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NYTimes Classical Recommendations • 6/4/04


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Here are excerpted reviews on the latest NY Times Classical music pics. (You can read the full article at their website: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/arts/mus...AN6DK2pi6dNQpg)

GEORGE CRUMB: COMPLETE WORKS, VOL. 7

Miró String Quartet; Ann Crumb, soprano; Orchestra 2001, conducted by James Freeman. Bridge Records 9139; CD.

Review by Anne Midgette

"This latest release of Mr. Crumb's works from Bridge Records includes one of his most famous pieces, the string quartet "Black Angels," and the Miró String Quartet's reading is as luminous as if someone had learned Tolkien's elfin script and made new mithril inscriptions on a face of rock. ...But the Miró players render those trills with the crisp elasticity of Mozart. ...The quartet put a lot of energy into "Black Angels," performing it a number of times and working intensively with Mr. Crumb before making the recording, a definitive reading of a deservedly beloved piece. The Kronos Quartet, the work's best-known exponent, sounds downright roughshod in comparison. ... The other piece here, "Unto the Hills," is one of Mr. Crumb's newest: an arrangement of folk songs from his native West Virginia for vocalist (here, his daughter, Ann), piano and percussion quartet."

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LEE HYLA: `TRANS'

Tim Smith, bass clarinetist; Laura Frautschi, violinist; Boston Modern Orchestra Project, conducted by Gil Rose. New World Records 80614; CD.

Review by Anthony Tommasini

"THE composer Lee Hyla has a rigorous conservatory training and a formidable musical intellect. Yet he has been as excited by the gritty power and raw surface energy of avant-garde jazz, rock and punk as by the brainy modern music of Elliott Carter and Stefan Wolpe. .. New World Records deserves credit for releasing "Trans," an exciting new recording of three orchestral works by Mr. Hyla, in dynamic performances by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, an ensemble that champions living composers. These pieces offer arresting evidence that a gifted composer can find common ground among Wolpe, Cecil Taylor and the Sex Pistols and create music of vibrant originality and elegance...

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MACHAUT: MOTETS

Hilliard Ensemble. ECM New Series 472 400-2; CD.

Review by Allan Kozinn

"FOR all the strenuous and varied efforts of period-instrument groups and specialized choirs over the last two decades, the music of the 14th-century French composer Guillaume de Machaut has made relatively little headway. This is odd in a personality-driven time, for Machaut essentially invented the notion of the composer as name brand.

Recordings of the Mass are infrequent, and albums drawn from other corners of Machaut's copious output are rarer still. The Hilliard Ensemble helps to redress that neglect with a new selection of 18 motets, secular and sacred songs, in French and Latin.

These are exquisite works, structurally unlike the polyphonic vocal works familiar since the Renaissance. ...The five Hilliard singers render these pieces beautifully, in the smoothly blended sound that has become the ensemble's trademark. But Machaut fanciers may bristle at that description."

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