Aequalis - Works by Brody, Davidovsky, Gideon, Steiger, Ung (1991)

The compositional company kept on this recording reveals a broad spectrum of artistic sensibilities and musical techniques. Its members are equally oblivious to fashionable trends and sectarian dogma. Miriam Gideon, the elder member of the group, studied with the Russian composer Lazare Saminsky and then with Roger Sessions from 1934 to 1941. From the mid-1940s she began her own extensive teaching career. A generation younger, Mario Davidovsky, who had studied composition in his native Buenos Aires, began his American career at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, where he came in contact with Aaron Copland and Milton Babbitt. His compositional lineage converges with Gideon at this point, since she and Babbitt studied with Sessions at the same time. Davidovsky encountered Edgard Varèse, Bulent Arel, and Vladimir Ussachevsky in his early years on the faculty at Columbia University working with them and Babbitt in developing the techniques and idioms that would dominate electronic music during the following decade. Chinary Ung, a native Cambodian, studied with Chou Wen-Chung and Davidovsky at Columbia in the Sixties. Like Davidovsky, his musical training was already quite advanced by the time of his arrival in the United States. Ung also worked with an influential predecessor at Tanglewood, in this case, George Crumb. However, Ung's music—with its involvement of forthrightly Asian elements in a musical style that also directly engages contemporary American concert music techniques—defies any easy listing of influences.

Tracklist

Chinary Ung
1 Spiral (14:07)

Mario Davidovsky
2 Synchronism No. 6 (6:54)

Rand Steiger
3 Trio in Memoriam (13:38)

Miriam Gideon
Sonata for Cello and Piano:
4. I. Agitato ma non troppo vivo (6:57)
5. II. Andante con moto (6:56)

Martin Brody
6 Commedia (10:14)

Aequalis
Fred Bronstein, piano
Elizabeth Mohr, cello
Michael Parola, percussion

New World 80412-2