Donald Berman Ives Avie, 2024 Pianist and scholar Donald Berman has made a special inquiry into the music of American hyper-modernist composers, Charles Ives chief among them. This year marks the sesquicentenary of Ives’s birth, and Berman celebrates the occasion with an Avie CD of the original piano version of St. Guadens (“The Black March”), best known as one of the movements of the orchestra piece Three Places in New England, and his own scholarly edition of the totemic Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord Mass., 1840-1860, usually known by its nickname, the “Concord Sonata.” One of the challenges
Read moreThis Island Susan Narucki, soprano; Donald Berman, piano Avie Records Soprano Susan Narucki has long been known as an advocate for contemporary music, as has collaborative pianist Donald Berman. On their latest recording, for Avie, the duo present a program of art songs by female composers active in the first half of the twentieth century. Three of the song sets are world premieres. Narucki was inspired to begin collecting the songs for this recording by Rainer Maria Rilke. Specifically, in one of his letters he mentioned the Belgian Symbolist poet Émile Verhaeren, one of the most highly regarded
Read moreGeorge Perle Serenades Boston Modern Orchestra Project Gil Rose, conductor BMOP Sound Composer George Perle passed away a decade ago, but his music has remained part of the repertory. This is noteworthy in that, upon their deaths, many composers are eclipsed for a time. An excellent example of the resilience of Perle’s work is a new recording on BMOP Sound. The Boston Modern Orchestra Project, conducted by Gil Rose, presents a disc of Perle’s Serenades: one featuring viola soloist Wenting Kang, another featuring piano soloist Donald Berman, and another for a chamber orchestra of eleven players. Serenade No. 1, which
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