The cover of this release shows two old friends sharing a moment — composer Poul Ruders and guitarist David Starobin. Their 30+ year relationship has been extraordinarily fruitful. This release presents a few of Ruders’ works commissioned by Starobin. Occam’s Razor is a philosophical principle: the simplest explanation is usually the best. Just as Occam’s Razor […]
Bridge Records
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Paul Lansky – Idle Fancies Keep Gwen Dease Busy
Paul Lansky has been creating an impressive catalog of percussion music since the 1990s. This release features three exceptional works for solo marimba, written for some exceptional performers. “Three Moves” (1998) is the earliest (and most difficult) of the three works. Written for Nancy Zeltsman, the music hops across the broad expanse of a five-octave […]
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Cooperstock Delivers Nuanced Performances of Bernstein Piano Music
Leonard Bernstein was an accomplished pianist and a prolific composer. And yet his oeuvre for solo piano is surprisingly small — small enough to fit onto two CDs. The first disc of this release collects all of Bernstein’s “Anniversaries” – miniature gems written for friends and colleagues. The second features his more extended piano works. […]
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Paul Chihara Takes the A Train and Mixes Genres
Paul Chihara composes for films. Film scores must support the narrative and communicate emotion. And it must do it in a way that instantly connects with the viewer. That skill set works well for Chihara in the classical world, too. His compositions have a transparency to them that draws the listener in. The surface may […]
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Quattro Mani Restructure Piano Duo Concept
The new release from the Quattro Mani is aptly titled “Re-Structures.” Steven Beck and Susan Grace restructure the concept of a piano duo, making it more of a keyboard duo. And that’s an important distinction. The program features works for two pianos as bookends. Paul Lanksy’s brisk and brief “Out of the Blue” opens the […]
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Seattle Symphony Shines with George Perle
George Perle didn’t come to orchestral composition until fairly late in his career. But as this new album shows, it was worth the wait. Maestro Morlot and the Seattle Symphony deliver strong, sure-footed performances. If you’ve never experienced Perle’s music before, this may be the recording to start with. Perle developed his own version of […]
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Gregory Mertl Piano Concerto – music with a strong narrative
How to best to describe the music of Gregory Mertl? According to the composer, it “often enfolds as a narrative generated from its opening ideas.” The three works on this release all have a forward-moving narrative. Yet each work achieves that in a different fashion. “Afterglow of a Kiss” for flute proceeds in fits and […]
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Gregory and Sinchuk excel with Rachmaninoff
Rachmaninoff wrote very little for violin and piano, but that didn’t stop others from transcribing his music for those instruments. This recording collects Rachmaninoff’s three violin and piano works, plus 17 transcriptions. The earliest transcriptions by Konstantin Mostras and Mikhail Press are fairly straight-forward. Fritz Kreisler’s transcriptions provide plenty of opportunity for expressive phrasing and […]
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Martin Perry pairs Weisgall and Hindemith
Martin Perry couples two works the complement each other — one’s very well-known, the other deserves to be. The well-known work is Paul Hindemith’s Ludus Tonalis. This 1942 masterwork is a summation of Hindemith’s mature style. Its frequent comparisons to Bach’s “Art of the Fugue” are valid. Counterpoint is at the heart of both works, […]