David Adam

A songwriter's songwriter, David combines a keen social sensibility with dazzling musical ability and a strong voice to produce songs that are performed by dozens of other top musicians…

"Ascanio in Alba" K. 111 came about through the good offices of Count Firmian, who had shared the Milan audience's enthusiasm for "Mitridate" and exerted his influence on the Empress in Vienna. He suggested entrusting the young Mozart with the composition of a festa teatrale for the wedding of the Empress's son, Archduke Ferdinand, and Maria Beatrice d'Este of Modena. Mozart began working on the score in late August 1771.

Though a pupil of the great orchestrator Rimsky-Korsakov, and in turn a teacher to the likes of Rachmaninov, Glière, and Scriabin, Anton Arensky himself is a composer often forgotten when contemplating the Russian greats. Productive in many genres, it is perhaps in his chamber music that this unduly neglected composer truly shines. His writing has much of the same textural sophistication and melodic beauty as his close friend, Tchaikovsky. In fact, the theme on which the Second Quartet's Variations are based is drawn from a Tchaikovsky quartet. Performing Arensky's First and Second string quartets, along with the Piano Quintet, is the Ying Quartet. This ensemble's playing is characterized by a surprisingly precise, consistent uniformity of sound and exactness of articulation, making it seem as if a single instrument were playing as opposed to four independent parts. All aspects of their technical execution are polished and refined, which only enhances their equally enjoyable musical effusiveness, rich, deep tone, and understanding of Arensky's scores that casts them in the best possible light.

Dark, emotional, and exquisitely beautiful, David Lang's new CD, Elevated, has premiere recordings of 3 recent works. Taken together, these pieces create a world in which consonance fights dissonance, hope struggles against hopelessness, and simple melodies are constantly beset by gravity, weight, and decay.

Originally put out by Timeless, only to be issued in the U.S. on Impulse! eight years after the session, the phrase "if they only knew" at one time was conceived as a riposte to Liebman's critics. But you won't hear any querulous complaints from this corner, for this is a thoughtful, often burning quintet session carooming off the bumpers of post-bop, jazz-rock, and the avant-garde. Liebman is mostly heard on brittle, sometimes volatile tenor throughout the record, even turning in some fancy bop licks on "Autumn in New York." The relaxed, darting electric touch comes from John Scofield, whose asymmetrical guitar you can spot a country mile away, and he contributes the most attractive tune on the session, "Capistrano"…

Composed in 1993, the John Adams Violin Concerto is already a contemporary classic. Some reviewers say it is the best violin concerto written in the past 50 years. This new recording by Leila Josefowicz is the last word on what are now many recordings by some of the world's finest players. She first recorded the Violin Concerto in 2002 with John Adams, the composer, conducting. What makes this new recording the best? Josefowicz "owns" the piece having performed it in concert over 100 times since the premiere!