David Shifrin & Friends

This CD gets off to a great start with a top-notch performance of Copland’s Sextet for Clarinet, Piano and String Quartet. A chamber reduction of his neglected and technically challenging Short Symphony (1933), the sextet captures Copland at what turned out to be the final phase of his absorption of the European musical zeitgeist – and just before his decisive turn toward the “American” style on which most of his fame rests. Rarely has this music sounded so appealing, thanks to the hyper-attentive playing of David Shifrin, the Kavafian sisters, Paul Neubauer, Fred Sherry and Anne-Marie McDermott. The Copland is followed by three works by contemporary American composers – Ellen Taafe Zwilich’s previously unrecorded Clarinet Concerto, Stephen Hartke’s The Horse With the Lavender Eye and Aaron Jay Kernis’ Trio in Red. The Zwilich is by far the most substantive. Three of its four movements have a vaguely Shostakovich-like quality, rather appropriate considering that the intense second movement was written shortly after the events of 9/11. Shifrin, who premiered this piece nine years ago, gives an impassioned and fluid performance commensurate with his lofty reputation. Ransom Wilson conducts a high-quality chamber orchestra in this long-overdue recording premiere.