Weiss, S.L.: Lute Sonatas, Vol. 4 - Nos. 21, 37, 46

DUPRE: Works for Organ, Vol. 13

SCHNITTKE: Cello Concerto / Stille Musik / Cello Sonata

Charpentier, M.-A.: Sacred Music, Vol. 4

When Franz Krommer wrote the three wind partitas presented on this recording (between 1808 and 1810) the Harmonie-Musik tradition was waning, making these some of the last examples of this once widely-practiced genre. Scored for pairs of oboes, clarinets, horns, and bassoons, they gain added ceremonial nobility with the addition of contra-bassoon. Listeners new to this music also will note the high, penetrating clarinet parts in C for the Op. 76 Partita and the many flamboyant arpeggio passages for second horn throughout Op. 69. Both techniques recall outdoor styles of the late 1700s.


These new performances by the Michael Thompson Wind Ensemble are of very high order and have been pleasingly recorded in a bright-sounding church acoustic that suits this extrovert music particularly well. This account of Op. 79 supplants an older analog version by the Nash Ensemble, with well-focused if quite closely miked sound and playing that's more technically refined and better blended. Op. 76 has been recorded previously by the Meyer Wind Ensemble for EMI, but that performance is outclassed here by superior playing and a brilliant sense of comedy. For an enticing sample, try the final Rondo! Highly recommended.
--Michael Jameson, ClassicsToday.com

What's a critic supposed to do? The last thing you want is to go around just handing out top ratings, but what choice do you have when you hear a disc such as this one? On the surface it's got very little going for it--obscure repertoire, esoteric instruments, and it's chamber music to boot! And for the whole disc, all you hear is two solo bass violas da gamba--no orchestra, no keyboard, no exotic winds or percussion. But I'm willing to bet that if you hear this, if you have even the remotest appreciation for beautiful melody, for the richly-colored, reedy sonority of ideally matched stringed instruments, and a fascination with the essence of chamber music--a real dialogue between players--you will be pleased and happily surprised. It's not Bach or Marais, and it's not masterpiece-caliber music, but these six sonatas by 17th-century Dutch-born composer Johannes Schenck (1660-c. 1712) show an unusually accomplished facility for dramatic, interactive part-writing as well as a thorough command of the gamba's technical limits and possibilities. Schenck was a virtuoso player himself (he was one of the many stars at the Düsseldorf court from about 1696 until his death), and the two performers on this recording, members of the Quebec-based Les Voix Humaines, not only grasp the music's considerable technical demands, but fully embrace its more or less free-flowing style, weaving and tossing and shaping their lines, playing with and against each other in a spirited, sometimes improvisatory-like conversation. Le Nymphe di Rheno (The Nymphs of the Rhine) is the title of Schenck's Op. 8 collection of 12 sonatas of which half are presented on this Volume 1. I'm actually looking forward to more of this music from these very fine musicians on Volume 2. And the full-bodied sound makes the whole thing just about perfect. --David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Opera Explained: BIZET - Carmen (Smillie)

Bach's concertos for multiple harpsichords and orchestra are beloved by some and drive others crazy. Perhaps no other music so graphically illustrates Beecham's famous description of the sound of the solo instrument as "two skeletons copulating on a tin roof." The performers must exercise great care in selecting instruments that are not too "clangy" sounding, and the recording has to balance a need for warmth and roundness of tone with contrapuntal clarity. In fact, most of this music was originally composed for melody instruments (violin and oboe, principally), and Naxos has obligingly reconstructed the original versions on another disc in this excellent series. One of the nicest things about this particular disc is the presence of the original version (by Vivaldi) of the Concerto for Four Harpsichords, an impossible work that is performed here about as well as it ever has been. In fact, all of these performances are uniformly propulsive, tasteful, and above all genuinely comfortable to listen to. A good listen, then, but best enjoyed one work at a time. --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

SAINT-SAENS: Carnival of the Animals / RAVEL: Mother Goose (

CLERAMBAULT: Triomphe d'Iris

American Neo-Romantic composer, David Del Tredici has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. His recent energetic output for piano solo is due partly to a close artistic collaboration with Marc Peloquin, resulting specifically in S/M Ballade, a “pianistic terror”. The finale of Gotham Glory is another virtuoso test, Del Tredici’s celebration of New York closing with a Grand Fantasy derived from a waltz by Emil Waldteufel. This is the first of three volumes of David Del Tredici’s complete piano music, with its generously rewarding combination of achingly expressive romanticism, subtle references and ever-present sense of covert and overt drama.

This first-ever recording of the original version of Anton Bruckner's sweeping Symphony No. 1 marked the final great achievement of the acclaimed Bruckner conductor, Georg Tintner, who died in 1999. Following the premiere of the symphony in 1868, Bruckner's devoted conductor friends, all of whom were die-hard Wagnerians like Bruckner himself, championed the work (and Bruckner's other compositions) while subjecting it to their own modifications in order to make Bruckner sound more Wagnerian! Regrettably, the trusting Bruckner sometimes allowed and even abetted these interventions. With the advantage of twenty-twenty hindsight, one can see that Bruckner was, from the beginning, a majestically individual composer and should have been left to his own devices. Under the knowing hand of Tintner, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra reveals this symphony's sprawling orchestral architecture as it was first conceived. The first two movements are surprisingly novel for a fledgling essay in the genre. The second movement already sets the standard for those otherworldly adagio movements, with their glacially unfolding melodies, that populate Bruckner's symphonies.

James Sinclair is always an excellent guide to this music, even through Ives' most complex textural thickets. The Fourth of July has real celebratory fervor and a sense of fun, while the climax of Thanksgiving, so often a muddle, here achieves real transcendence, with the choir perfectly integrated into the ensemble. I have to confess that I love this piece particularly, even though it's often considered the weakest part of what would later become the "Holidays" Symphony. I attended Hopkins Grammar in New Haven, as did Ives, and every Christmas the Glee Club gave a concert on the New Haven green at Trinity Church, right next to Center Church at which Ives served as organist. One of the hymns we often sang was "Duke Street", which forms the climax of Thanksgiving. So it has personal resonance, and it's also a great tune.

For this reason, and because of the similarities in tone and structure among the other three movements, I see no reason why the movements of "Holidays" should not be enjoyed separately, as they are presented here (the first, Washington's Birthday, already has been released). Interspersed between the better-known works are some real novelties. First, The General Slocum, a brief portrait of a tragic shipwreck, followed by two student works that sound totally Romantic, and completely unlike Ives: the Overture in G minor, and the Postlude in F. Finally, the Yale-Princeton Football Game, a two-minute riot of a piece that will make any fan of (American) football smile.

As already suggested, Sinclair's conducting gets everything right: tempos, textures, balances, and colors. He allows Ives' boisterous high spirits to emerge naturally, effortlessly, and where necessary, raucously. The Malmö orchestra plays all of this music with complete confidence, and the sonics are unaffectedly crisp and clean. An essential release for Ives fans.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Quincy Porter was one of a diverse generation of American composers who played a significant role in shaping and directing American musical culture in the mid-twentieth century. Although his orchestral works attracted considerable attention in. Quincy Porter: String Quartets Nos. 1-4 CD music contains a single disc.

John Corigliano is one of the finest and most widely recognized American composers. He has won several Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, and an Academy Award for his score for the film the Red Violin. Corigliano' nostalgic Snapshot.

Every Friday for two years between 1942 and 1944, a group of teenage boy prisoners in the Terezin concentration camp shared their poems, stories and artwork in a secret magazine they called Vedem. Most of those boys perished in the Holocaust.

SCHUMAN Symphony No. 6. Prayer in Time of War. New England Triptych • Gerard Schwarz, cond; Seattle SO • NAXOS 8559625 (60:51)


I was working as office administrator for a church at the time of 9/11, and can still remember the shock and angst following the attack and its aftermath. The minister came to me one day and mentioned how horrible things were. I remarked that at times like this I thought of Olivier Messiaen and his three fellow musicians, held prisoner in a Nazi POW camp, thinking that not only their own ends were near but the end of the world, and how Messiaen responded, artistically, with his masterly Quartet for the End of Time. The minister looked at me as if I had just said I came from Mars and said, “Well, I don’t know how to rock and roll any more!”


Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. I respond more to Messiaen and those other works written as a response to the angst of a war that shattered mankind to the very depths of its soul. William Schuman’s response was his 1943 Prayer in Time of War and, afterwards, his abstract but darkly soul-shattering Symphony No. 6. The Prayer met with good critical response when it first appeared, the symphony with antipathy bordering on outright hostility. Its premiere with the Dallas Symphony conducted by Antal Dorati on February 27, 1949, incensed the audience so much that, in Schuman’s words, “They questioned whether they should even complete payment of the commission.”


The symphony, following the dark music he wrote for ballets by Antony Tudor ( Undertow ) and Martha Graham ( Night Journey ), is similarly black and angst-ridden. Like Vaughan Williams’s own Sixth Symphony, it is a highly personal reaction to a postwar world in which so many thousands of lives were ended or disrupted, a world dominated by power struggles with the Soviets, the atomic bomb, and the intense effort it took to pick up shattered lives and move on. The fact that Vaughan Williams’s work was understood and appreciated in England while Schuman’s was vilified in America probably has something to do with the level of property destruction the former country suffered. America itself was largely protected, at least physically, and like the onset of the Depression, the postwar years created a market for soft, soothing music. Schuman’s existentialist bombshell was not what audiences wanted to hear.


Even today—perhaps especially today, in an uncertain world caught between Islamic jihads on one side and an economic freefall on the other—Schuman’s symphony and Prayer speak to us deeply unless, of course, you are one of those who just don’t know how to rock and roll. The Prayer is gentler in expression. Despite a dangerous-sounding Più animato section in which the storm of war is depicted, its overall mood is soothing in its multitonal, Ives-like expression. The second outburst, consisting of brass fanfares and animated strings, is more hopeful than nihilistic, and it ends with the same soft chord with which it began. Conversely, the symphony is consistently dark, a tunnel with no light at its end but only the quietude of resignation and emotional defeat. One of the more furious outbursts at about the 20-minute mark didn’t seem to me as well composed as the rest of the work, but even this somewhat spurious moment seemed to me to indicate our powerlessness against forces too strong to fight.


Gerard Schwarz has developed over the years into an outstanding conductor, with only a few of his recordings sounding emotionally shallow. This music is very much his métier as, apparently, was the Mahler Seventh he recorded a while back. These performances lack nothing in drama, feeling, or outstanding orchestral balance. Schwarz’s only rival in the symphony with which I’m familiar is the recording by American conductor Hugh Keelan with the New Zealand Symphony (Koch 7290), a fine performance as well if, to my ears, a little less seamlessly joined than Schwarz’s. The Prayer is combined with Schuman’s Fourth Symphony and Judith on First Edition 11, played by Jorge Mester and the Louisville Symphony, but the splendidly professional polish of the Seattle Symphony surpasses Louisville’s playing capacity of that time.


After two such melancholy works, Schwarz ends this CD with one of Schuman’s most popular pieces, the New England Triptych , three pieces for orchestra after William Billings. Here the language is also bitonal but the overall mood more positive. It’s a wonderful way for the disc to end and, again, Schwarz gives a performance comparable to the best available, including Howard Hanson’s classic account for Mercury Living Presence (432755) and Leonard Slatkin with the St. Louis Symphony (RCA 61282). Their versions have, perhaps, a trifle more swagger, but Schwarz is not eclipsed; and, when combined with these shattering performances of the symphony and Prayer, it makes for an indispensable disc for those who admire Schuman’s unique musical aesthetic.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley


If we set to one side the disavowed first two symphonies Gerard Schwarz has now completed recording the Schuman symphonies. Only the Schwarz-Seattle-Naxos Eighth awaits issue. The series began with a handful of Schuman symphonies recorded by Delos in the 1990s. Naxos has picked up the baton dropped when the gloriously ambitious Delos project stumbled and fell. That they are doing this at bargain price is remarkable as with so much that Naxos does. Naxos have reissued all the Delos session symphonies and continued and completed the cycle in Seattle. This disc mixes the Delos-originated 1990 session for the Triptych with newer Naxos fixtures in 2005 and 2008. The transcript of an interview with Gerard Schwarz can be found on the Naxos website.

The Sixth Symphony was first recorded by Ormandy in the 1960s on CBS AML 4992 and reissued on Albany TROY256. It’s a work of nocturnal reclusion; not at all restful. Although Schuman has his lyric heart on display it is not close to his sleeve. The song is sweet but haunted and darkly clouded with Bergian strands – even a touch of Allan Pettersson about it. Barber in his most introspective brown study comes to mind and the tension never lets up. Kinetic fury has usually been part of the Schuman palette and so it is here (try. 20:00 onwards) although occluded lyricism dominates and acts as an indefatigable magnetic pull. The work is presented in a single half hour track. The Sixth was commissioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra League and the Dallas orchestra premièred it with Antal Doráti conducting on 27 February 1949. It’s an impressive piece if without the compulsive concentration that bowls over listeners to the Third Symphony and the Violin Concerto.

Prayer in a Time of War first saw light of day with Fritz Reiner and the Pittsburgh Orchestra on 26 February 1943. It’s a substantial movement of symphonic bearing and unyielding seriousness as befits the subject. The language is touched with some bleakness but it is less convoluted than that of the Sixth Symphony. This is the Schuman of the Third Symphony admitting and radiating facets that recall Roy Harris and Aaron Copland. The brass writing is gaunt, statuesque and excoriating; the drum-taps and cold fanfares referencing Lincoln and Whitman. It’s is a grand statement to put alongside his works of similar concision: Credendum, In Praise of Shahn and American Hymn. This is not its first recording; that honour goes to the Louisville and Jorge Mester – still to be had on Louisville First Edition.

New England Triptych is in three movements: I. Be Glad Then, America [5:05]; II. When Jesus Wept [7:53] III. Chester [3:08]. The outer movements are redolent of Tippett in zest, springiness and riotous exuberance. The Triptych was premièred in Miami on 28 October 1956, with Andre Kostelanetz conducting the University of Miami Symphony Orchestra. The next month Kostelanetz took it to the New York Phil. It is one of Schuman’s most accessible works despite its date. The three movements are based on hymns by the Revolutionary period figure, William Billings (1746– 1800). Schuman refers to “a fusion of styles and musical language”; acidic-epic Schuman meets devout Hanoverian. The middle movement recalls RVW’s Tallis and Bliss’s Blow Meditations.

Let’s not write off those first two symphonies (1935, 1937). I have heard the Second Symphony in a 1930s broadcast by Howard Barlow and the CBS orchestra and it’s by no means negligible. Then there are other works which will be worth revival – principally theConcerto on Old English Rounds and the spectacular symphonic cantata Casey at the Bat, superbly revived by Dorati in Washington as part of the American centennial event diary.

It’s a pleasure to report that this disc was generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts who seem to have moved away from a policy that appears at one time to favour only the work of the adherents of academic dissonance.

The notes are by Joseph W. Polisi, currently sixth president of The Juilliard School and author of “American Muse: The Life and Times of William Schuman” (Amadeus Press, 2008).

Keep watching for the Naxos Schuman Eighth secure in the knowledge that Schwarz and his Pacific Edge orchestra are fully equal to the challenges set by Schuman. Naxos will again, I am sure, provide a stunning recording as they have done here across a span of eighteen years – session to session.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

It's hard not to like Leroy Anderson, a skilled orchestral craftsman with a rich supply of clever ideas, an ingratiating musical imagination, and, thank heaven, a sense of humor. Most of his music embodies the term "American light classical", and you can't listen to pieces such as Sleigh Ride or Bugler's Holiday without a smile and feeling just a bit lighter of spirit. The selections featured here, billed as a "collection of Leroy Anderson's holiday music", are taken from Naxos' excellent multi-volume series devoted to Anderson's orchestral music. Although it's not clear why such numbers as Horse and Buggy, The Waltzing Cat, and The Golden Years are here, in style and mood they take nothing away from the more obvious Christmas/holiday pieces. And while it's possible to imagine just a bit more personality and panache in the articulation in some places (à la Boston Pops), Leonard Slatkin is an unqualified expert in this repertoire, and he leads his British orchestra with consummately entertaining style, all of it most favorably recorded.

Four years ago Decca released A Leroy Anderson Christmas, which contains many of the same works featured on this program--performed both by the Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler (Sleigh Ride) and by Anderson conducting his own orchestra. Although that one is worthy for its historical aspects, this one is superior for its consistently high-quality performances, much more satisfying ambience, and first-rate sound. Highly recommended.

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Hovhaness has found a strong advocate in Gerard Schwarz, and about time too. This prolific and at times prolix composer's music, with its expressively limited mixture of bell sounds, modal and Eastern harmonies, and simple counterpoint, can sound naïve and even irritating in large doses. What is so often missing from many performances is committed playing, giving the music the strength, beauty, and confidence that so often makes all the difference between "getting through the notes" and the quality of response that these pieces need and deserve. This disc, all premiere recordings, does the latter, and even if you dislike Hovhaness you might well be impressed by the results.

Khrimian Hairig is a short, pretty work for solo trumpet and strings much like the composer's Prayer of St. Gregory. It makes a very nice program opener even though it tells us nothing especially new. That certainly isn't true of the larger works. The Guitar Concerto must be numbered among the more successful works in its genre. It has all of the composer's hallmark fingerprints, but it also reveals an astutely judged understanding of how to pit such a weak-toned instrument against a large orchestra. In terms of color, texture, and contrast, the music is wholly beguiling and never overstays its welcome.

The same holds true for Symphony No. 60. At a bit more than half an hour, this is a long work for Hovhaness, but the inclusion of some American folk music makes an interesting contrast with his usual Eastern modes, while the four movements once again offer an unusually broad range of contrast and sonority. Best of all, the entire program is extremely well played, from guitarist David Leisner on up. This isn't difficult music technically, but it must never sound tired or lazy, and here it doesn't. The disc offers what in effect is an entire mini-concert--overture, concerto, and symphony--and you can listen to the whole thing straight through without fear of monotony. Sensitive and coherent notes by the late composer's wife add to the overall appeal, as does the excellent sound, particularly in the difficult-to-balance Guitar Concerto.

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

FELDMAN String Quartet (1979) ? Group for Contemporary Music ? NAXOS 8.559190 (78:35)


The Group for Contemporary Music made several CDs of American music for Koch in the early 1990s, the above being one of them. Now here it is, reappearing as part of Naxos?s ?American Classics? series. I expect one of Fanfare ?s resident Feldman specialists covered it back then?I think Mike Silverton was doing it in those days?but I have been unable to locate any review. According to the CD information, this was a world premiere recording.


Although not to be confused with his monumentally long second string quartet, this late work of Feldman?s still runs for almost 80 minutes. (Well, it doesn?t exactly run .) Readers unfamiliar with this composer?s music but interested in experimenting at the low Naxos price should dispense with any normal idea of the passing of time. Feldman?s work unfolds at a snail?s pace, with the result that every musical incident is examined in minute, close-up detail. Imagine walking down your garden path to the mailbox; now imagine doing it on your hands and knees with a magnifying glass, taking over an hour to complete the journey. You would know a heck of a lot more about the nature of your garden path by the end of it.


Of course, it?s not entirely as simple as that. Feldman understood the big picture, form-wise: the apparent randomness of the sounds he dwells on in his own good time is kept in balance by a fierce musical intelligence. These sounds include rocking motifs, chords, and often even single notes, usually separated by moments of complete silence. Feldman requests the quartet to play without vibrato and, most of the time, using mutes. Much of the material consists of high harmonics. It is nearly all pianissimo or softer, except for some sudden loud interruptions?for example, at 26:00 and 33:30 respectively. (The Eastern-bloc composer Kancheli appears to have known his Feldman. Unheralded fortes are a fingerprint of his as well.) As the work progresses, earlier motifs or textures are revisited and developed, providing at least an unconscious sense of structure. In the end, the painstaking process undertaken together by the composer, the performers, and the listener creates a unique, mesmerizing context where sudden shifts of emphasis are almost seismic. The forte s mentioned above seem earth shattering. The occasional consonant harmony, unnoticed in another context, becomes pure balm. The slightest rhythmic acceleration feels like panic. High, quiet harmonics from the solo violin assume the cloak of unbearable loneliness.


For those readers already conversant with Feldman?s world, it need only be said that this performance seems to me as good as it could possibly be. (I don?t have access to a score.) The internal balance is finely judged, and all four members of the group must have spent many hours in meditation to be so at home in this time span. By the way, the stalwart players are Benjamin Hudson and Carol Zeavin, violins; Lois Martin, viola; and Joshua Gordon, cello. Recorded sound is first-rate. One can only hope Naxos will reissue the other recordings in the Koch series, particularly those of Wolpe and Wuorinen.


Morton Feldman?s mind worked in a manner unlike that of any other composer. This fact alone makes him important and his music riveting.


FANFARE: Phillip Scott

EXPLORE AMERICA

My symphonic suite Roundings was commissioned by the Amarillo Symphony to celebrate it's 75th anniversary. The suite was premiered movement-by-movement throughout the anniversary season, and it received it's first complete performance on 8th April, 2000, by the Amarillo Symphony under the baton of it's music director, James Setapen. The Prologue, "Hymn to the Earth" sets the stage for all that follows. A disarmingly simple piece, it consists entirely of slow chords which move in whole steps. These chords set up relationships which are explored in each of the following movements. Windmill depicts the motions of the wind, the wheel and pump which harness the wind, as well as a calling out for water. Oil Well has a main theme the shape of which constantly reaches for successively deeper pitches, mirroring the actions of an oil rig Sounds such as iron pipe and chains add to the description of drilling. The middle section suggests the upward flow of oil once the oil-bearing layer has been reached Locomotive commemorates the importance of the coming of the railroad to the establishment of a community in inland portions of the United States. The music describes the sound one hears at the depot as a passenger train approaches, comes to a halt, empties it's passengers and cargo, then departs, slipping into the distance. Lariat paints a picture of an old cow herder bragging of his skills with the rope to his younger colleagues, as fragments of cowboy songs, and eventually two complete songs, are sung around the campfire. Plow quotes an old Presbyterian hymn tune, entitled Dresden ("We plow the fields"). It also utilizes the celebrated Dresden Amen. The movement presents three statements of the hymn tune, each varied from the other. The second statement portrays the repetitive physical labor of plowing, and the final statement uses expanding and contracting instrumental voices, as well as the recorded sound of an old tractor, to illustrate the coming of mechanized farming. My Cello Sonata was written in 1996 and premiered on 14th March, 1997 by the Fischer Duo, for whose 25th wedding anniversary it was commissioned. It has subsequently been championed by the Lopez/Parr-Scanlin Duo, who performed it on a tour of the eastern U.S. before the present recording.

Naxos' exciting and important American Classics series now includes music of the present day, in this case three recent works by Philip Glass. The Violin Concerto, a work that (surprisingly) adheres to classical conventions, lures us in with beautiful, seductive harmonies. Glass relies both on his trademark arpeggiated technique (sounding in the first movement somewhat like Vivaldi's "Winter" concerto) and on his favorite harmonic progressions to suggest a sustained melodic line. In the first two movements Glass' carefully timed harmonic and rhythmic shifts keep you in a happy daze. He breaks the mood in the finale, however, leaving the soloist to practice arpeggios at length until the quiet, serene coda steals in. Adele Anthony, who plays with the kind of skill and grace we would expect in a Mozart concerto, brings off Glass' work with consummate, convincing musicianship. Company (music for Becket's prose) for string orchestra is in four movements, characterized by stimulating changes in time signature and rhythm. The Prelude and Dance from Akhnaten, Glass' third opera, sound exceedingly repetitious without the opera's spoken dramatic narrative, but of course, this won't bother committed Glass fans who will find much to cherish in this recording. Newcomers, too, will enjoy this tuneful if unchallenging music, which benefits from the characterful playing of the Ulster Orchestra under Takuo Yuasa's keen leadership. The sound is excellent. Another home-run from Naxos.--Victor Carr, ClassicsToday.com

Howard Hanson wrote most of the solo piano music on this disc early in his career, before he became the first American to win the Prix de Rome in 1921, and before his forty-year tenure as director of the Eastman School of Music. Though he later focused on orchestral writing in emulation of Respighi, his teacher in Rome, Hanson's piano music intimately defines the romantic and popular character of his work. Hanson's music is emotionally yearning, tuneful Americana.
Critically acclaimed American pianist Thomas Labé has researched Hanson's music extensively, which was necessary, as many of Hanson's scores are unpublished. His labor informs his virtuosic playing with keen insight in these performances, five out of eight of which are world premiere recordings.

2 CDs with over 2 hours of music Illuminating essay by Stephen Johnson Illustrated with photographsWell over half a century after his death, Bela Bart k is held up as one of the twentieth century' great musical moderni.

Selection includes An Introduction to Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande.
This CD contains an original commentary and analysis of this work, written by Thomson Smillie and narrated by David Timson.

Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and John Adams—it is my prediction that, 50 years from now, it will be the last composer’s music that is played most frequently. I am not sure that Adams is the “best” composer of the three (frankly, Reich’s work is more interesting to me), but he is the one who has motivated the most performers to program and record his work. For example, apart from Alsop, three other conductors have recorded Short Ride (de Waart on Nonesuch, Rattle on EMI, and Mosko on Chandos), and there are alternative recordings on Nonesuch of the other three works as well. The Nonesuch discs are important documents, but not necessarily the last word. Despite their explicit or implicit approval by the composer, they can and will be bettered, as time goes on. Consider The Wound-Dresser. I remember being impressed by this work when Nonesuch released the CD with baritone Sanford Sylvan, and the composer conducting the Orchestra of St. Luke’s—I still was in graduate school, and various commentators were quick to draw parallels between Walt Whitman’s injured and dying boys and the current victims of the AIDS epidemic. There’s nothing wrong with Sylvan and Adams, but I find Gunn and Alsop more moving—almost too much so, as the text’s homoaffective subtext is moved closer to the foreground. (It strikes me now that the vocal line at “Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested” could have been written by Stephen Sondheim.)

Alsop makes a good case for Short Ride and for the Berceuse élégiaque. The latter work is an arrangement for chamber orchestra of a work by Ferrucio Busoni—a fact that is not mentioned anywhere in Naxos’s documentation, shamefully enough. Adams, in his Nonesuch recording, is a little more weird and abrasive than Alsop in Shaker Loops—to good effect. All in all, the availability of the Nonesuch recordings does not make this Naxos release superfluous. Alsop is a fine conductor, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra plays well for her, and then there’s that Naxos price! If you’ve been curious about Adams’s music, but have not been willing to pay Nonesuch prices to hear it, here are four of Adams’s best works in competitive performances at a fraction of the cost.

Raymond Tuttle, FANFARE