Matthew Greenbaum is the only composer in New York to be a mentee of both Stefan Wolpe and Mario Davidovsky. Wolpe was one of the many great minds who were forced to our shores by historical circumstances, and arriving here, found that there was interest in what they had to offer. Stravinsky, Hindemith, Krenek, Schoenberg, as well as Stefan Wolpe all tried to put down roots in the Western Hemisphere, with varied success. Or, perhaps it’s more fair to say that their influence is paying off very slowly over a long period of time.

Brickle seduces listeners with luscious harmonies and a deft melodic sense. A master of vocal writing, he elicits a multitude of sharply etched vocal personae from his two singers, Haleh Abghari and Elizabeth Farnum. In The Creation, Abghari, as God, lovingly sings of the creation's bounty of forms,day by day, culminating on the 4th and 5th days with a deeply moving kind of bluesey American weltschmertz. The mystery play continues with the angels, Lucifer, and his fall, as Abghari becomes the irresistable embodiment of a boy soprano, a loveable little solipsist who eventually gets his comeuppance. Elizabeth Farnum opens the recording with Farai un vers, Brickle's setting of a famous and famously enigmatic poem by Guillaume D'Aquitaine, the "first troubadour," set in its original language, Occitan. Farnum shakes the rafters with her jaunty-slapstick-cabaret delivery -- Edif Piaf & Lotte Lehmann meet Rosemary Clooney and the Andrews sisters. The CD also includes several exquisite little miniatures. Among them are Genius Loci, for mandolin and guitar, a bizarre little newgrass aria; and Midnight Round, for four electric guitars, a psychedelic riff on the Thelonious Monk tune, Round Midnight. Rounding out the album are two transcriptions for the Cygnus "broken consort": a fin-de-siecle gem by Busoni, and an 11th century masterpiece by Perotin.

Scott Johnson - Bowery Haunt (electric guitar duo)
Charles Wuorinen - Dodecadactyl
Martin Rokeach - Fantasy on 12 Strings
Chester Biscardi - Resisting Stillness
Sidney Corbet - Le Cirque, after Chagall (title track, with soprano Elizabeth Farnum)
Robert Pollock - Entertwined
David Lang - Warmth (electric guitar duo)
Frank Brickle - Genius Loci (guitar and mandolin)
William Anderson/Gillian Welch - My Morphine

The works on this disc are representative of Harold Meltzer's unique sensibility, profound imagination and inquisitive musical mind, quickened both by the things of the world and by a wide range of music, including the works of Franco Donatoni and the Stravinsky of Agon. Brion was praised by the 2009 Pulitzer prise jury as 'a graceful, sensual and contemplative experience', the 'inexorable emotional power' of Two Songs from Silas Marner impressed The New York Times, The Oxford Times described Sindbad as 'a startling and deeply
interesting modern work', while The Boston Globe declared that 'Exiles goes immediately onto this year's must-hear again list.'

Review

The American composer Harold Meltzer's "Brion," a runner-up for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in music, is a haunting, quirky and continually inventive chamber work for a small ensemble including guitar and mandolin. It receives an elegant, colorful performance on a splendid recording of four fascinating chamber and vocal works by Mr. Meltzer. -- New York Times, Vivien Schweitzer, November 23, 2010