Cassatt

On this CD:

1. Cassandra Sings
Composed by Tina Davidson
Performed by Cassatt String Quartet, Anna Cholakian, Sunghae Anna Lim, Michiko Oshima, Muneko Otani

2. Four Marys
Composed by Julia Wolfe
Performed by Cassatt String Quartet, Anna Cholakian, Sunghae Anna Lim, Michiko Oshima, Muneko Otani

3. Strophic Variations for String quartet "A Song"
Composed by Andrew Waggoner
Performed by Cassatt String Quartet, Anna Cholakian, Sunghae Anna Lim, Michiko Oshima, Muneko Otani

4. Lemniscates
Composed by Eleanor Hovda
Performed by Cassatt String Quartet, Anna Cholakian, Sunghae Anna Lim, Michiko Oshima, Muneko Otani

5. Intermedio
Composed by Daniel S. Godfrey
Performed by Cassatt String Quartet, Anna Cholakian, Sunghae Anna Lim, Michiko Oshima, Muneko Otani

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Sadly, the cellist featured in this recording, Anna Cholakian, passed away several years ago. She was the ensemble's driving force and creative fire behind its imaginative, poetic renderings of new music. On this disc, the repertoire and the musicians push us beyond known boundaries. Julia Wolfe's Four Marys is a wrenching work, on which the Cassatt bestows the sort of brilliant, gripping interpretive effort I wish the Kronos Quartet would put out. Daniel S. Godfrey's Intermedio comes across as somewhat derivative and is the weakest piece on the album. But the performance shows off what there is to like. --Gwendolyn Freed

Cassatt, Music, Anna Cholakian, Tina Davidson, Daniel S. Godfrey, Eleanor Hovda, Andrew Waggoner, Julia Wolfe, Cassatt String Quartet, Michiko Oshima, Muneko Otani, Sunghae Anna Lim, Chamber, Chamber Music, Classical, Classical Artists, Miscellaneous, Miscellaneous Music, Quartet for Four String Instruments

Julia Wolfe: The String Quartets
Average customer rating:

Influence

Fun like the dentist

Julia Wolfe: The String Quartets
Julia Wolfe , Ethel , Cassatt String Quartet , and Lark Quartet
Manufacturer: Cantaloupe
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Chamber Music | Forms & Genres | Classical (c.1770-1830) | Historical Periods | Classical | Styles | Music
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Ethel

Trance

Light

Braggtown

ASIN: B00007IPZT
Release Date: 2003-02-11

Customer Reviews:

Influence.......2005-02-04

What made me get this CD of Julia Wolfe's String Quartets was her citing of influences from Beethoven to Led Zeppelin. Specifically these string quartets were said to be inspired by Led Zeppelin and other American 'pop' music. I had to hear it.

Know what you're getting into before you buy this CD. All the pieces brush close to minimalism but with more intensity, less pure harmonies, and much better rhythm. You won't find shimmering, sweet harmonies but rather harsh and blunt harmonies. Her influences for these works seem to come from rock and metal less than from Beethoven, Schubert, or the like.

The first quartet, 'Big Deep', plays true to its name. It's an almost non-stop rhythmic work on some harsh, low chords. It almost reminds me of a metal band like Meshuggah being transcribed to String Quartet. It sounds like the soundtrack to an aggressive underwater expedition by the Discovery Channel. Different short, adventurous melodies try to break through on the violins occasionally but are always beaten down back into the 'big deep' of the rhythmic chords. It gets progressively more dissonant and harsher towards the end, building up a violent undercurrent that crashes against the end as suddenly as it began.

'Four Marys' is definately the most abstract sounding of the pieces. It is less repetitive than Big Deep. It begins with all parts doing glissandos, sliding around the middle registers. This eventually turns into some webs of soft harmonies sustained, and occasionally reverts back to its searching, sliding beginnings.

'Last Summer' is more remeniscent of the first piece, back to the grinding chords, but not as deep and to me not as memorable. It has more moments of melody, which is to say a few brief snatches of melody over 10 minutes. It's the least impressive work on the album to me.

If you're looking for music with brilliant progression, challenging harmonies and deeply emotional melody, this CD is not for you. If you want to hear some excellent rhythm work and see what happens when you take a classical medium into more modern rhythm and chord methods of rock and metal music (though i'm sure Wolfe wouldn't characterize it quite like that), then definately give this CD a shot.

Fun like the dentist.......2004-12-19

The New Yorker included this CD as one of its top classical releases of 2003, and that's how I ended up with one of the only CD's, of hundred's I've purchased, that I'm desperate to get rid of. The first track opens with a grinding, jarring riff that's a bit of Purple Haze without the satisfaction of any kind of resolution or even progression. It churns relentlessly and repetitively for over 13 minutes with the one moment of glory the beautiful respite of silence that comes when the last dissonant chord fades. The next track oscillates in and out of harmony, an effect that could be reproduced by a house DJ (with a death wish) who messed with the speed control of turntable playing Philip Glass in a dirge-like mode. The third track -- well, who knows -- my pain threshold had long since been met and crossed.
As a casual classical music fan, I can't claim to make sense of all of this. But if this is what passes as new, interesting, and innovative classical music then it is no wonder the genre is in trouble. If it's pleasure you're after, look elsewhere. If you like your music as a self-flagellating intellectual exercise, then this may be the one for you. Just keep the Advil nearby.

Average customer rating:

A pleasure

Daniel S. Godfrey String Quartets
Cassatt String Quartet
Manufacturer: Koch Int'l Classics
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

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Waggoner: Legacy
Words of the Sea
It Is My Heart Singing

ASIN: B0001IN0G2
Release Date: 2004-04-27

Tracks:

String Quartet No. 2: Moderato
String Quartet No. 2: Adagietto
String Quartet No. 2: Presto
String Quartet No. 3: Mesto, poco rubato (Elegy)
String Quartet No. 3: Allegretto (Reverie)
String Quartet No. 3: Agitato - Molto vivace
Romanza

Customer Reviews:

A pleasure .......2005-09-24

A jewel. I like this music. I hear echoes from Viennese school, Berg, Zemlinsky Quartets, with a new twist.
Strange, the writer from the CD refers to Satie (??), but I dont know why.

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Enjoyable Contemporary Music

Margaret Brouwer: Crosswinds

Manufacturer: Composers Recordings
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B00000J8RR
Release Date: 1999-06-22

Tracks:

Crosswinds: Blue Ridges, Dappled Sunlight, Mountain Waltz
Crosswinds: Dusk
Crosswinds: Oldtime Fiddles : High, Low, Lower
Prelude And Vivace: Prelude
Prelude And Vivace: Vivace Ritmico
Diary Of An Alien: A Call For Action
Diary Of An Alien: Drifting
Diary Of An Alien: No Rotary Phone
Diary Of An Alien: Somewhere The Bells
Sonata For Horn And Piano: Hymn
Sonata For Horn And Piano: Riding To Higher Clouds

Customer Reviews:

Enjoyable Contemporary Music.......1999-11-09

I really liked the Sonata for Horn and Piano - It was great

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It Is My Heart Singing
Tina Davidson , and Cassatt String Quartet
Manufacturer: Albany Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

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Daniel S. Godfrey String Quartets

ASIN: B000FO443K
Release Date: 2006-06-01

Tracks:

It Is My Heart Singing for String Quartet and Piano
Delight of Angels for String Quartet
Paper, Glass, String and Wood forTriple String Quartet

Product Description

Born in Stockholm, Sweden, of American parents, Davidson spent her first three years living in the town of Malmo on the Baltic Sea. She later lived in Istanbul, Turkey, and, as a teenager, in Wurzburg, Germany and Tel Aviv, Israel, finally settling down in Oneonta, New York. Her mother, a professor of English literature, recognized her musical talents and started her on piano at an early age. She studied later at the Wurzburg Conservatory and Tel Aviv University. In the early 1970s, she went to Bennington College, Vermont, where she studied with Henry Brant and Vivian Fine. Over the years DavidsonÂ’s music has been commissioned and performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, Relache Ensemble and Orchestra 2001, among many other ensembles. She has created works of integrity and fascination, honing an individual and expressive style. She has an ear for vivid harmonies and colors. Full of tender, haunting melodies that grow expansively! , generously and graciously, her music is real, harmonic and sophisticated. Here are three works performed by the renowned Cassatt Quartet, now celebrating its 20th anniversary. In Paper, Glass, String and Wood, all twelve parts are played, through over-dubbing, by the Quartet, revealing its famed virtuosity and commitment to challenging, original new music.

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Waggoner: Legacy

Manufacturer: CRI
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music

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Daniel S. Godfrey String Quartets

ASIN: B00005T6HH
Release Date: 2001-11-01

Tracks:

Legacy: Two Movements For String Quartet: I. Love Chorus - Corigliano Quartet
Legacy: Two Movements For String Quartet: II. Legacy - Corigliano Quartet
Symphony No. 2: I. Moderately - Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic
Symphony No. 2: II. Orage (Very Fast) - Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic
Symphony No. 2: III. Reconaissance (Slowly, Sadly) - Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic
String Quartet No. 2: I. Dream
String Quartet No. 2: II. Fantasy I
String Quartet No. 2: III. Dream
String Quartet No. 2: IV. Fantasy II
String Quartet No. 2: V. Dream
String Quartet No. 2: VII. Fantasy III
String Quartet No. 2: VIII. Albedo

Album Description

The works on this disk all reflect, in one way or another, legacies both personal and public: legacies of social action, of friendship and of the formation-for better or worse-of a musical point of view.

Legacy

The piece titled Legacy was commissioned for the Cassatt Quartet by Planned Parenthood Center of Syracuse to celebrate the dedication of their new facility, completed in 1996. The first movement, “Love-Chorus,” was commissioned later, in 1999, by the Summit Institute for the Corigliano Quartet.

Legacy is intended both as an occasional work and as a rumination on the progress of women's rights in our society; the “legacy” of the title is that of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Sanger, and countless others who have fought to raise our collective consciousness. What interests me about these women is that they shared no common ideology, no easy agenda. They were each simply committed to the realization of basic equality for women in a wide variety of contexts.

“Love-Chorus” celebrates a kind of collective spirit of renewal through Hendrix-like explosions of sound; it prepares the second movement, “Legacy,” which is carried along on a wave of propulsive rhythmic and harmonic motion. The voices are at times in unison, at other times in canon—sometimes working together, sometimes not. They press ahead, however, with tremendous urgency. As the struggle for reproductive freedoms has been through dark times in recent years, so too the music descends into the abyss and cries out de profundis. The inevitable motion of the opening, however, sweeps these lamentations away; this legacy lives in an eternally renewed, and renewable, present. The work is dedicated, with love and gratitude, to the Cassatt and Corigliano Quartets.

Symphony No. 2
In the fall of 1995 I received a commission from the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic Orchestra of Zlin, Czech Republic, for a new orchestral work to be premiered in its upcoming season. I had been to Zlin once before for the recording of an earlier piece of mine called The Train and was excited at the prospect of working with the orchestra again. (Aside from their devotion to new orchestral music from literally around the world, they gave the Czech premiere of Karel Husa's Music for Prague, 1968, at the 1990 Prague Spring. Who could possibly turn down the opportunity to make music with a group such as this?)

I had had a symphony in mind for some time and decided that this was the chance I needed to see it through. While the piece had been taking shape in my unconscious from the fall of 1995 into the early part of 1996, its expressive core was formed in February of 1996 with the unthinkable and wrenching loss to cancer of Cassatt Quartet founding cellist Anna Cholakian. In this moment the symphony became for me a meeting ground between the mythic cast of this most public of genres and the very private, personal shadow of my own grief. The piece that resulted is, I think, imperfect, but captures with some clarity the difficult journey of that year.

Quite unexpectedly, and for the first time in my life as a composer, the piece began to draw from everything around it. Thus the first movement takes up and refines elements from my first symphony (a work thankfully not included on this recording), while the third echoes an old Armenian song beloved of Anna and her father, “Hokis Murmur (My Soul is Sad),” the Dresden Amen (associated in my mind more with the Reformation symphony of Mendelssohn than with Parsifal), my own second string quartet, and a setting of John Donne's holy sonnet “From the Round Earth's Imagined Corners . . .” that I had composed earlier the same year. It is, perhaps, the multiplicity of these sources that accounts for the third movement's strange tone and precarious sense of balance, and yet for me the whole thing has a weird integrity; this is actually some of my favorite of my own music.

Cassatt
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Cassatt

Manufacturer: Composers Recordings
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Quartets | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000005TWM
Release Date: 1994-06-08

Tracks:

Cassandra Sings - Tina Davidson
Four Marys
A song...
Lemniscates
Intermedio

Amazon.com

Sadly, the cellist featured in this recording, Anna Cholakian, passed away several years ago. She was the ensemble's driving force and creative fire behind its imaginative, poetic renderings of new music. On this disc, the repertoire and the musicians push us beyond known boundaries. Julia Wolfe's Four Marys is a wrenching work, on which the Cassatt bestows the sort of brilliant, gripping interpretive effort I wish the Kronos Quartet would put out. Daniel S. Godfrey's Intermedio comes across as somewhat derivative and is the weakest piece on the album. But the performance shows off what there is to like. --Gwendolyn Freed

Average customer rating:

Music of Ursula Mamlok

Manufacturer: Composers Recordings
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music
ASIN: B00000IMEU
Release Date: 1999-04-13

Tracks:

Constellations For Orchestra: I. Brisk
Constellations For Orchestra: II.Vivo: Sprightly
Constellations For Orchestra: II.Tranquil
Constellations For Orchestra: IV. Sprightly And Energetic
Polarities For Flute, Violin, Cello, And Piano: I. In High Spirits
Polarities For Flute, Violin, Cello, And Piano: II. Still
Polarities For Flute, Violin, Cello, And Piano: III. Playful
Der Andreas Garten: I. Dunkel...
Der Andreas Garten: II. Noch Schlaft
Der Andreas Garten: III.Und Morgen's
Der Andreas Garten: IV. Kleiner Kolibri
Der Andreas Garten: V. Libelle
Der Andreas Garten: VI. Rote Scheibe
Der Andreas Garten: VIII. Taubenflug
Der Andreas Garten: VIII. Andreas Garten
Der Andreas Garten: Der Mond
Girasol For Flutes, Clarinet, Violin, Viola, Cello, And Piano
String Quartet No. 2: I. With Fluctuating Tension
String Quartet No. 2: II. Larghetto
String Quartet No. 2: III. Joyful

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Chamber Music
Lawrence Dillon , Keesecker , Wilson , and Cassatt String Qut
Manufacturer: Albany Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000069JJO
Release Date: 2002-07-30

Tracks: