Mari Kimura: Polytopia: Music for Violin and Electronics. Works by Jean-Claude Risset (b. 1938), Conlon Nancarrow (1912–1997), Frances White (b. 1960), Milica Paranosic (b. 1968), Robert Rowe (b. 1954), Tania León (b. 1943), and Mari Kimura (b. 1962). Mari Kimuri, violin. (Bridge 9236)

TAKING A ROAD LESS TRAVELED, Mari Kimura has chosen an unconventional career path, which she describes as “creating a new kind of musicality for the violin, and a cognitive interactivity between man and machine that has been previously unavailable.” Yet her training was as a classical violinist and included studies with Joseph Fuchs and Roman Totenberg, among others, and a doctorate in violin performance from New York’s Juilliard School. In recent years, she has explored violin subharmonics and other esoteric paths. Her playing on this recording, whenever the violin sound triumphs over that of the electronics, proves that she is a formidable virtuoso with total technical and tonal command of her instrument, in every register, at any speed, and under all circumstances. She calls herself a performer/composer in the venerable tradition of the Baroque masters.

The combination of acoustic and electronic instruments can strike the uninitiated listener as a bewildering collection of sound effects, but it offers almost unlimited possibilities of enhancing and enlarging the violin’s timbre and register. The works by the contemporary composers featured here do this very imaginatively, and the Serbian-born Paranosic and the Cuban-born León also make use of elements of their national idioms. Kimura’s own pieces are perhaps the most virtuosic, both technically and in terms of exploiting the violin’s potential for sound effects: pizzicato, slides, swoops, double-stops, scratches, grunts, and groans.

The program’s most substantial work is Frances White’s “The Old Rose Reader,” inspired by the composer’s “love of old garden roses, many of them famous for having been grown in the Empress Josephine’s garden.” The piece is based on a text by White’s husband, Jamey Pritchett, that incorporates the names of the roses; since many are in French, it is read with the proper French accent by Kimura’s Paris-born husband Hervé Brönnimann. The music is distinguished by giving more prominence to the natural violin sound than most of the recording’s other works.

Learn more at marikimura.com.

—EDITH EISLER

The Entertainers. Andrej Kurti, violin; Viktor Uzur, cello. (Blue Griffin 109)

The concoction presented here, by Andrej Kurti and Viktor Uzur, natives of Yugoslavia who met as students at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, is an exhilarating musical equivalent of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Applying relentless energy, razor-sharp virtuosity, and a great sense of fun to 14 lollipops—from a Scott Joplin rag to a 10-minute treatment of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir,” with generous chunks of the classic-rock acts Yes, Pink Floyd, and Queen in between—Kurti and Uzur have created a treasury of irresistible encore items. Their sumptuous performances, with all sorts of often over-the-top expressive glissandi and ritards, are enhanced by a larger-than-life recording that sounds fabulous at virtually any volume level.

The arrangements range from straightforward (Kreisler’s Schon Rosmarin and some familiar Middle European bon-bons) to pretty interesting (Yes’ edgy “Heart of the Sunrise” and a really imaginative “Flight of the Bumblebee”).

—LAURENCE VITTES

Miklós Rózsa: Variations on a Hungarian Peasant Song, Op. 4; Duo for Violin and Piano, Op. 7; North Hungarian Peasant Songs and Dances, Op. 5; Sonata for Solo Violin, Op. 40. Philippe Quint, violin; William Wolfram, piano. (Naxos 8.570190)

Though remembered today mainly for his film scores (Spellbound, Double Indemnity), Miklós Rózsa (1907-1995) was a successful composer long before Hollywood made him famous. He studied at the Leipzig Conservatory and had published several compositions when his promising career was aborted by the Nazis. Born in Budapest, Hungary, he was exposed to local peasant music from childhood at the family’s summer country home. Unlike his models, Bartók and Kodály, he never collected folk material, but it exerted a permanent influence on his style.

The four works recorded here are impressive. In Op. 4 and 5 (1929), Rózsa uses actual folk melodies. In the Variations, a simple theme is followed by 13 alternately song-like and dance-like variations, using effects like pizzicato, harmonics, and chords. Bartók’s Romanian Dances cast their shadow on the Peasant Songs and Dances, which range from wistful and delicate to forceful and pungent. The Duo, Op. 7 (1931), is a partnership of two equal instruments. The first movement is slow, hesitant, with lush, melancholy tunes; the second is an ironic Scherzo with a very Hungarian trio; the third is a lamentation; the last a rousing dance.

The Violin Solo Sonata (1985-86) is one of Rózsa’s late single-instrument works, written after he became too ill to handle scores for large ensembles and had stopped composing for films. In three movements, it is complex, restless, and abrasive, with dissonances, tritones, and slashing chords. The middle movement’s variations hardly resemble the theme. It demands utmost virtuosity of the player, with runs into the stratosphere, double-stops, bravura bowings, and sudden character changes.

The ubiquitous Quint handles all these challenges with consummate ease and flair. He is a splendid violinist. His technique is brilliant, his tone intense and strikingly beautiful, and he plays with genuine expressiveness and idiomatic identification. Wolfram, a fine pianist, is an empathetic partner.

—E.E.

Composers in the Loft: The Music of Ricardo Lorenz, Carter Pann, Pierre Jalbert, Stacy Garrop, Vivian Fung. David Ying, cello; Elinor Freer, piano; Lincoln Trio; Biava Quartet; Maia Quartet; John Bruce Yeh, clarinet. (Cedille 90000 100)

The Music in the Loft project was founded in 1992 in Chicago to offer gifted young chamber groups and composers performance opportunities. This CD illustrates its mission’s success. The performers are major competition winners enjoying international careers; the composers are recipients of multiple awards and commissions and teach at prestigious colleges and conservatories. All the featured works, except Jalbert’s Trio, are world-premiere recordings.

The composers represent a wide variety of national, cultural, and stylistic backgrounds.

Lorenz’s “Bachangó” (1984) uses rhythmic and lyrical elements of Afro-Cuban music. Pann’s “Differences” (1998), played by David Ying, cellist of the Ying Quartet (which inaugurated Music in the Loft’s first season) and pianist Elinor Freer, includes blues, jazz, a country dance and, most memorably, a somber, beautiful, song-like “Air.”

Born to Chinese parents, Fung grew up in Canada and lives in New York. Her Miniatures (2005) shows her Western musical training in jazzy clarinet runs and slides, but also draws on Asian folk music and the sound of gamelan orchestras.

The two remaining works have unusual programs. Jalbert based the rhythms of his Trio’s first movement (1998) on the rapid heartbeat of his unborn son; the second movement, dedicated to Mother Teresa, is modeled on the “Agnus Dei” and builds from single lines to a massive, dissonant climax for all three instruments.

The record’s most ambitious work is Garrop’s String Quartet No. 2: Demons and Angels (2005). The story of a man who, torn between the forces of good and evil, finds that he has committed five murders, it aims at nothing less than the depiction of a mind’s descent into madness. In its four movements, aggression, dissonance, and chaos alternate with lyricism, mournfulness, and pleading. In the Biava Quartet’s committed performance, the total impression is always arresting and often moving.

The playing throughout is excellent, but the pianos tend to be too loud and the strings lack resonance.

—E.E.

Justin Dello Joio: Music for Piano Trio. Two Concert Etudes, Sonata for Piano. Carter Brey, cello; Ani Kavafian, violin; Jeremy Denk, piano on the trio; Garrick Ohlsson, piano on the sonata. (Bridge 9220)

Born in 1955, Justin Dello Joio represents the seventh generation of composers in his family. Recipient of numerous prestigious awards and commissions, he holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from the Juilliard School, and has written in every instrumental and vocal genre. He began to play the piano at the age of five, and this early training shows in his effective, idiomatic writing in the piano pieces included here.

The centerpiece of this recording is Music for Piano Trio: The March of Folly (2006). Inspired by a book of that title by the historian Barbara Tuchman, who defines folly as “the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interest,” it has a strong political subtext and reflects the composer’s conviction that “many things never change as the same behavior patterns and the same errors are endlessly repeated throughout history.”

The Trio is in three movements and an epilogue: “The March of Folly”—an ironic, sarcastic grand march suggesting a flag-waving, self-righteously patriotic crowd, with lots of banging and crashing from the piano and sound effects from the strings; “Respite”—an oasis of calm with songful solos for the strings; “March of Folly: To the Abyss/Cataclysm”—a return to the aggressive chords of the beginning, with thematic fragments building up to a chaotic climax. The piece ends on a hopeful note with a short, lyrical “Prayer for Chiara” (the composer’s daughter).

The trio is structured around a motivic cell of a minor third, which recurs melodically and harmonically, plain or in disguise, until it is left in sole possession of the epilogue.

A powerful, arresting work, the music and the political subtext seem not only timely but timeless. The performance is most excellent: secure, brilliant, and utterly committed.

The only flaw is the recorded sound. The piano is too loud and percussive, the violin’s tone has a forced, constricted quality.

—E.E.

Vítezslava Kaprálová: Works for Piano and for Violin and Piano. Stephanie Chase, violin; Virginia Eskin, piano, (KOCH 7742)

Throughout history, supremely gifted artists have been cut down at the peak of their creativity, either by the cruelty of fate or the cruelty of men. The Moravian composer Vítezlava Kaprálová (1915-1940) was a victim of both. Her prodigious talent blossomed and bore fruit remarkably early. Her mother was a singer, her father an all-round musician who had studied composition with Janáček. Under her father’s guidance, she started composing when she was nine. Entering Brno Conservatory at fifteen, she was the first woman to graduate in both composition and conducting.

She later also became the first woman to conduct the Czech Philharmonic and the BBC Orchestra.

In 1935, Kaprálová moved to Prague to study at the conservatory with the distinguished composer Vítezlav Novák and conductor Václav Talich. Her works were performed at important contemporary music societies; her first large-scale orchestral composition was dedicated to the Republic’s president Edvard Benes.

Settling in Paris in 1937, Kaprálová studied conducting with Charles Munch and established a close musical and personal relationship with the Czech expatriate composer Bohuslav Martinů, who became her mentor and champion.

After conducting her own symphony at the 1938 London ISCM Festival, she planned to visit her homeland, but the Germans had invaded it, cutting her off from her family. Adrift, she married a young Paris-based Czech student in 1940; four months later, aged 25, she succumbed to a mysterious illness.

Of Kaprálová’s 40 complete compositions, only three are for violin and piano: the rhapsodic, romantic “Legend,” and the charming, lively “Burlesque” were written in 1932. “Elegy,” a mournful lamentation, was written in 1939 in memory of the great Czech writer Karel Capek.

Beautifully performed by Stephanie Chase, these works are paired on this CD with four piano pieces. Kaprálová’s music displays a remarkable mastery of form and harmony, and radiates youthful spontaneity, lyrical tenderness, and passionate intensity. Her style is fairly conventional, but becomes more daring as she experiments with contemporary influences, leaving an aching sense of uncompleted search and unfulfilled promise.

—E.E.