This album was awarded the 2008 Grammy Awards for "Best Classical Album" and "Best Orchestral Performance."
All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

Joan Tower creates music which is bold, colorful and communicative, her list of commissions and awards providing ample evidence of her ability to engage performers and audiences alike. Emotional intensity characterizes Stroke, which vividly conveys a stroke victim’s dramatic turmoil while also offering a vision of hope. The Violin Concerto, selected for the final round of the Pulitzer Prize in Music, is both a virtuoso showcase and a lyrical vehicle for the soloist, its conversational cadenzas representing a poignant exchange between the living and the departed. The deceptively titled Chamber Dance alternates huge blocks of sound with intimate solos and duets in an ever-evolving riot of colors.

Review:

In the Violin Concerto the ear is caught by the constantly changing colours of the soloists interaction with different orchestral players. Violinist Cho-Liang Lin is lyrical and muscular as required, and his slender tone is well balanced with the excellent Nashville Symphony. The orchestra impresses also in two more recent pieces by Tower, and bears further witness to Tower's imaginative handling of instrumental coloring.

– BBC Music Magazine

Joan Tower is widely regarded as one of today’s most important American composers. The works heard here in their world premiere recordings are part of a growing legacy that one pundit has described as “The Power of Tower.” Strike Zones is tailor-made for percussionist Evelyn Glennie’s dazzling technique and impeccable musicianship. The work’s orchestration is crafted to enhance a stage filled with percussion instruments – while in Small they are contained on a single table, the soloist working like a brilliant chef. The piano concerto Still/Rapids was inspired by the glistening beauty and powerful force of water, and Ivory and Ebony, written as a test piece for an international piano competition, is infused with Tower’s “high-energy” signature.

REVIEW:

Another American Classics release features the music of contemporary composer Joan Tower. These fabulous premiere recordings give a good representation of the range of music Tower has been producing over recent years. It is particularly good to hear performances from Evelyn Glennie as one of a cast of top rate musicians here. The earliest work, Strike Zones, dates from 2001 and the latest, Small from 2016. Both these feature percussion. Still/Rapids combines piano and orchestra with the final piece, Ivory & Ebony being a test piece for an international piano competition.

-- Lark Reviews

Widely regarded as one of America’s pre-eminent living composers, Joan Tower, who is also a pianist, is particularly devoted to chamber music. Organic structures underpin her string quartets; there is ‘heat from within’ and radiance of texture in "Incandescent", her third quartet, virtuosic interplay in No. 4, "Angels", and fluid connections in "White Water", her fifth string quartet. Only the third composer – after Stravinsky and Copland – to be commissioned by the Dumbarton Oaks Foundation, Dumbarton Quintet pursues extremes of moods both romantically consonant and dissonant.

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REVIEW:

Premiere recordings of three quartets and a piano quintet, composed over a 10-year span and performed by two outstanding American quartets. The Fifth Quartet has an aquatic feel and flow, the music leading towards an exquisite, radiant end. The Piano Quintet is a characteristically dynamic and angular score, tempered by the piano's warmth and and an intriguing range of combined sounds.

– Gramophone

Joan Tower's chamber music has much the same emotional intensity and gestural ferocity as her orchestral works. Her primarily angular harmonic language, with its predominantly dissonant cast, evokes a sense of agitation bordering on rage--something most apparent in Wild Purple for solo viola (played with conviction and arresting virtuosity by Paul Neubauer). Like many Tower works, In Memory (in a stunning rendition by the Tokyo String Quartet) begins quietly--the violin's first notes are almost imperceptible--then builds to a gripping climax. The music's emotions are particularly raw and acute, as the composer was inspired by the death of a close friend, and then the 9/11 attacks that occurred shortly after.


Big Sky for piano trio (persuasively performed by Tower, along with Chee-Yun and Andre Emelianoff) has somewhat softer contours. It begins and ends in a subdued, melancholy atmosphere, while the climactic central section jars with its abrupt syncopations fleshed out in robust, quasi-romantic piano writing.


Island Prelude is the most surprising piece in this collection, as it features passages of genuine consonance and even lyricism, as well as some characterful writing for solo oboe (featuring the expert Richard Woodhams with the Tokyo String Quartet). Of course, all of this is woven into Tower's free-flowing, volatile musical style, which quite often catches you off-guard--the very thing that makes her music compelling.


No Longer Very Clear is a set of four piano pieces, the titles of which are lines taken from the John Ashbery poem of the same name. This very intimate encounter with Tower's art reveals a composer of imagination and ingenuity, and one who possesses a profound emotional sensitivity. The piano writing is brilliant and ranges from Scriabinesque passion to the mystery and exotic beauty found in Messiaen. Ursula Oppens (in the first two pieces) and Melvin Chen (in the remainder) both offer powerfully evocative performances. The recordings are uniformly excellent in both the chamber and solo settings. This release marks an important document of the composer, and a fine addition to Naxos' American Classics series. [9/16/2005]
--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com