower is represented by her trio cleverly called Cavany. It was co-commissioned by the La Jolla Music Festival in California, the Virginia Arts Festival, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York. Since it was a three-way co-commission, it has a three-note motif. It sounds simple but it actually requires considerable virtuosity from each of the able players. The resulting music is accessible and has already started to enter the repertoire.


Lesser-known composers on this CD include the wildly inventive, Russian-born Lera Auerbach, who now composes in New York City. Stacy Garrop’s Seven was written in memory of her father. Laura Elise Schwendinger’s C’e La Luna Questa Sera? makes the listener wonder if it will be safe to walk in the moonlight, while Augusta Read Thomas’s Moon Jig is an invitation to dance into the night.


This compact disc was produced and engineered by Grammy Award-winner Judith Sherman. The sound is clear, the balances seem natural, and the sound of the trio is close to what you would hear if you were listening to them play in a small hall with good acoustics. This is the premiere recording of the works by Tower and Schwendinger. The Lincoln Trio plays all these pieces with exquisite taste, so this disc would be an important addition to any library.


FANFARE: Maria Nockin

Czech composer Jan Vorišek (1791-1825) was a talented musician just beginning to make a name for himself, particularly as a composer of piano music, when he died prematurely of tuberculosis. The excessively enthusiastic notes to this release take full advantage of speculative historical hindsight and describe his orchestral style as an amalgam of Beethoven's (which he may have known) and Schubert's (which he certainly didn't), asserting in passing that "Beethoven was never a great melodist...(!)" This hardly corresponds to the reality of what you actually hear on the disc, but it represents the only questionable aspect of this otherwise splendid production.


Vorišek's style arises directly from the classical language of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Of incipient Romanticism or the Schubertian long melodic line there's nary a trace, and the music is none the worse for that. His single symphony might pass for early Beethoven: indeed, the end of the first movement exposition apparently lifts a famous passage directly from the finale of the older composer's Fourth Symphony, but this doesn't diminish Vorišek's modest originality. You can hear this at work, among other places, in the characterful use of timpani at the very beginning and in the wonderfully passionate minor-key opening of the slow movement. For some time now, the reference recording of this piece has been Charles Mackerras' reading on Hyperion with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Paul Freeman does him one better, having a superior orchestra, more tactile recorded sound, and slightly broader tempos that, combined with punchier accents (especially in the first movement), give the piece an appropriately grander stature. Let's just say that Freeman evidently views the work as closer to Beethoven while Mackerras places it closer to Haydn and Mozart.


Mackerras couples the Vorišek symphony with another singleton effort, by Arriaga. Cedille gives us more Vorišek, his marvelous Mass in B-flat, which (I believe) receives its CD debut recording here. This piece really is a find. Close in style to the language of Haydn's late masses, it contains numerous original touches, such as the thrilling augmentation of the fugue subject toward the end of the Gloria, an almost violent Crucifixus characterized by syncopated rhythms and jagged interjections from trumpets and drums, a sweetly lyrical second Hosanna following the Benedictus, and a startling ending scored for pianissimo timpani and brass. Its stylistic provenance may be clear, but there's no other mass setting quite like it, and fans of choral music really owe it to themselves to give it a listen.


Once again Freeman turns in an excellent performance (though he should have had a soloist intone the opening lines of the Gloria and Credo, as Vorišek, designing the work for a genuine liturgical setting, leaves these to the officiating priest). His soloists manage their assignments capably, the Prague Chamber Chorus sings with appropriate fervor, and the recording copes with the vast reverberation of the Rudolfinum in Prague very well. At the loudest moments the textures tend to thicken a bit, but this seems primarily a result of Vorišek's tendency to keep all of the parts close to their middle register, creating a certain density of sound (and I suspect making the work easier to perform by early 19th century church choirs). This is, in any case, a major release and a very pleasant surprise. Good work, Cedille.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The viola d’amore is a curious beast. It has extra strings (like the baryton) that exist for no purpose other than to provide resonance, producing a fuzzy timbral halo that sweetens the slightly nasal, husky tone of the instrument, rather like a sort of mild continuous vibrato. When played with perfect intonation such as we might expect from Rachel Barton Pine, the result is captivatingly mellow and expressive, even in virtuoso passages. Vivaldi composed eight concertos for viola d’amore, and here they all are, smartly gathered together and performed to the hilt.

Although Vivaldi limited himself tonally in these works (to D, F, and A, with four in D minor), the instrument’s unusual tunings, combined with inventive scoring, ensure variety and contrast. The Concerto in F major pits the viola d’amore against a wind ensemble of oboes, horns, and bassoon, with the oboes and horns muted. I’m not sure what a muted baroque oboe is, but they sound lovely here and the horns also never turn gnarly–they really do complement the timbre of the viola d’amore. There’s also a double concerto, RV 540, for viola d’amore and lute, with the superb Hopkinson Smith on hand to partner Barton Pine.

The players of Ars Antigua accompany with evident relish, although as usual with today’s period instrument groups the strings could use some natural vibrato in the slow movements. Leaving it out or minimizing it the way they do is neither stylish nor “authentic”, but when the playing itself is so pointed and in tune it matters very little. The fact that the sonics are drop-dead gorgeous and the balances absolutely perfect also counts for a lot. If you thought that Vivaldi all sounds the same, consider this release as a welcome corrective.

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday

Trio Settecento, the “superlative Chicago-based early music ensemble” (Gramophone) presents Italian Baroque composer Francesco Maria Veracini’s monumental Opus 2 Sonate Accademiche for violin and continuo. It’s a cosmopolitan collection of 12 sonatas of breathtaking scope and pan-European influences – a set of sonatas unlike any other of the era. Veracini’s Sonate Accedemiche is both an homage to his fellow-countryman Arcangelo Corelli and an original masterpiece in its own right.

Billboard chart-topping violinist Rachel Barton Pine, “one of the rare mainstream performers with a total grasp of Baroque style and embellishment” (Fanfare) and her colleagues in Trio Settecento, cellist John Mark Rozendaal, and harpsichordist David Schrader, bring their “refreshing, life-enhancing Baroque playing” (Chicago Tribune) to these sonatas infused with melodies imported from Scotland, Dalmatia, Poland, the Canary Islands, and rural France.

Cellist Ani Aznavoorian and pianist Marta Aznavoorian, each a renowned soloist and chamber musician in her own right, together celebrate the sounds of their ancestral homeland on Gems from Armenia. The album marks the Chicago-raised sisters’ recording debut as the Aznavoorian Duo. Their panoramic survey of Armenian classical music opens with ancient folk songs arranged with haunting harmonies by early 20th-century Orthodox priest, composer, and musicologist Komitas Vardapet. The Armenian musical renaissance of the Soviet era finds expression in Aram Khachaturian’s glorious ode to his hometown of Yerevan; Arno Babajanian’s impassioned tribute to his mentor Kachaturian; the early Sonata for Cello and Piano by Avet Terterian, whose admirers included Dmitri Shostakovich; and the Impromptu of Alexander Arutiunian, winner of many Soviet and Armenian musical honors and awards. Contemporary voices include Serouj Kradjian, whose “Sari Siroun Yar” is an arrangement of an Armenian troubadour love song. Vache Sharafyan’s Petrified Dance is haunted by the memory of Armenian soldiers lost in recent battles. American Peter Boyer’s Mount Ararat, commissioned for this project and receiving its world-premiere recording, evokes the snow-capped twin peaks of Biblical fame central to Armenian national and religious identity.

Third Coast Percussion’s Paddle to the Sea transports listeners into a realm of imaginative sounds and world-premiere recordings evoking the aquatic world. Anchoring the album is the Grammy Award-winning ensemble’s original new collaborative composition Paddle to the Sea. The fearsomely talented foursome conceived it as a live soundtrack to the charming, Oscar-nominated 1966 film of the same name, based on a classic children’s story about a Native Canadian boy who carves a wooden figure called Paddle-to-the-Sea and launches him on a solo canoe voyage to the ocean. The Dallas Morning News called Third Coast’s concert performance “arresting and enjoyable.” TheaterJones called it “unforgettable” and said, “There was something magical about the performance, but it is almost impossible to describe the experience in mere words.” In composing Paddle to the Sea, Third Coast found a wellspring of ideas in the other works they’ve included on the album. Jacob Druckman’s Reflections on the Nature of Water revels in textures and timbres unique to the marimba as it explores the different characters water can embody. Third Coast plays its own arrangement of selections from Philip Glass’s 12 Pieces for Ballet (originally composed for piano) — also drawing inspiration from Brazilian group Uakti’s multi-instrumental version, titled Aguas da Amazonia. The final leg of Third Coast’s waterborne adventure is Zimbabwean Musekiwa Chingdoza’s arrangement of Chingwaya, a song from the Shona tradition used to call water spirits.

REVIEW:

Today’s percussionists are amazing virtuosos, and the members of Third Coast Percussion play with astonishing precision and sensitivity throughout this intelligently planned recital built around the theme of “water” in many of its forms. There are two major works, the most important of which is Jacob Druckman’s amazing marimba solo “Reflections on the Nature of Water.” Its six movement are broken into pairs, and spread throughout the disc. As the idiom is strongly atonal, it makes a refreshing contrast to the mellow harmonic syntax of the remaining pieces.

The other major work is Third World Percussion’s original film score Paddle to the Sea. The movements have evocative titles, some presumably taken from the images to which they correspond: The Lighthouse and the Cabin, Open Water, Nagara, The Locks, etc. Other bits are simply evocative and more impressionistic: Flow, Thaw, Sanctuary, Release. The entire work plays for about thirty-five minutes, and despite the considerable skill that obviously went into its crafting, it doesn’t seem to have much musical substance. It sounds like background, and presumably suits its purpose admirably, but you may well feel differently.

Also interspersed with the other items are four superbly made transcriptions from Philip Glass’s score to Aguas da Amazonia, easy on the ear and magnificently played. The last of them, Amazon River, brings the program to a satisfying conclusion. Finally, the players toss in a Zimbabwean song of the Shona people, Chigwaya, supposedly used to call water spirits. It’s charming, but also musically ephemeral. It would have been interesting to hear the song used as the basis for something more extended in form.

The bottom line here is that the performances are amazing, the music of variable quality but never gratuitously difficult or off-putting, and the engineering is perfect. You make the call.

– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)

This is the first installment in the Pacifica Quartet's highly anticipated, four-volume CD survey of the complete Shostakovich string quartets: The Soviet Experience: String Quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich and his Contemporaries. The Soviet Experience is the first Shostakovich quartet cycle to include works by other important composers of the Soviet era, adding variety and perspective to the listening experience. This superbly performed series of audiophile recordings, produced and engineered by multiple Grammy Award winner Judith Sherman, will appeal to everyone interested in great Russian music of the 20th century. It's also a great value: each two-CD installment is priced as a single CD.

REVIEW:

Cedille certainly produces some of the smartest “concept” albums in the classical music business today, because the concept always seems to work musically. Now the Pacifica Quartet is one of the best chamber ensembles out there, as its Mendelssohn recordings for this same label attest. Even so, there’s no dearth of fine Shostakovich cycles, from the Borodin Quartet to the Emerson. These performances, every bit as fine as those, would be excellent by themselves, but they do risk getting lost in the discographic shuffle. So it was an inspired idea to pair them in this series with other important works in the same medium by Shostakovich’s contemporaries. I’m not sure if this adds up to a “Soviet Experience”, whatever that is, but it does make for some great listening.

The four Shostakovich quartets offered here constitute the heart of the cycle, culminating in the incredibly popular (amazing because musically it’s very sad) Eighth Quartet. In this latter work, the Pacifica Quartet finds a perfect balance between technical polish and raw intensity, nowhere more so than in the ferocious second movement. In Quartet No. 5, with its complex outer movements, the players pace the music with an unerring feeling for tension and relaxation. Even the slender Seventh, Shostakovich’s shortest quartet, has an unusual measure of cogency and expressive depth.

Miaskovsky’s Thirteenth Quartet, his last, is a splendid work: conservative to be sure, but so beautifully written. The scherzo, marked “Presto fantastico”, displays a vast quantity of color and texture, but then the entire work belies the notion that the quartet medium tends toward the monochrome. The thematic invention is also surprisingly arresting for this composer; some of the symphonies seem bland in comparison. Once again, it would be difficult to imagine a finer performance, and the engineering allows the players’ attractive sonority and well-balanced ensemble work to speak with total naturalness. A great start to a very promising series.

-- ClassicToday.com (David Hurwitz)

MEANWHILE • eighth blackbird • CEDILLE 90000 (68:28)


MAZZOLI Still Life with Avalanche. HUREL _…à mesure. ETEZADY _from Damaged Goods. HARTKE Meanwhile: Incidental music to imaginary puppet plays. GLASS Music in Similar Motion. ADÈS Catch


Eighth blackbird has always impressed me with their unstoppable combination of fresh taste and virtuosic playing. They’ve gone from strength to strength in their series of albums, and this might well be my favorite. Whether I like all the pieces or not doesn’t really matter: If I did, it probably would mean they weren’t reaching out broadly enough, and what really matters is that the group plays as though it likes them.


Stephen Hartke (b. 1952) contributes the “title track” for the disc, Meanwhile (2007). It’s a micro-suite, referencing a personal re-imagining of Javanese puppet theater, yet I also hear echoes of Stravinsky from L’Histoire du Soldat . Perhaps the most consistently striking thing about the piece, though, is its sound world. It has dazzlingly imaginative percussion writing (the first movement has an insistently groovy hammering of three flexatones, for example). It’s a feast of little sonic plates, served with dizzying speed.


Missy Mazzoli (b.1980) opens the program with her Still Life With Avalanche (2008). She’s perhaps the most visibly successful composer of her generation, and fronts her own indie (all-female) rock band Victoire. The music is fluent and propulsive, but it moves me the least of the works here. The form for the majority of pieces I’ve heard by the composer is a chaconne (with repeating bass line), and even though she livens it here with polytonality, it still feels a little predictable to me. Others, I know, will disagree.


Philippe Hurel (b. 1955) is the most explicitly modernist composer on the program. His … à mesure (1996) feels like a very “post-Boulez” piece, in its evident rigor; its relentless motoric textures; and its sense of a complex undergirding system. But while formalistic, it’s not apparently serial. One hears constant repetition and sequencing of motives; indeed one could even reference minimalism in its obsessive cycling…except for the fact that there also seem to be processes at work that “eat away” at the material to distort it and trip it up (an approach owing something to Ligeti). His involvement with computer music is evident not only in the work’s structural logic but also in the slow drifting harmonies of its conclusion, which have a very “electronic” sound, even though they are all acoustic, emanating from the sextet.


Catch by Thomas Adès (b. 1971) is mercuriality incarnate. In just over nine minutes, the piece runs through a dazzling sequence of states and moods, at times somber, at others frenzied. Things can sound very raw, contrasts can be unnerving, and yet one never doubts the commitment of the composer to the resultant sounds and harmonies. It’s an almost sinister display of precociousness. Along with the Hurel, this is the most crazily virtuosic music on the program.


Philip Glass needs no introduction or explanation by this point. He’s not my favorite minimalist, but his presence on the program as a sort of elder statesman is strangely welcome, and I also salute the blackbirds for their selection of one of the composer’s early (1969), radical, and pathbreaking pieces, from the time when his “absolute” music was perhaps at its height of originality. And Roshanne Etezady (b.1973) is represented by two movements of her Damaged Goods. I’ve enjoyed almost every piece of the composer I’ve encountered, and these are a nice pairing; “About Time” is dark and mournful, while “Eleventh Hour” is a real rhythmic rush and the perfect closer to the program.


Eighth blackbird’s taste is stylistically omnivorous. They tend to avoid any school of composition in favor of real personality and high imagination. The result is a rare mix of substance and entertainment. I did mention that they’re able to negotiate all the subtleties of these different languages with equal virtuosity, didn’t I? Also, I salute them for sticking with the plucky Cedille label, which has been one of Chicago’s greatest cultural ambassadors for a couple of decades now. A wonderful disc.


FANFARE: Robert Carl

The Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet and multiple Grammy-winning guitarist Sharon Isbin join forces for an uncommon album of music for strings and guitar from the Baroque to the mid-20th century. Souvenirs of Spain & Italy is the first joint recording by these renowned artists and marks Isbin’s Cedille Records debut. The program spotlights Italian-born composers influenced by Spanish idioms. Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Quintet for Guitar and String Quartet, Op. 143, is a seldom-heard gem demanding virtuosity from every player. Written for guitarist Andrés Segovia, it’s “an urbane work, rich in vibrant themes and dialogues among individual lines,” critic Allan Kozinn writes in the liner notes. Isbin and the Pacifica play Emilio Pujol’s guitar arrangement of Antonio Vivaldi’s lute Concerto in D Major, RV 93. Isbin’s guitar work in the dreamlike, meditative Largo movement features her own Baroque ornamentation. Luigi Boccherini’s Quintet for Guitar and String Quartet in D Major, G. 448, melds the emerging classical style of late 18th-century Vienna with hints of Spanish flamenco. Spanish composer Joaquín Turina’s string quartet movement, La Oración del Torero, Op. 34, evokes the fervor of a matador’s private prayer before entering the bullring.

REVIEWS:

At least since the days of lutes and viols composers and performers recognized and exploited the favorable combination of plucked and bowed strings. And yet we don’t often hear such a lineup these days; if we do it’s usually the same relatively small roster of works, most notably including the Vivaldi concerto heard on this recording, justly popular for its catchy, lively outer movements and beguiling (oft used, and abused) Largo. While the list of most commonly performed pieces may not be extensive, you may be surprised to learn, as I was, that the rather special genre highlighted on this program–guitar and string quartet–boasts more than 300 works, ranging from the 18th century to the present, by composers from Boccherini to Brouwer, Diamond to Dougherty. (I learned this from an article in the Spring 2019 issue of Classical Guitar magazine, which I recommend to anyone interested in this subject.)

The rest of the program assembled here, by an it-doesn’t-get-any-better-than-this group of musicians, constitutes an easy and engaging introduction to this repertoire, beginning with another favorite, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Quintet Op. 143, written in 1950 for Andrés Segovia. Much of its popularity certainly stems from its knowing, skillful writing for this particular combination of instruments that showcases the guitar while also exploiting the textural, melodic, and harmonic possibilities of the string quartet, especially memorable in the affecting second movement, Andante mesto, which the composer declared to be his “favorite”. Nowhere is the guitarist’s voice more articulate or expressive as here, or in the following Scherzo.

Boccherini is another big name, and his D major quintet, like his many other “guitar” quintets, was fashioned from already existing, non-guitar chamber works. It’s a fine piece whose chief attraction is its–very attractive–final movement, appropriately titled “Fandango”, which is definitely a crowd-pleaser, enhanced by castanets and tambourine. While there’s no denying the sheer, easy pleasure of listening to the above-mentioned guitar/strings pieces, I found one of my favorites–next to the Castelnuovo-Tedesco slow movement and Boccherini Fandango–to be Turina’s 1925 work La oración del torero (The bullfighter’s prayer), originally written for a type of Spanish lute quartet, but later arranged by the composer (as heard here) for string quartet. It’s moody and gay and colorful and dramatic and eloquent–the sort of piece you would be grateful to hear in any string quartet recital. Who cares if it doesn’t remind you of a prayer, or a bullfighter: it’s an excellent piece.

Sharon Isbin needs no introduction to any classical guitar fan, or to anyone who’s paid more than casual attention to the classical music and performance scene since the 1980s. One of the world’s greatest advocates for her instrument, award-winner, teacher (founding director of the guitar department at Juilliard), pioneer in new repertoire, Isbin’s appearance here informs the music with an authority–enlivened by her unique ornamentation and occasional improvisatory licks–that elevates the performances far beyond the merely respectable or routine efforts of some of her very competent colleagues. And the Pacifica Quartet, commanding its own list of impressive achievements and honors, is a more than worthy partner. Perhaps we may even look forward to a further exploration of guitar/string quartet repertoire by these musicians? Brouwer? Daugherty? Miguel Bareilles? Gabriela Lena Frank? Thanks for this–and we’ll be watching.

– ClassicsToday (10/10; David Vernier)

This release on Chicago’s Cedille label features mostly well-worn pieces for guitar and ensemble; the ensemble here is the Pacifica String Quartet. The most familiar of all is the Vivaldi Guitar Concerto in D major, RV 93, heard here in an arrangement by Emilio Pujol and tinkered with by Isbin herself. Her execution here is flawless, and the effect is haunting. This is a treat for fans of Isbin, who’s doing more teaching than recording these days.

– All Music Guide (James Manheim)

The Civitas Ensemble, an enterprising chamber group founded by Chicago Symphony Orchestra musicians, teams up with Czech violin virtuoso Pavel Šporcl and his wildly popular Gipsy Way Ensemble for a groundbreaking collaboration at the crossroads of Western classical and Romani musical traditions.

Alla Zingarese (“in the Gypsy way”) embraces the past with new arrangements of well-loved, Gypsy-infused works by Brahms, Enescu, Hubay, and Sarasate, while celebrating the present with new music by noted Czech composer Lukáš Sommer, written for the combined forces of Civitas’s violin, clarinet, cello, and piano and Gipsy Way’s violin, viola, string bass, and cymbalom (hammered dulcimer), plus a Sommer piece dedicated exclusively to Civitas. All the arrangements and Sommer’s two original compositions are world-premiere recordings. Highlights include Šporcl’s new version of his own Gipsy Fire, the title track from an earlier, best-selling Gipsy Way album. Alla Zingarese marks the Civitas Ensemble’s recording debut and the Cedille label debut for Gipsy Way. Years in the planning, the project is the outgrowth of the enduring friendship between Šporcl and Civitas violinist Yuan-Qing Yu dating back to their student days. Civitas and Gipsy Way recorded the album after premiering the program at packed concert halls in Prague and Chicago. The Chicago Tribune found it “unique” and “exhilarating.” Chicago on the Aisle called it “a trip through musical history . . . and a venture into new musical territory with surprises aplenty.”

KURKA: Good Soldier Schweik (The)

Review quotes about "Lyric for Strings" by George Walker:

"Deserves to be as popular as the string elegies by Grieg, Faure and Elgar". Classical New Jersey
"Intense, haunting, lyrical beauty" News Journal, Mansfield, OH
"Hushed beauty and passionate intensity" American Record Guide
"A gorgeous find" Cincinnati Enquirer
"A finely crafted and deeply felt piece" Philadelphia Inquirer
"Intensely moving and beautiful" High Fidelity
"It reminds one of Barber's Adagio for Strings, only less sentimental and ultimately, more profound" Baltimore Evening Sun
"A Masterpiece" Fanfare Magazine
"One of the most beautiful pieces ever written" News Journal, Wilmington, Delaware
"A Gem." Baltimore Sun
"As a piece of gentle art . . . it has few peers." Philadelphia Inquirer

DVORAK: String Quartet in G major / String Quintet in E-Flat

A 2020 double GRAMMY nominee, for both Best Small Ensemble/Chamber Music Performance and Best Engineered Album!

Grammy Award-winning, Chicago-based percussion quartet Third Coast Percussion teams up with influential, genre-defying multi-instrumentalist, record producer, songwriter, singer, and composer Devonté Hynes (aka Blood Orange) for an album of imaginative, evocative instrumental music created as the live soundtrack for choreography by the adventurous Hubbard Street Dance Chicago company. The album’s three works, all world-premiere recordings, represent Hynes’s debut on disc as a classical composer. In Perfectly Voiceless, Philip Glass-style minimalism gives way to a catchy pop melody. There Was Nothing blends synthesizer sounds with bowed mallet percussion instruments and moments of meditative lyricism recall the music of Lou Harrison. The expressive harmonies within the gauzy textures of For All Its Fury point to Hynes’ love of Debussy. Third Coast arranged Hynes’ music for its immense collection of diverse instruments and performed them on stage with the Hubbard Street dancers in Chicago and on tour. The Los Angeles Times praised Hynes’ “lush score” and Third Coast’s ability to summon “otherworldly sounds from a multitude of idiophones, drums and other devices.” Chicago’s New City Stage applauded Third Coast’s “extraordinary performance” and “ceaseless river of sound.”

REVIEW:

Third Coast Percussion grabs onto the Ambient Minimalism of the music of composer Devonte Hynes on the recent album Fields (Cedille CDR 90000 192), which creates universes of sound primarily out of mallet interlockings and ambient electronics. If New Music could remind you of some album track in Prog Rock, this could qualify for its cosmicality and spacey directedness.

This is New Music for people who may not much like New Music, or for those unfamiliar with such things. It is primarily good music beyond category.

I fully recommend this one for all progressive folks, for those who do not mind or even welcome a bit of groove and New Music fans who are open to the new in whatever form our artists see fit, regardless of preconceptions. Minimalists will also take heart I suspect. For this is very good indeed.

– Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

Classical Music