“A wonderful disc of early 20th century American music”
“Elliott Carter, the doyen of American avant-guard composers, turned 100 years old this year (2008). His warm demeanor in interviews belies the complexity of his music. However, his Piano Sonata is an early composition that leaves the listener with a quiet sense of calm, as if it’s a prelude to the complexity that pervades his later works…The first movement creates drama by alternating between contemplative chords and rapid passagework. The second movement starts with an andante section saturated with quiet stillness which gradually intensifies into brilliant angular passagework. The work ends with a …slow section, oddly moving and fading into the distance…she performs (it) convincingly. Aaron Copland’s Piano Variations is one of his signature compositions…Bernstein went crazy when he first heard the work, saying, ‘A new world of music has opened to me in this work – extreme, prophetic, clangorous, dissonant and intoxicating…’ Martha Graham choreographed ‘Dithyrambic’ to the music, a dance of orgiastic abandon to the god Dionysus. The 11 minute work’s pungent four-note motif is transformed into 20 variations and a coda. It is striking in its unvarnished emotion, frenetic dissonance and poetic interludes. Schein’s performance balances dissonance with vision. (In) the beautiful Copland Violin Sonata…the opening movement ‘freely sings’, the middle movement is a lyrically sad ode to a friend killed in World War II, and the final movement combines high spirits with heartfelt poignancy. Violinist Earl Carlyss, a member of the Juilliard Quartet for 21 years, plays exquisitely. John Patitucci is a jazz bass player and composer who wrote a thoughtful and dramatic work for his friend, Ann Schein called ‘Lakes’ which ends the disc…(This is) a wonderful disc of 20th century American music.”
Copland, Carter, Patitucci, MSR Classics, 2007