NO LAUGHING MATTER
Melvyn M. Sobel | Freeport (Long Island), New York | 02/11/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"With compositions like these to her credit, Amy Beach (1867-1944), the jewel of New England, could easily dismiss the academes, the slights to her burgeoning talent.... and the infamous moniker. [After her 1885 marriage to Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, poor Amy was nicknamed Mrs. H.(a) H. A. Beach. So much for professional courtesy among the rabid and envious few.]
Well, we can almost share the last laugh with Mrs. Beach, but not quite; for although her music--- three hundred works plus--- was highly regarded and published throughout her life, by the end of the century it had fallen into relative obscurity, where, with the exception of record companies like Arabesque, Vox, Chandos and sundry others, it remains. Such is the fate of too many Romantic-era composers, and maybe justly so, but not in this case.
No. The three chamber compositions here illustrate the breadth and scope of Amy Beach's actively inventive, lyrically experimental mind. Spanning over forty creative years--- from the Brahmsian Op. 34 Sonata for Piano and Violin (1896), with its delightfully dancing and memorable polka-like Scherzo, to the one movement Op. 89 Quartet for Strings (1921; rev. 1929), noteworthy for its "modern" dissonances and gravitation towards textural clarity, and inevitably reaching the ne plus ultra Op. 150 Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano (1938), written when Beach was seventy, with its exceptional amalgam of romanticism and impressionism.
No. This is music that is charming, daring and deservedly praiseworthy; the kind that, like vintage wine, only improves with age and becomes finer still. And with each "tasting" more warmly appreciated.
This is music that should be heard. Kudos, then, to pianist Joanne Polk, whose excellent survey of the complete Beach piano works has incorporated these, the melodiously empathetic Lark Quartet, whose violinist Diane Pascal is a charmer, and to the stalwart, enterprising Arabesque group for allowing us the opportunity to hear this beautifully-recorded recital.
[Running time: 59:54]"
Track Listings (8) - Disc #1