From Method to Madness: The American Sound

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From Method to Madness: The American Sound takes its title from a work both composed and played by cellist Clancy Newman. It is not clear whether the four works here are supposed to represent some kind of abstract "American Sound," but they do hang together well and have an entertaining sense of energy that breaks boundaries. This is most explicit in Newman's work, which lives up to its title with its orderly opening disrupted by anarchic, jazzy energies, but all of the other works combine contrasting elements in entertaining ways. Samuel Barber's early Cello Sonata in C minor pushes the tonality but contains several examples of his purely tonal melodic gift; Lukas Foss' Capriccio for cello and piano is a humorous work that seems to poke a bit of fun at its own modernist elements; and Kenji Bunch's Broken Music for cello and piano features abrupt rhythms that keep threatening to cohere but then veer off the tracks once again. Not one of these pieces is terribly familiar, which is odd considering the general paucity of music for cello, and all of them are enjoyable for anybody. Newman and Natalie Zhu have good performance chemistry, and the Albany label's sound from the famed Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in New York is superb.

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