Samuel Adler: Chamber and Instrumental Music
Toccata Classics

Text on the back cover of this sampling of Samuel Adler's chamber music describes it as blending “an edgy angularity with long flights of lyrical melody, and often informed with both a buoyant charge of energy and impish sense of humour.” That turns out to be a very apt characterization for the eight chamber pieces presented on the seventy-eight-minute release by violinist Michelle Ross, pianist Michael Brown, and Cassatt Quartet. It's a compendium spanning almost sixty years—the earliest work dated 1956 and the most recent 2014—and offering a solid representation of his writing for string instruments and piano. Adding to its value, five of the works are first-time recordings.

Though Adler was born in Mannheim in 1928, he left Germany with his family in 1939 for the United States. A graduate of both Boston University and Harvard, he studied composition with seminal figures such as Paul Hindemith, Walter Piston, and Aaron Copland. While he did return to Germany after completing his studies to found and conduct the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra, he grounded himself stateside with faculty positions at the North Texas State University (now the University of North Texas), the Eastman School of Music, and the Juilliard School of Music and facilitated the development of composition students for close to six decades. His own works have been performed and recorded far and wide. A writer as well as composer, Adler's published books on choral conducting, sight-singing, orchestration, and the autobiography Building Bridges with Music: Stories from a Composer's Life. His creative energy is far from spent, as shown by the Seventh Symphony he completed at the age of ninety-three and “When Great Trees Fall,” a song he recently wrote to commemorate Ruth Bader Ginsburg's passing.

His parents started him on violin at a young age, and his lifelong fondness for the instrument has likely been a factor in the many works he's written for it. Adler's fortunate to have as stellar a violinist as Michelle Ross in his corner for this release. This protégé of Itzhak Perlman, Juilliard School graduate, and one-time composition student of Adler's is not only an accomplished musician but a composer of note too. Her work recently appeared on albums by cellist Arlen Hlusko and the Carr-Petrova Duo, and she collaborated with cellist Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir on 2022's The Whale Song. It's as a violinist that Ross distinguishes herself here, however, as does Brown, who impresses on three pieces alone and as her partner on three violin sonatas. She also plays unaccompanied but on one piece only, 2012's In Memory of Milton, Adler's tribute to Milton Babbitt.

The three solo piano pieces are first recordings, beginning with Fantasy for Piano Solo (2014), an arresting rhapsody whose pensive opening blossoms into a commanding exercise in pianistic dynamism, and later moving on to 2007's Festschrift: A Celebration for Solo Piano and 1980's Thy Song Expands My Spirit. Whereas the former swells from a crepuscular hush into an aggressive rhythm-driven expression, the Whitman-titled latter, written in tribute to Copland on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, similarly builds from delicate beginnings into a clangorous array of chords and runs. Delivered with intense feeling and consummate poise by Ross, the compact Babbitt piece hews to an ABA form with an agitated central section framed by slow, lyrical episodes.

Two of the sonatas are three-part works; the Violin Sonata No. 3 (1965), on the other hand, is, formally speaking, a single movement work that contains six episodes performed without pause. Sequenced first, however, is the Violin Sonata No. 2 (1956), which eschews the serial techniques many an American composer was drawn to at the time for tonality, if tonality of a particularly adventurous kind. After a rambunctious allegro sets a spirited tone, the central “Lento espressivo” offsets its playfulness with lyrical poignancy beautifully rendered by Ross. A brief closing movement reinstates the lightheartedness of the opening with a folk-tinged thrill-ride that hints at a Copland influence. The third sonata advances rapidly through its parts, with the lengthy marking “Fast and intense – Very slowly – Suddenly fast – Very lively – Very slowly – Like a waltz, gracefully – Fast and intense” leaving little doubt as to the work's trajectory. Ross and Brown sustain a powerful connection throughout the sixteen-minute performance, regardless of whether the passages are torrential, plaintive, or brooding. Created in 1989, the demanding fourth sonata calls upon the virtuosity of the instrumentalists, but Ross and Brown are up to the task. The two navigate the craggy terrain of “Quite fast” with authority, the introspective “Quiet and dream-like” movement with circumspect delicacy, and ride the rapids of the effervescent “Fast and very rhythmic” like seasoned pros.

Similar to the third violin sonata, the String Quartet No. 10 (2014) is a one-movement composition but with four individual sections giving it a multi-movement character. Commissioned by the Cassatt Quartet to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the group has performed the piece many times and delivers a sterling sixteen-minute treatment for this recording. Alternating twice between slow and fast sections, the work moves from a reflective opening into a savage episode marked by stabbing gestures and flurries; the reinstatement of calm and peacefulness serves as a harbinger for the agitated part sure to follow. Even though transitions between the four sections are discernible, the work nevertheless flows fluidly from one into the next.

April 2024