Cast: Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Ruth White, Brock Peters
Music: Elmer Bernstein
Studio: Universal Studios 61121056 [1/31/12]
Video: 1.85:1 for 16:9 1080p HD B&W
Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, DTS Express 2.0 mono, French DTS-HD 2.0 mono
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
Extras: “Fearful Symmetry” documentary, Conversation with Gregory Peck, Academy Award Best Actor acceptance speech, AFI Lifetime Achievement award, Except from Academy tribute to Gregory Peck, “Scout Remembers,” Feature commentary track with director Robert Mulligan and producer Alan Pakula, Orig. theatrical trailer, 100 Years of Universal: Restoring the Classics, BD Live!, U-Control, Pocket Blu, 44-page illustrated hard-bound book with Gregory Peck’s script pages, personal letters, storyboards and more
Length: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Rating: *****

The American Film Institute once named Peck’s role as the courageous Southern lawyer Atticus Finch as The Greatest Movie Hero of All Time. The film is second only to the Bible in the hearts and minds of U.S. readers, and is probably the most-shown film in the nation’s classrooms. We reviewed the DVD reissue of To Kill a Mockingbird in 2005 here. This Blu-ray edition is basically the same, with the addition of the fascinating Universal documentary on Restoring the Classics, and the impressive fully remastered and restored Blu-ray transfer from the original hi-res 35mm film elements. (There is a review online complaining about Universal’s over-use of DNR noise reduction which eliminated all the celluloid grain, but the transfer looked fine to me.) The participation in the documentary of the now-grown actors who originally played Scout and Jim in the film is also a plus.

I’ve already written about the major enhancement of classic black & white films in the Blu-ray format; that goes for the superb transfer and restoration of this milestone in film history. There are quite a few night scenes and the details that come up in the dark areas will be appreciated in this transfer. I did notice one telling example of the much higher resolution of Blu-ray which is not necessarily positive. It was the cropped closeups which Director Mulligan decided after the fact to use of the man’s daughter who was the supposed rape victim. The zooming in on the original larger frames caused a pronounced graininess and loss of sharpness not noticed on the DVD transfer or the film on the screen, but becomes extremely evident on the Blu-ray transfer.

—John Sunier

Swiss conductor Stefan Blunier with the Beethoven Orchester Bonn have tackled one of the great monuments of the Romantic musical era in a convincingly monumental fashion. In this new, live recording, the performance is of the second version of the symphony (1890). Either you like Anton Bruckner’s music or you don’t. I do.

This sublime work, the last symphony Bruckner finished, is a crowning achievement, lofty in aspiration and spiritually moving, not to say that his incomplete Ninth is not on the same plane.

German music historian H.H. Stuckenschmidt points out in his book Twentieth Century Music, “In a purely musical sphere, the nine symphonies of Bruckner are  …(an) expression of cosmic and cyclic thought and creation. Indeed, in Bruckner the principle of variation can be seen on a gigantically-expanded scale.”

Following in the symphonic footsteps of Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann, Bruckner’s musical journey unfolds like a majestic landscape of the actual and of the imagined. It is beautiful, devout, unearthly, scary, awe-inspiring and full of a grandeur vast and magnificent. Blunier and the Beethoven Orchester capture these episodes in a convincing manner.

Benjamin Cohrs, who has successfully worked with others on finishing the unfinished final movement of the Bruckner Ninth, points out there are 19 Bruckner symphonies, if you take Bruckner’s first and his revised versions as separate works.

Then there are the various editors’ versions. In the case of the Eighth, there are two versions by Bruckner. The first of 1887 was rejected by conductor Herman Levi. This sent Bruckner into a tailspin, but he did not give up and produced the revised version of 1890.

Austrian musicologist Robert Haas, who was working for the International Bruckner Society to prepare proper editions of the composer’s works, published in 1939 a mix of the 1887 and 1890 versions. Haas’ successor Leopold Nowak edited the 1890 version and published it in 1955. This is what Blunier presumably has used in this recording.

Later Nowak edited the first 1887 version in 1972. There is an 1892 version by Bruckner and Joseph Schalk which has been discredited by some because of Schalk’s excessive influence in terms of cuts and re-orchestration. Of three great Bruckner conductors, Karajan and Wand prefer the Haas conflation of 1887/1890 and Jochum the Nowak edition of the revised 1890 version.

Blunier’s tempos strike a middle ground with a total timing of 88 minutes. I mention this matter of speed, because Bruckner’s symphonies can become intolerable to sit through when dragged out. Celibidache on EMI slogs along, totaling 104 minutes. Koussevitsky in a well-pruned 1892 Schalk version clocks in at 50 minutes.

The sound of this recording is very good, but not in-your-face spectacular in its SACD surround sound reproduction. The orchestra has plenty of body and is realistic sounding. There is great depth for the brass and timpani, but the sense of space for the front instruments is elusive.

MD&G records use what they call a true three dimensional system: 2+2+2. This was not auditioned (due to difficulty setting up the additional speakers). [We have reviewed many of the 2+2+2 releases and will cover more soon...Ed.]

—Zan Furtwangler

Garrick Ohlsson turns his considerable digital prowess to the “great flights of imagination and difficulty” composed by Enrique Granados (1867-1916), his two books of Goyescas, subtitled “The majos in love” (c. 1909-1910). Attracted to the paintings of Spanish master Francisco Goya (1746-1828) whose works Granados had viewed in the Prado Museum in Madrid in 1896, Granados sought to capture in music that national representative spirit and bohemian power which Goya’s oeuvre generates. The designation majismo means to embrace a dashing elegance of demeanor, a sophisticate’s grace tinted by a sense of dangerous passion. The subtitle refers to the mutual attraction of majo and maja in a highly romanticized sensibility of old Madrid. Not since the classic recordings for RCA by Amparo Iturbi and that of Alicia de Larrocha for Decca have we had such a sympathetic reading with ideal piano sound, here courtesy of David Hinitt.

Performing on a resonant Steinway (in Henry Wood Hall, London, 31 May-2 June 2011), Ohlsson begins auspiciously with a grandly eloquent Los requiebros (“The flirtations”) in which Granados quotes the song “Tirana del Tripili.” A jota in triple meter, the keyboard imitates both plucked and strummed timbres of the guitar as endless metrical variants move the poetic conceits from verses and refrains of the original song. The passionate setting extends into the large second piece, “Coloquio en la reja, duo de amor” (Dialogue at the window, love duet), an evocation of two lovers’ exchanging their ardent troth through the lattice-work of a window’s ornamental iron grill. The third piece, “El fandango de candil” (Fandango by candle-light) has its source in painter Ramon de la Cruz, not Goya. Here, Ohlsson’s muscular and percussive brilliance asserts itself in triplets of a colorful fandango for guitar and castanets. The sweeping lines and buoyed curlicues remind us of veronicas performed in a Madrid bullring.

The spirit of Valencia rather than Andalusia reigns in “Quejas, o La maja y el ruisenor” (Complaints, or The maja and the nightingale), in which a lovelorn maja converses with a nightingale while the filigree beneath the song constantly varies its shape and texture. The imaginative flourishes include a bravura “cadenza ad libitum” at the end of the movement. The upward sweep of the erotic tune and the cadenza suggest much from Liszt, while the interior, intimate, dreamy lines whisper conceits only Spain can convey.

Book II begins with monumental chords announcing “El amor y la muerte” (Love and death), a ballade inspired by Goya’s Capricho of a young woman’s holding in her arms her dying lover. Themes from former sections return, now in a succession of dominant-sevenths on the verge of death, a most Lisztian, even Wagnerian, progression. The liquid harmonies might recall Paolo and Francesca from Dante. The “recitativo dramatico” near the finale indicates the majo’s death. The final movement, “Epilogo, serenata del espectro” (Epilogue: the Ghost’s serenade), invites the majo’s departed spirit to appear, a wraith singing to his beloved on a phantom guitar. A macabre simplicity of style dominates the plucked open strings of the guitar, the martial pace renouncing happiness in this world. If we had to serenade Cathy and Heathcliff on the moors, this music might well suffice.

The 1913 character piece “El pelele” (the straw man) is the subject of one of Goya’s caricatures, an effigy tossed in the air by young women in the same spirit as a sorority hazing. The work’s pungent staccati and blazing panache, its bold leaps and trills, encompasses both Scarlatti and the brilliant finished lyricism we know from Albeniz and Falla. The 1903 Allegro de concierto, a favorite of Alicia de Larrocha, Granados intended as a competition piece for the Royal Conservatory in Madrid. The national flavor of the work remains Spanish in affect without recourse to direct folk quotation, the flair and sumptuous filigree well within the Liszt tradition. Ohlsson projects the same Herculean energy and loving shapeliness here as he might assert in a Chopin Polonaise or a Liszt Rhapsody.

—Gary Lemco

Many years ago I was associated with Crystal Clear Records, and they released a direct disc of someone playing his own transcription of The Planets on a pipe organ installed in a pizza parlor in San Francisco.  I couldn’t find it in my direct disc collection, so evidently I chucked it in the past due to its low level of musicality. This transcription by Peter Sykes and performance by organist Hansjörg Albrecht is a huge improvement, and may in fact be preferable to many listeners vs. the now-hackneyed Holst orchestral original, which has become an over-worked item on a level with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

The organ is a Cavaille-Coll-Mutin in the cathedral of St. Nikolai in Kiel, Germany, and this is just one of a series of organ SACDs Albrecht has done for the Oehms label, including one disc of highlights from Wagner’ Ring Cycle and another of concertos for keyboard instruments by Poulenc. The variety and diversity of Holst’s musical creations for seven of the planets seem to stand out more clearly in the organ arrangements than they did for full orchestra. (There’s no concern about Pluto’s recent downgrade, because Holst never did one for Pluto.) It might even appeal to listeners who are normally averse to pipe organ. Albrecht’s interesting notes on each of the movements frequently make reference to works by other composers which have some similarity to the particular planet’s movement by Holst. For example, I would have never thought of Philip Glass having any connection with the Venus movement, but listening closely to the last part of it, I can understand the reference. Albrecht points out that Holst as at rehearsals of The Rite of Spring and Firebird, and knew of Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, so he wasn’t averse to new music influences in the creation of The Planets.

He likens the pounding, militaristic qualities of Mars with Shostakovich’s sounds of the Fascist army in his war symphonies, or the music for the human-subjugating machine in the score for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. The chorale-like effects in Holst’s loudest movement—Saturn—are beautifully conveyed in the organ transcription, and although I always enjoy the vocalese choir in the longest, final movement of the orchestral original—Neptune—the organ version is effective without it, conjuring up the boldest and most mystical of Holst’s planets. Albrecht draws similarities to Scriabin and Debussy’s Nocturnes (with its vocalese chorus) in the notes for this movement.

The church has a long reverberation which supports not only the spaciness of this particular movement but all the sections of the Holst transcription.  Organ music is a whole different experience in the excellent hi-res surround provided by Oehms. (That also goes for binaural headphone recordings of pipe organ, of which there have been a few.)

—John Sunier

Mary Lou Williams was one of those musicians who overcame a variety of impediments in her early life to become one of America’s seminal composers and arrangers’. This disc reprises many her well-known compositions which are done with style and verve designed to reveal the meaning the composer intended.

While the song list is not necessarily in chronological order, it does lay out her writing and arranging starting with her earliest forays in the late 20s and early 30s. “Roll ‘Em”, “Messa Stomp” and Walkin’ and Swinging” are from that period and the band delivers accordingly in a boogie-woogie style with the rhythm section supporting the melodies with a typical 30s “chugga chugga” beat. Part of the challenge facing the Jazz Ambassadors is that they do not have a readily identifiable sound.  But there are some first rate soloists such as pianist SFC Tim Young, who is clearly at the forefront on all three noted tunes.

“Scorpio” forms part of Williams well-known “Zodiac Suite” which foreshadowed some of her progressive musical ideas and here features guest artist Geri Allen on piano.” Blue Skies” was originally arranged for the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1943 and this take showcases the lead trumpet of SFC Paul Stevens. In 1949 Williams penned the somewhat facetious “In The Land of Oo Bla Dee” for the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra and on this rendition guest singer Andy Bey does the honors. Although this aggregation may not call themselves professional musicians, they clearly are up to dealing with demanding material with which they imbue energy and life. Listen to the tight harmonies on “Chunka Lunka” and the melodic line contained on “Tisherome”. The band continues to deliver in the same swinging fashion on the remainder of the disc with some especially interesting solo breaks by SFC Andrew Layton soprano sax on “Rosa Mae” and SFC Pat Shook clarinet on “Miss D.D.”.

This session is a continuation of a number of legacy outings that this group has done for the likes Hank Levy, Sammy Nestico, Stan Kenton and Benny Carter. This band can really play and the disc is deserving of support.

TrackList: Roll ‘Em; Messa Stomp; Walkin’ and Swingin’; Scorpio; Blue Skies; Big Jim Blues; In The Land of Oo Bla Dee; Chunka Lunka; Tisherome; Knowledge; What’s Your Story Morning Glory; Rosa Mae; MissD.D.; Act of Contrition.

—Pierre Giroux

Carmina Burana is so wildly popular that Orff’s other music lives in the shadows of its reputation. And the truth is that none of Orff’s other works so skillfully and rightly captures the cultivated simplicity of his pioneering compositional style. Yet Orff’s attempts to recreate the unity of the arts that early opera composers hoped to achieve produced some very interesting results. You may never get a chance to see Der Mond or De Temporum Fine Comoedia on stage, but they have a unique impact even when only heard via recordings.

It’s not surprising that one of Orff’s abiding enthusiasms was for the music of Monteverdi and that one of his earliest projects involved the music of the early-Baroque master. After all, the first opera composers turned to ancient Greek theater—with its mix of drama, pageant, dance, and music—as the model for their endeavors, so Monteverdi was a natural conduit for Orff’s artistic ambitions. Orff first mounted his reworking of Monteverdi’s Orfeo in 1923, for a public that was far less sophisticated musically than today’s audiences, with a half-century and more of historically informed performance practice as a part of their shared experience. The result was consternation on the part of Orff’s first listeners. Undiscouraged, Orff revised his conception twice, in 1929 and 1940; this recording is based on the 1940 version.

Orff subtitled his Monteverdi adaptations “in free new design” and wrote that they represented “a resurrectio in our theater today.” So historic fidelity was not a part of Orff’s scheme; instead, Monteverdi was to be updated to meet the dramatic and musical expectations of modern audiences. That his audiences didn’t get it may either be indicative of Orff’s being ahead of the times—or on a slightly wrong track. Or maybe a little of each is true. Orff rightly appreciated the qualities of Baroque opera and forecast its resurrection in the last half of the twentieth century. And like Liszt, who tried to give wider distribution to music he admired—whether Beethoven symphonies or Verdi operas—through his piano arrangements, Orff managed to create works that have intrinsic value and interest apart from the originals that he arranged. The same could be said of Mozart’s arrangement of Handel’s Messiah. It’s interesting to hear what a later master did to “improve” and make more relevant to contemporary audiences Handel’s lean orchestration. On the other hand, “interesting” doesn’t draw me back terribly often to Mozart’s Messiah or to Orff’s Orpheus.

To be fair, Orff’s work is much more a rethinking of the original, resulting in a pared-down version in which extraneous elements are sacrificed to a presentation of the bare narrative. Orff also substitutes a more contemporary-feeling tragic ending for Monteverdi’s happy one, with Eurydike lost to Orpheus forever, which is also more truthful to the original myth. Still, for me, the mix of Monteverdi’s bald declamatory style and Orff’s relatively lush cushiony scoring is a queasy one. Maybe I’m betraying my prejudices, but Klage der Ariadne (Lament of Ariadne) seems more appealing because the original is a bit more obscure and Orff’s orchestral arrangement is a bit more Spartan. Even Orff’s use of the trombones at one point sounds authentic since from the Renaissance onward that mournful timbre has been used to portray the Underworld and its dark foreboding. Anyway, there are things here for admirers of both Monteverdi and Orff to enjoy, though both composers are heard to better advantage in other contexts.

These are very good performances, with fine singing and touching delivery especially from Kay Stiefermann as Orpheus and Janina Baechle as Ariadne. The Orpheus Choir of Munich seems just the right size to deliver the lilting chorus “Flieht uns der nächtigen Wolken Dunkel” (“Let’s Flee the Gathering Cloudy Darkness”) with nimbleness. I wish the famous opening toccata were conducted just as crisply. It has a too-solemn pace here, maybe because conductor Ulf Schirmer wants to convey the pervasive sense of loss in Orff’s reworking of the original. Whatever, it’s an initial wet blanket that luckily doesn’t hang over the whole enterprise. Elsewhere, tempi seem well-judged, and orchestra and chorus are finely attuned and responsive.

There’s competition in the form of a classic recording on the Arts label by the same orchestra and some of the finest singers of an earlier era, including Hermann Prey and Lucia Popp. I haven’t heard it, but I find the singing on the current disc fine enough that I don’t very much miss those golden voices, and besides, CPO’s live SACD recording is outstandingly good—warm and properly enveloping. If you want to experience Orff’s take on Monteverdi, this new recording is almost certainly the way to go.

—Lee Passarella

Russian pianist Vladimir Nielsen (1910-1998) seems to be one of those colossal best-kept secret legends of the keyboard, and these transfers of recordings made by Kiev and Leningrad Radio, 1955-1960, do him only partial justice.  The sound quality of these recordings remains consistently tinny and boxy, the piano either under water or in a telephone booth. Still, the poetry that Nielsen possesses, especially in Schumann, perseveres. A friend and colleague of N.I. Golubovskaya at the Leningrad Conservatory, Nielsen admitted that it was she who “discovered the laws of musical speech to me, a spontaneous performer’s intuition.”

The Schumann 1849 Forest Scenes offer a series of eight landscape character-pieces, of which the “Herberge,” “Vogel als Prophet,” and “Jagdlied” make the most immediate impression. The two end-pieces, “Entritt” and “Abschied,” combine hortatory and meditative impulses in that delicately poetic balance that raises the notes to another sphere. While I remain partial to my Robert Casadesus rendition of the Waldszenen, I must confess that Nielsen’s lofty thought and intricate contrapunctus invokes many wistful thoughts.

The Mendelssohn group opens with the B Minor, Op. 67, No. 5, a moodily nervous piece often overlooked in the Mendelssohn canon. The Andante tranquillo in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 3 enjoys an optimistic lyricism undercut by some obsession in the repeated notes. The organ quality of the E Minor, Op. 102, No. 1 perhaps inflates this piece beyond the usual song boundaries, but its girth cannot be denied. The harsh acoustic does not do kindly by this inscription, though it waxes obvious that Nielsen has warm affection for its chordal progressions.  Allegro agitato in A Minor, Op. 85, No. 2 concludes the brief set, a passionate but concentrated toccata of a sort that ends abruptly.

Medtner’s Fairy Tale in E Minor, Op. 34, No. 2 (1916) follows, a piece that subsumes Brahms and Rachmaninov at once. The modal runs take on their own hypnosis, their filigree even hinting at the sensuality in Chopin and Scriabin. The Fairy Tale in B-flat Minor, Op. 20, No. 1 (1909) clearly derives its impulse from Chopin’s Op. 9, No. 1 Nocturne. Then Medtner goes his own way in thirds and counterpoint, the bass rising with grumbling passions. The block chords seem to condense Rachmaninov and Liszt into as tight ball, a heated, perfumed reverie from one of Dorian Gray’s soirees.

Ravel’s 1908 suite after poems of Bertrand, Gaspard de la Nuit, appears to have been a life-long specialty of Nielsen’s. Certainly, Nielsen’s Ondine splashes and undulates through a wiry gauze of Ravel harmony, the repeated notes redolent with Liszt’s Geneva bells. Liquid runs and a polished bass line contribute to the lulling affect of the sensuous score, a plaint for a degree of pity for a feral seductive creature whose underlying malignancy makes her La belle dame sans merci. A merciless sun casts its unearthly glow on a dangling carcass in Le Gibet, the gloomy repeated bass tones almost a sequence from the Latin Mass. Nielsen’s spectral performance invokes a series of lurid nightmarish images, the affect cold and unnaturally static. Each shadow and depression in the corpse seems to relate some ghastly narrative. The tolling bells leave off, and another nightmare intrudes upon us in Scarbo, the dwarf, something like Poe’s Hop-Frog. Some pre-echo invades the sound space, so we have unintended polyphony beyond the often Iberian modalities that pervade this fierce toccata. The recording venue adds a haunted reverberation all its own to complement the wild leaps in the melodic line.  Paroxysms and paranoia frolic with one another in thunderous panoply; and we could only wish Nielsen had better recording conditions to savor the color details of this revealed master. [Can't do much to improve terrible Soviet-era recordings, and Northern Flowers doesn't...Ed.]

—Gary Lemco

HDTT started sourcing their now-public domain masters from two-track prerecorded tapes, valued for their high levels and relative freedom from hiss and noise. Then they moved on to quarter-track prerecorded tapes, using their highest level of mastering gear for resulting hi-res reissues with no noticeable hiss.  Now they are occasionally mastering from highest quality vinyl.  In this instance it was a London/Decca LP originally released in September of 1968, recorded in the orchestra’s Victoria Hall in Geneva.  I found only one Suisse Romande/Ansermet London CD in my collection, but of other works. The HDTT reissue had a huge improvement in clarity, detail and spatial positioning of the musicians. There was absolutely no surface noise to peg it as an LP source.  I then did a comparison to a couple of Speakers Corner vinyl reissues of Suisse Romande recordings. The extreme high end had a greater extension on the HDTT reissue, but the vinyls had just a bit more “air” – a frequent occurrence in such A/B comparisons.

To the music: Honegger’s Third was written in Paris, where the Swiss composer had been during WWII, just after the end of the war. Its three movements evoke the Requiem Mass, which had similarities to Benjamin Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem. Its melancholic mood was entirely dissipated by the Fourth Symphony, which has lyrical and optimistic flavor—celebrating the delights of his Swiss city of Basle. However, both symphonies have a more solemn character than that of his fellow composers in Les Six. Honegger’s harmonies are always interesting, and his driving rhythms move his works along. (Of course his Pacific 231 is the great example of the latter quality.)

—John Sunier

Becky Billock is a very fine pianist who is clearly pursuing her own muse of the work of female composers. I agree, actually, that the first step to recognizing and promoting artists who are from “outside the box” of typical classical music is to play their works. The second step is allowing the audience is to decide whether or not they like and appreciate the quality of the works they are hearing; incidental to any categorical commonality like the fact that – in this case – all the composers happen to be women.

In reading Ms. Billock’s own thoughtful and informative program notes, it is clear that she has an informed passion for gender equity and awareness issues. As Becky says, at some point it would be nice to see a recording company put out a collection of “The Great Women of Music”. (A cause that I think is at least as valid as thematic programming along cultural lines – actually much more common.)

Fortunately, these pieces are all very nice and compelling pieces in their own right. For me, these works are all very pleasant discoveries. Spiral Journey by Diane Thome is a swirling rhapsodic work that structurally ‘spirals’ in the most appealing way! It was written in honor of Ruth Geberding, a benefactor of the University of Washington School of Music; where Thome is a composition and piano professor.

Medium Piano by Molly Joyce is one movement of her Preludes of Pace, written for the 2011 Texas Piano Festival. Each movement is defined stylistically by its title: medium piano, fast piano, slow piano. There is a very attractive sound at work here; a sort of impressionism-meets-jazz quality. Ms. Joyce is actually a nineteen year old pianist and composition student of Christopher Rouse at Juillard. Very impressive!

Emma Lou Diemer is one of America’s pioneers in recognition for women composers. The Kansas City native has built a career spanning over sixty years as a renowned composer-pianist. Her Toccata, from 1979, is a very energetic and dramatic work involving some inside the piano techniques with traditional playing. This is a highly rhythmic and propulsive work that showcases the techniques of the soloist very well.

The largest work on this program is the Six Preludes by Marion Bauer. The six movements/preludes each bear a different character but share a tonal and harmonic language in common. The feel in these works is somewhat impressionistic, a bit jazz-influenced and occasionally quite Romantic. Bauer is an interesting historical figure, from Washington state and being one of what some musicologists call the “forgotten vanguard” of American modern music. Some of her larger works included a more pronounced dissonance and “experimental” feel. Bauer also helped found the American Composers’ Alliance and worked to her death promoting new music in America. The Six Preludes are very attractive and interesting and might be mistaken, just a bit, for some Ravel or even Tailleferre. The closing prelude, exuberantly, passionately, sounds – wonderfully – just like it says.

Ellen Taffe Zwilich is a big name in American music with multiple awards to her credit; including the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for her Symphony #1; the first time a female won such acclaim. Her music has a depth of feeling to it throughout genres. The Lament for piano does indeed have an elegiac tone to it, having been written for the passing of Judy Arron, Executive Director of Carnegie Hall. Zwilich wrote the work in memorial and response to this loss which the composer felt personally. Lament has elements of mourning as well as frustration and is a very strong work.

Becky Billock chose four short works by another American groundbreaker, Amy Beach for this program. Beach was, herself, an accomplished pianist and much of her work is neo-Romantic and melodic. Beach was a member of what some call the “Second New England School”, writing and promoting new American music around the Boston area. She was the only female member of this group that included McDowell, Paine and Parker. Her piano works (of which the four played here are a prime example) are quite reflective of both her affinity for Chopin as well as the influences that she felt, and left, in the “Boston Group.”  These works are historically important and stand alone in sound from the others in this set but are their equal in quality.

Minnesota native Libby Larsen is another renowned living American composer and 2010 winner of the Peabody award for contributions to American music. Most of Libby’s music has an attractive and clever style that draws upon a variety of cultural sources and references. In this case, her Mephisto Rag is a take on Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz but makes little use of direct quotes. It is basically a fantasy on the Liszt theme with rag elements and some touches of stride piano. A wry but captivating little work, this piece is both entertaining as well as a nice showcase for the soloist.

Margaret Bonds was one of the first African American women composer-pianists to become well known.  Her Troubled Water is a fantasy on the spiritual “Wade in the Water”. The treatment of the original melody is inventive and somewhat complex, being wrought through a series of variations, but the piece is fascinating and is helped by the weight and strength of the original melody. Bonds also wrote some very impressive works for chorus, all of them influenced by the Black Christian religious experience in the Depression-era South.

I applaud both Becky Billock’s playing but also her “muse.” There are so many wonderful piano works out there by female American composers. In addition to the wonderful music showcased here, the music of Jennifer Higdon, Augusta Read Thomas, Shulamit Ran and Rebecca Oswald are all worth exploring – to name just a handful. I look forward to more from Becky Billock and I recommend this disc to piano lovers and those wanting to know more about the repertory!

—Daniel Coombs

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Bryan Cranston, Carey Mulligan
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Studio: Film District/Sony Pictures 39231 [1/31/12]
Video: 2.40:1 anamorphic/enhanced 1080p HD
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio
Subtitles: English, English SDH, Spanish
Extras: I Drive: The Driver, Driver and Irene: The Relationship, Under the Hood: Story, Cut to the Chase: Stunts, Interview with Refn, BD Live, UltraViolet system
Length: 100 minutes
Rating: ***1/2

The Danish director has fashioned a gutsy, extremely violent look back at 1980s film noir with the accent on cars and dangerous driving. The main character, who seems almost autistic in his lack of emotion or even speech, is a part-time stunt driver for the movies, but occasionally also works as a getaway driver for criminals, as the opening scene shows. He is in addition a mechanic in a small garage.

He falls for his next-door neighbor, whose husband is in prison, but when the husband returns things get complicated. But she’s not a femme fatale and they don’t become intimate. Seeing that the woman and her young son will suffer if he doesn’t help the husband steal some money to pay off dangerous underworld criminals, he arranges a pawnshop heist which goes terribly wrong. He even tries to return the cash that was stolen but learns that won’t be enough—his life and that of the woman and child are in danger and he has to save himself. Albert Brooks has an unexpected stint as one of the deadly heavies, and Ron Perlman is his usual oversize threatening self. The bloody scenes may cause some viewers to leave the theater or turn off the movie—be warned. Drive got a huge rave from many reviewers; now that I’ve seen it I’m frankly not quite sure why.

There are many scenes in relative darkness but the black levels of the rich-looking transfer are superb and you can see many details usually lost. I didn’t like the beat-heavy music but the surround soundtrack certainly supported the images well. Sometimes I wanted to understand more of the police radio chatter but perhaps that wasn’t important to advancing the story. There were more extras than I was interested in seeing, but some may find them worth viewing.

—John Sunier