1999 [DDD]

{CD}

{"Best CD of the Month" for December at www.classicstoday.com}

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 [at Amazon.com]

Article by Lucia K. Hyde in Wonderful West Virginia magazine about the release of this CD.

Review of the complete CD by George Bulanda at Detroit Metro Times, January 12, 2000