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Music faculty featured on CDs
By PATRICIA DONOVAN
Contributing Editor
Three CDs featuring members of the UB music faculty have been released recently to critical applause.
UB faculty member Movses Pogossian is
featured on "Blooming Sounds: Works for Unaccompanied Violin,"
a CD released by Albany Records.
PHOTO: NANCY J. PARISI
The adventurous and spectacularly varied "Blooming Sounds: Works for Unaccompanied Violin," released by Albany Records, features violinist Movses Pogossian, visiting artist teacher in the Department of Music.
A CD from Bridge Records features performances by soprano Tony Arnold, assistant professor of music, on George Crumb's "Ancient Voices of Children" and "Madrigals, Books I-IV." Arnold's performances, supervised by the composer, have been praised by critics throughout the world of contemporary music, particularly for their artistic and sound quality. The "Ancient Voices of Children" track from the CD was nominated for a 2006 Grammy Award in the "Best Performance by a Small Ensemble Category."
Another new release, this one on the 8bells label, is "Metalofênico!" ("the sound of brass" in Portuguese), the first recording by a 20-piece brass, percussion and electric guitar ensemble of the same name that features musicians from throughout the U.S. who specialize in the performance of contemporary music. The group, directed by trumpeter Jon Nelson, assistant professor of music, was formed at the 2001 June in Buffalo Festival by Nelson and David Felder, Birge-Cary Professor of Music at UB and artistic director of June in Buffalo. The CD was released in November on the 8bells label.
"Blooming Sounds" presents an eclectic selection of works by such well-known composers as Vache Sharafyan, Adam Khoudoyan, Augusta Read Thomas and Felder, whose work, "Another Face," is included on the CD.
"I have always deeply loved Movses Pogossian's playing, and consider it an honor to work with him," Thomas says. "His recordings of my two works on this CD mean the world to me."
Pogossian was a prizewinner in the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Competition, and the youngest-ever first-prize winner of the U.S.S.R. National Violin Competition. He made his American debut in 1990 performing the Tchaikovsky Concerto with the Boston Pops, about which R. Dyer of the Boston Globe wrote, "There is freedom in his playing, but also taste and discipline. It was a fiery, centered and highly musical performance..."
A major proponent of new music, Pogossian has since performed with major orchestras in Europe and the United States, and has premiered more than 30 works. He is a member of the Baird Trio and Duo Forza, a remarkably creative chamber group formed in 2002 with award-winning classical guitarist Matthew Ardizzone.
The "Ancient Voices of Children" CD is volume nine of the Grammy Award-winning George Crumb Edition by Bridge Records and features new recordings of "Ancient Voice of Children" and "Madrigals, Books I-IV"—two of Crumb's Lorca-inspired classics—as well as the premiere recording of the composer's latest piano piece.
Critic David Hurwitz, writing in the August 2005 issue of Classics Today, noted that Arnold's performance here is informed by her previous recordings of difficult contemporary music by such composers as Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt.
"Her performances of 'Ancient Voices of Children' and 'Madrigals' on this CD," he writes, "are the first that challenge the classic recordings by Jan DeGaetani on Nonesuch and New World (to whom the work was dedicated).
"Aside from (Arnold's) totally fearless delivery," he writes, "she presents the music with a naturalness and ease that allows us to forget all about its technical difficulty, focusing instead on pure expression."
"Ancient Voices of Children" is the composition that brought Crumb his greatest fame in the 1970s, and is scored for soprano, boy soprano and a wild assortment of instruments, including mandolin, musical saw and toy piano.
"It is," says Bridge Records, "a dramatic masterpiece that influenced an entire generation of composers with its use of quotation, extremes of color and dynamics, and one of the most stunningly virtuosic vocal parts in the 20th century repertoire."
Metalofênico performs music of many styles, including contemporary works by Milton Babbitt, Felder, Charles Ives, Iannis Xenakis and LaMonte Young, and musics of Brazil, Cuba and Mexico. The ensemble draws its performers from the Meridian Arts Ensemble; Atlantic Brass Quintet; the Los Angeles, Utah and Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestras; and some of New York's finest free-lance players.