Crossing Over features the music of Anna Thorvaldsdottir, John Tavener, William Schuman, Daniel Elder, and more. This release contains world premiere recordings, as well as rarely recorded pieces. Skylark is a chamber choir consisting of professional musicians from across the United States. The group also performs educational programs for students across the nation.

REVIEW:

All the music is concise, in the manner of utterances made or heard on a deathbed; the longest work clocking in at just over nine minutes. This is new music, put together in a new way, beautifully sung and recorded. In short, it's fabulous for listeners looking for a place to start with contemporary choral music, downbeat subject matter or not.

-- All Music Guide

The final album in Bruce Levingston’s three-part series, Still Sound contains intimate works featuring world premiere recordings of Pulitzer Prize-winner William Bolcom’s “New York Lights” written for Bruce Levingston, and Augusta Gross’ new works inspired by Satie and Pärt. Bruce Levingston is one of the leading figures on the contemporary music scene. The New York Times calls him “[one] of “today’s most adventurous musicians” and describes his performances as “graceful,” “dreamy” and “hauntingly serene”; The New Yorker describes him as “a poetic pianist who has a gift for inventive—and glamorous— programming.”

The Ames Piano Quartet, the resident chamber music ensemble at Iowa State University, holds a unique position in the chamber music field as one of the few piano quartets in the world. The combination of their lush string sound, blended with the orchestral quality of the piano, produces an exquisite and rare sonority. The Washington Post aptly described it as “one of the most heavenly combinations of instruments around.”

The ensemble has toured throughout the United States, including concerts in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Denver, San Diego, and Washington D.C. Internationally they have performed in Canada, Mexico, France, Austria, and the Far East. Most recently the Quartet spent a week concertizing and teaching in Havana, Cuba, the first American chamber music group to perform there in over forty years.

Its members, all present ISU Music Department faculty, include Mahlon Darlington, violinist; George Work, cellist: (Lawrence Bulkhalter violist - discs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8) Jonathan Sturm, violist; and William David, pianist. Since its formation in 1976, the ensemble has recorded eight compact discs, including six for the Dorian Recording label, all of which have received national and international critical acclaim.

Fanfare called its CD of the Dvorak quartets, “one of the best chamber music recordings of the century.”

The Los Angeles Times wrote of a recent Ames Piano Quartet concert, “The four generated nearly limitless excitement … arching lyricism, poetic eloquence, and great accuracy.”

The French magazine La Cote des Arts commented, “The Ames [Piano] Quartet has a full vigorous sound, which deeply touches the soul.”

Reviews of some of the original recordings that make up this set:

Strauss, Widor Quartets
The masterpieces for piano quartet can be counted on the fingers of two hands: two by Mozart, one by Schumann, three by Brahms, two by DvorAk and two by Faure. This record offers two that are certainly not masterpieces, and are probably unknown even to most chamber music players, by composers who made their mark in very different spheres and whose names are not normally associated with chamber music at all. The earlier of them is the one by Richard Strauss, composed in 1884, when, at the age of 20, he was already a precocious and highly professional musician (with almost all the chamber music he composed already behind him). Widor's quartet dates from 1891, when he was in his late forties and already an eminent organist and pedagogue and the composer of a piano trio and quintet, a sonata for cello and piano and numerous shorter pieces—not to mention the first eight of his ten symphonies for organ.

The Strauss is heavily indebted to Brahms, notably in the two expansive, opulent outer movements, but in both the unmemorable quality of the thematic material is stretched too far (nearly 12 minutes, even without the exposition repeat, in the first movement, nearly ten in the fourth) despite the assurance of the actual craftsmanship. Some relief is provided by the nimble Scherzo and the rather sugary Andante (which are listed in the wrong order in the accompanying booklet). In 1885 the quartet was awarded, by a far from unanimous vote, a prize given by the Berlin Tonkiinstler Verein, and when it was played at Meiningen in January 1886 it made such a favourable impression on the audience (which included Strauss's employer, Georg II, Duke of Sachsen-Meiningen, to whom the score was later dedicated) that Strauss was agreeably surprised, "considering," as he wrote to Hans von Billow, "that it is by no means a pleasing or ingratiating work". The Widor is, to my ears, a more original and appealing piece, with a noble, impassioned first movement and an inventive finale, framing a tender, rather elegiac Adagio and a playful Vivace.

The performances, by the Ames Piano Quartet (formed in 1976, and a 'resident' ensemble at Iowa State University), are of outstanding quality, as is the recording by the American company, Dorian; it will not be their fault if the hope expressed in the booklet, "that this release will begin the work of restoring both pieces to the standard repertoire", is not realized.

-- R.G., Gramophone

Czech Piano Quartets
Great Czech piano quartet performances come from Iowa, Ames, IA, to be precise, home of Iowa State University where the Ames Piano Quartet is the chamber music ensemble-in-residence. The group, one of the few full-time piano quartets in the world, has already released several excellent discs on Dorian: the mandatory couplings of quartets by Dvorák, Fauré, and Brahms, plus several ingenious couplings like a disc joining quartets to quartets by Strauss and Widor. This 2002 disc has one of the most fascinating programs yet, uniting three quartets by three different Czech composers: Josef Suk's A minor Quartet, Op. 1; Vitezslav Novák's C minor Quartet, Op. 7; and Bohuslav Martinu's Quartet written in 1942.

All three are three-movement works in the fast-slow-fast pattern, all three last a bit more than 20 minutes, and all three are interesting examples of specific aspects their composer's style. Suk's A minor Quartet, his 1891 graduation piece from Dvorák's composition class, is a passionate but well-crafted piece of ardent romanticism. Novák's C minor Quartet started life as a four-movement student work in 1894, which the composer completely rewrote in 1903, discarding three of the movements and replacing them with the two published outer movements. Martinu's Quartet was written while the composer was living in exile in Jamaica, Long Island, a refugee from war-torn Europe and shows his mature mastery at its height.

The Ames Piano Quartet performs every work with amazing strength and total dedication. With a tight but flexible ensemble, strong but agile technique, and big, passionate tone, the Ames has what these works need to succeed. Its Suk is fervent and sincere, its Novák bold but controlled, and its Martinu driven but lyrical. Though some listeners may find the string's tone a bit edgy, others will find this only adds intensity to the performances. Recorded in Martha-Ellen Tye Recital Hall in 2002, Dorian's digital sound here is big, close, and direct. It should also be noted that this appears to be the premiere recording of Novák's quartet.

-- James Leonard, All Music Guide

Russian Piano Quartets
orian's pairing of these two piano quartets is particularly apt for a number of reasons, not least of which is the relative rarity of works in this genre by Russian composers. Paul Juon was a student of Sergei Taneyev (himself a student of Tchaikovsky), and it is Juon's Rhapsody that opens the program. A troubled, yearning theme in the cello's lower register sets the course for the entire piece, whose exceptionally rich chromaticism (stopping just short of Scriabin) keeps the music awash in a late-romantic delirium. The drama of the big finale is capped by the return of the cello's theme near the end. It's passionate, Wuthering Heights-type stuff, and the Ames Piano Quartet really pours on the sauce (but not so much that it overruns the plate).


Though written in the same year as Juon's Rhapsody (1906), Taneyev's piano quartet sounds like an earlier work due to its greater reliance on traditional Russian harmonic techniques. It's only slightly less emotionally heated, and the high strings' singing of the first movement theme brings to mind Chausson's Concert for violin, piano, and string quartet. The second movement features a catchy tune that would make a great rock n' roll anthem today. Taneyev's finale is even bigger that Juon's, though it also employs a cyclic device, in this case bringing that fetching second movement theme back for another rendition. As if two big chamber works were not enough, the disc is packed with Borodin's Polovtsian Dances in a mostly satisfying arrangement (you might miss the oboe) by Geoffrey Wilcken. Again, the Ames Piano Quartet plays with power, sensitivity, and brilliance. Dorian's recording places the piano well to the rear, but the live acoustic perfectly balances it with the strings.
--Victor Carr Jr., ClassicsToday.com

Review of complete set:

While piano trios abound and string quartets are a dime a dozen, what's rare are extant, long-standing piano quartets. Compared to the former two ensembles, repertoire for the latter is less abundant but no less significant. Piano quartets are often performed by piano trios who add a viola or string quartets that sit out a member and add a pianist. The result, however, is a temporary ensemble that lacks the benefits of performing long term with the same musicians. The Ames Piano Quartet proves that not only can a piano quartet exist as its own entity, but that it can thrive. Originally formed in 1976 at the University of Iowa and now faculty artists at Iowa State University, the Ames Piano Quartet has made a name for itself as skilled interpreters of the standard popular repertoire as well as champions of new and lesser known works. The present eight-disc collection showcases the recordings the group made on the Dorian label from 1989 through 2009. Listeners will enjoy stunning, thoughtful interpretations of warhorses of the repertoire like the three Brahms quartets, two from Dvorák, and quartets from Schumann, Fauré, and Strauss, as well as enlightening performances of rarely performed quartets by Suk, Martinu, and Widor. Taken from recordings made across two decades, there is an understandable variability in recorded sound quality from disc to disc, and the Ames does not have the most spotless intonation in the world. What it does have that many others lack is a clear, singular, unified vision of the score. Every articulation, every phrase, every dynamic, and every nuance is perfectly matched across the four members. Balance within the ensemble is also pleasantly fluid, shifting to allow the melody to come to the fore without obscuring the inner voices. Adding to its polished playing and far-reaching repertoire is a very informative and well-written set of liner notes that make this collection one well worth checking out.

-- Mike D. Brownell, All Music Guide

The Zia Indians’ symbol for the sacred sun captures the adventurous spirit and global pulse of this CD from Sono Luminus and the award winning Del Sol String Quartet. The composers represented—Gabriela Lena Frank, Lou Harrison, José Evangelista, Reza Vali and Elena Kats-Chernin - draw on ancient and traditional folk music from four corners of the world and make it new by incorporating techniques such as inventive intonations or heterophony. = The San Francisco based Del Sol String Quartet has long made a practice of fostering contemporary music from throughout the entire Western Hemisphere. Critically acclaimed as “steeped in bravery and imagination” (James M. Keller, Chamber Music Magazine (February 2007), this quartet of master musicians explores new ways to interact with audiences, composers and artists across cultures and art forms.

Classical Music

Classical Music

REVIEW:

Baroque chamber performers face the challenge of picking a program that makes sense from among the enormous body of small-ensemble music by Georg Philipp Telemann, and the multinational historical-instrument ensemble Rebel (pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable) surmounts this challenge. Telemann, like other composers of the first half of the 18th century, wrote lots of trio sonatas, but he also pursued the richer sonata à quattro and sonata à cinque. These are, in the main, flashier and more experimental pieces than the trio sonatas, and Rebel captures their daring qualities. Most of the movements are Italianate, but annotator John Moran (his notes are in English only) rightly points to the influence of Polish folk fiddling on Telemann's music here. Consider the Sonata Discortato à 4 in A major, TWV 43:A7 (tracks 5-8). "Discortato" means "untuned," and Telemann is thought to have derived the scordatura tuning here from Polish music he heard. The final movement is not a Polish dance but a French one, a bourrée, and it is miles away from Bach's treatments of this form; with its drones and plain melodic figures it sounds almost like a reproduction of an actual folk dance. This rustic style (explored in more detail on another Rebel disc devoted specifically to Telemann's Polish side) is balanced by flamboyant Italian sonata movements with pairs of violins and violas sounding off against each other in many combinations. It's a great deal of fun. Rebel here records in the U.S., in a church in Stamford, CT, that brings disagreeably live results, but this remains a colorful program that the Telemann aficionado will enjoy.

-- James Manheim, All Music Guide

There are more languages spoken in Los Angeles than in any other city in the world. It’s a transitive city. Most residents have come here to contribute to its cultural identity and have ended up calling it “home”. Los Angeles is a city where every industry, creative or otherwise, is fueled by the pursuit of personal creative dreaming. It’s clear then how the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet (LAPQ) created a community of composers and made them all local to the group’s music making and to Los Angeles itself, regardless of each composer’s city of origin.

Is it language that makes someone at home in a given place? If so, the compositional languages of Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Christopher Cerrone, Ellen Reid, Daníel Bjarnasson, and Andrew McIntosh appear as interwoven and complex as Los Angeles itself. Their music similarly courses with chiming repetition, spectral near-silence, and the wearing away of time on objects so barely touched that they appear, in moments, as fragile as paper. These composers from two drastically different continents are brought together by LAPQ, despite their differences in origin, under one banner: friendship. For years LAPQ has been known for its skill in both championing and cataloging works by West Coast composers, with a specific focus on Los Angeles. With Beyond they explore the deep knowing that comes from making work with old friends. And broadly, the project signals a move for the Los Angeles contemporary music scene, a scene burgeoning out with global significance, and overflowing with artists actively seeking to create community. Beyond is a remarkable epic in which space and time are stretched on and on, over and past the horizon.

Bjarnasson’s “Qui Tollis" spans an incredible arc, emerging from the contemplative space of the works around it, brimming with the bashes and tumbles of bass drums, and then seemingly too early, vanishes again into a lull and rhythmic groan. With “Fear-Release,” Reid takes us into a world of metallic voices, as if we’re listening to a rubbed piece of crystal from inside the gem itself. It’s rare that a piece of music seems to truly sonically shine, and Reid’s piece accomplishes this brilliance early and often. Thorvaldsdottir’s “Aura” is the wind, the sand in the wind, and the wind chime hanging from the wood on the old falling-apart porch all at once. It speaks multitudes, and miraculously all upon the quiet edge of audibility.

The expanse of McIntosh’s “I Hold the Lion’s Paw” is that of a twelve-hundred page novel, in which each page has less than a half dozen words. Its sprawl is scrolled out like a web in air, as the quartet communicates effortlessly with one another across a cavern of distance. In one moment they sit still in space, another they rattle endlessly like the earth; they arrive where we are, simply putting musical puzzle pieces together. With “Memory Palace,” Cerrone creates rooms of sound, each drenched in a subtle hue. In the rooms of this ever-expanding house we find ourselves drinking different air, buzzing with pop, hiss, and click, and lingering with a guitarist who could be inside the guitar itself.

REVIEW:

Beyond excels in every sphere: this well-chosen programme brims with fine music and impassioned musicianship, all presented in sound that will delight audiophiles, percussionistas and music lovers everywhere.

-- MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Classical Music

This set includes a blu-ray audio CD playable on blu-ray players only and a standard CD playable on all CD players.

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Review:

Five virtuosic viola pieces exploring some of the many varied aspects of American music. All the composers are American with one exception: Russian Nikolai Kapustin, included because he incorporates American jazz elements in his music. GRAMMY® nominated violist Eliesha Nelson has a passion for performing and promoting music of neglected composers who have created masterworks for the viola. She has been critically acclaimed in international publications for her outstanding interpretive abilities. She is a marvelous player, a ravishing violist.

– Los Angeles Times

This set includes a blu-ray audio CD playable on blu-ray players only and a standard CD playable on all CD players.

‘Touch’ comprises eight tracks for analogue synthesizer, cello, piano, and string orchestra. Where Lights in the Sky was saturated, sonically intense, almost ‘spoilt brat’-ish sound, Touch has a more refined palette of sounds. Composers are often asked what their music is about, especially with instrumental music such as this. To me, it sort of defeats the purpose and joy of listening to music. How do we interpret the emotion and meaning of music when we aren’t hand held through listening, or guided by a lyric? Just because music is slow, doesn’t mean that it is sad; just because it is fast, doesn’t make it happy. The same goes for tonality: major music isn’t intrinsically happy, minor music isn’t exclusively sad. Yes, these can be devices for eliciting an emotional response, but they are not in and of themselves complete. For me, this is the magic of music. It has many lives and many meanings, none of them right and none of them wrong.

The title “Heavy Sleep” is meant to reference not only this album’s eponymous opening work but also to note the phrase’s allusion to death and eternal sleep. + Voices of other composers or allusions to their own or others’ works are found throughout, often appearing as subtle homage to past composers. + Pianist Bruce Levingston is one of today’s leading contemporary music figures. + Many of the world’s most important composers having written works for him, his NYC world premiere performances of their works having won notable critical acclaim. + “One of today’s most adventurous musicians.” (NYTimes)

Includes work(s) by various composers. Ensemble: Baltimore Consort.

Locke, M.: Consorts in 2 Parts

Two classical masterworks arranged for Cello Quintet. The Ying Quartet and Zuill Bailey have been collaborating for years to bring listeners the popular standards. With this release, they hope to explore repertoire beyond the common and reimagine works as their own. This release includes a world-premiere recording of the Schumann arrangement, Cello Concerto in A Minor.

"26 centers around the concept of violists performing and sharing their own compositions. As a violist/composer, I am inspired by the legacy of others who have picked up both bow and pen to create music. 26 was my way of gathering some of my favorite musicians who share a love of the viola, and a love for the new. This album features performances and works by violists Atar Arad, Garth Knox, and myself. Our trio of violists/composers is joined by composer Richard Karpen and violinist Michael Jinsoo Lim. The title of the recording comes from the number of strings on the instruments used: four strings each for the violas of Arad and myself and Lim’s violin; and 14 strings (seven playing and seven sympathetic) for Knox’s viola d’amore. As a student of Atar Arad’s, I had the opportunity to experience his artistry through his teaching, viola playing and his compositions. It was, indeed, Atar’s example that helped lead me to composing myself, along with the experiences culled from my performing career filled with new music and improvisation. I first got to know Garth Knox as an admirer of his work as violist of the Arditti Quartet. I have since had the good fortune to perform with him on a number of occasions, and to get to know him as a composer. Richard Karpen’s sense of experimentation was one of the initial draws for me to join the faculty at the University of Washington, where I am very happy to be his colleague. Michael Jinsoo Lim has been my partner in crime since we met in college. As co-founders of the Corigliano Quartet and members of Frequency, Mike is the musician I most often perform with." - Melia Watras

Parthenia, or the Maydenhead of the first musicke that was ever printed for the Virginalls, is perhaps the most important early publication of English keyboard music. It was first published either late 1612 or early 1613 and, as its title indicates, was the first printed collection of keyboard music to appear in England. The “mastermind” behind Parthenia was the engraver William Hole, who conceived it as a wedding gift to Princess Elizabeth Stuart (the second child and eldest daughter of James VI and I) and Frederick V, Elector Palatine of the Rhine. Stage plays, musical performances, mock battles on the Thames, and fireworks were featured in the festivities which accompanied the ceremony. The original dedication to Parthenia contains a somewhat cryptic passage that singles out the “neighbor letters E and F, the vowel that makes so sweet a Consonat, Her notes so linkt and wedded together seeme liuely Hierogliphicks of the harmony of marriage…” The author has linked these two together because they represent the royal couple, E referring to Elizabeth and F to Frederick. These two pitches play a central role in the piece, being the two opening notes and each section following begins alternately on E or F.

Includes work(s) by various composers. Ensemble: Baltimore Consort.

This set includes a blu-ray audio CD playable on blu-ray players only and a standard CD playable on all CD players.

GRAMMY-nominated Ronn McFarlane is joined by Mindy Rosenfeld to present this recording. Explained by Rosenfeld, it’s “about gathering some of our favorites, a musical feast. A wide cross section of styles… these timeless tunes from past centuries still touch us in ways words cannot, stirring our life energy.”

Classical Music

Sono Luminus proudly presents Celebrating the American Spirit, performed by Essential Voices USA and directed by Judith Clurman, which reconfigures musical expressions of nationhood. EVUSA comes together with guest soloists and instrumentalists, including singers Kelli O'Hara and Ron Raines, and composer arranger Larry Hochman. There is even a new lyric by Sheldon Harnick, the famed lyricist of Fiddler on the Roof. From beginning to end, EVUSA delivers imaginatively conceived performances that articulate new visions of community and civic responsibility in the 21st century. At the core of the CD is 'Sing Out Mr. President', a series of sixteen newly commissioned works set to quotations by U.S. presidents stretching from George Washington to Barack Obama. Judith Clurman initiated this inventive project in response to 9/11, after she conducted the Juilliard Choral Union in a wrenching memorial concert at a firehouse in New York City.

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REVIEWS:

Dirty Linen (8-9/99, p.65) - "...one of America's best lutenists....offers 44 tracks of music from three manuscripts from the 17th century. There is generally more nobility than abandon in the treatments...masterfully played."

Classical Music