Gould/Aurora O/Collon
(Decca)
Seeing Is Believing is Nico Muhly's violin concerto, composed for Thomas Gould and his six-string electric instrument four years ago. Like so much of Muhly's music, it is immediately engaging and fresh, with some delicious sounds and striking moments, especially the keening glissandi for the solo violin that open the work, even if in this case there are not quite enough of them to sustain the 25-minute piece convincingly. Another composition from 2007, Step Team, propels itself on the dislocated motor rhythms of neoclassical Stravinsky before finally collapsing into a lingering but still Stravinskian coda spun by a solo trombone. In between them on this debut disc from the Aurora Orchestra are works that derive from Muhly's fascination with early English church music ? more or less straight instrumental arrangements of William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons, and two works whose relationship with their sources is more oblique. Motion is built out of fragments of a Gibbons anthem, while By All Means attempts a teasing reconciliation between a Weelkes motet and Webern's Op 24 Concerto.
Lorri Bagley Leslie Bega Maria Sharapova Lindsay Price Zoe Saldana
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