Track Listing

1. 1. Allegro moderato
2. 2. Adagio lamentoso
3. 3. Fantasia. Epilogue
4. 1. Allegro moderato
5. 2. Andante
6. 3. Recitativo

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #386829 in Music
• Released on: 2000-01-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Import

Album Description
Cathy Basrak, as the 23-year-old newly appointed assistant principal violist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and principal violist of the Boston Pops Orchestra, made her recording debut with an all-American program of attractive twentieth-century chamber music that's rarely heard -- and largely unfamiliar even to many violists. Rochberg's Sonata, a highly expressive, romantic work from his post-serial period, is lyrical yet intellectually stimulating. It was commissioned to celebrate the 75th birthday of viola phenomenon William Primrose. Jacobi's 1941 Fantasy for Viola and Piano synthesizes classical, romantic, and modern influences with melodies that recall Jacobi's Jewish heritage. Ms. Basrak calls the Fantasy "the most difficult piece I've played on the viola." Likening it to Paganini's violin music, she says it demands virtuosic playing and dramatic expression extending to "all extremes of the spectrum." The most familiar work on the CD (other than the Rochberg) is Shulman's Theme and Variations. A fixture of the standard viola repertoire, it's unabashedly romantic in style but rich in substance. Impressionistic reveries alternate with rapid-fire passages of daunting difficulty. Porter, a Connecticut native who studied composition in Paris with Vincent D'Indy, wrote extensively for strings. His sunny Speed Etude, commissioned as a virtuosic tour de force for Paul Doktor, is infused with an ebullient postwar optimism. Liebermann's Sonata for Viola and Piano is an enchanting piece that's by turns ethereal and jazzy. Hailed as "one of America's most gifted 'new tonalist' composers" (Time), the 39-year old New Yorker's music has been performed by Mstislav Rostropovich, James Galway, James Levine, and Leonard Slatkin.

ClassicsToday.com / Disc of the Month, May 2001
[Basrak] possesses a luminous, rounded tone and she is nimble and responsive in even the most technically trying passages.

Slate.com
Here, Basrak knocks pretty confidently on the front doors of the world's few viola celebs...and manages to nudge her way in.