Discography

Winner of 2000 Grammy Award

“The long-awaited premiere recording of a major work by one of our greatest living composers. The performances are perfect and the recording is of demonstration standard.”Classical Pulse

Bridge celebrates George Crumb's 70th birthday with a cross-section of his music, including youthful songs and a delightfully humorous depiction of the dogs in his life for David Starobin's expressive guitar and Crumb's percussion accompaniment. The centerpiece though, is the large-scale Star-Child, a 1977 commission from Pierre Boulez and the New York Philharmonic. Massive in ambition and in its expansive aural vistas, Crumb says it traces a "progression from darkness (despair) to light (or joy and spiritual realization)." Have no fears of New Age doodling; Crumb's music is tough, beginning with a quiet, dark slow movement that becomes an expressive duet for soprano, and a trombone that comments on the "Libera me" text with stentorian eruptions, muted sighs, and spoken parody of the soprano line. The central movement depicts the Apocalypse; the closing movement brings peace via luminous strings surrounded by a halo of handbells and a male chorus's hushed prayer of deliverance. An important work; an important disc. Dan Davis