David Starobin

Bridge Records is pleased to issue guitarist David Starobin's final studio recording, W.T. Matiegka's Six Sonatas, op. 31, performed on a Viennese style guitar. Starobin regards Matiegka's sonatas as "in their time, the pinnacle of expression on the guitar, offering the most detailed notation of both articulation and character–a clear window onto performance style in the era of Beethoven and Schubert." Since Starobin's retirement from the concert stage in 2018, the native New Yorker has kept a busy schedule, co-authoring with his wife Becky, the libretto of the opera The Thirteenth Child (music by Poul Ruders); writing and directing the film, String Trio, Los Angeles 1946 (filmed in Arnold Schoenberg's Los Angeles home); and serving as Director of Artists and Repertoire at Bridge Records. David Starobin teaches at the Manhattan School of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he co-founded Curtis's guitar program in 2011. A frequently honored figure, Starobin was called “arguably the most influential American classical guitarist of the 20th Century” (Soundboard), and was inducted into the Guitar Foundation of America's "Hall of Fame" in 2011.

David Starobin - New Music for Guitar, Vol. 8 (2013) {Bridge 9404}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 233 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 133 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 9 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2013 Bridge Records | BRIDGE 9404
Classical / Modern Classical / Modern Classical / Guitar

David Starobin continues his award-winning New Music with Guitar series after a six year hiatus. Volume 8 includes two solo works and two chamber pieces in their premiere recordings. Starobin's own composition, Variations on a Theme by Carl Nielsen, takes Nielsen's “Song Behind the Plow”, first published in 1899, and subjects it to 12 variations. Paul Lansky's Partita for guitar and percussion is in four beautifully wrought and intricate movements. Six Pages by the Danish composer Poul Ruders, presents miniatures that range from light and comic to sustained and meditative. George Crumb's Ghosts of the Alhambra is a song cycle based on poems of Lorca, and features the distinguished American baritone, Patrick Mason.

David Leisner is on extraordinarily versatile musician with a multifaceted career as electrifying performing artist, a distinguished composer, and a master teacher. Regarded as one of America’s leading classical guitarists, his superb musicianship and provocative programming have been applauded by critics and audiences around the world.

Classics Today
George Crumb’s Songs, Drones, and Refrains of Death (1968) is one of a series of works exploring texts by Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. Like so much of Crumb's mature music, it uses avant-garde performance techniques and unusual instruments (a mixture of percussion and electronics) to create a primal, elemental atmosphere. In this respect, the music stands in the tradition of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring or Bartók's The Miraculous Mandarin, both works where an exceptionally refined and sophisticated technique is used unflinchingly to depict visions of mystery, evoke primitive rituals, and explore the ancient myths of our collective unconscious.

—David Hurwitz