Smith - Music for Chamber Orchestra - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The music of Samuel Adler - born in Mannheim in 1928 but long since one of the leading figures of American music - has it's roots in the Neo-Classical clarity of composers like Copland and Hindemith, who were among his teachers. The works on this album arose from a range of impulses a Neo-Baroque concerto grosso and a tribute to Bach encase a series of tributes to lost individuals and traditions; and two jeux d'esprit - Ives' tongue-in-cheek Variations on America and Holst's 'Jupiter' from The Planets - both bring jollity in Adler's idiomatic arrangements for string orchestra.