Tribute to the Angels

“American composer and NYU professor Louis Karchin’s music is challenging yet accessible, abstract and diffuse yet colorful. It embodies a romantic mode of expression and the structural rigor of serialism, yet often remains light and airy. This album of vocal and chamber pieces gives a fine survey of his recent work.

“(In) Tribute to the Angels (2020)….his stimulating, resonant music chimes, shifts, and blossoms and gives a solid foundation to the soprano’s declamations on rejuvenation, destruction, and metamorphosis, culminating in the momentous naming of angels and a warm vision of heaven. The Piano Trio bears hallmarks of traditional romantic chamber music in its language and structure, most notably (if not quite audibly) with an allusion to the opening of Schumann’s piano quintet. In fact, the entire work has an air of Schumann’s light, flowery, fragmentary style seen through a more abstract, post-serialist lens.

“Talea Ensemble and Da Capo Chamber Players give excellent performances, as do the sopranos Jennifer Zetlan and Marisa Karchin and pianist Steven Beck.”

“Jesse Mills’ violin, Ole Akahoshi’s cello and Rieko Aizawa’s piano interact in frisky bouts, emotive ebbs and stirring attention to tonality and mood. The back half brings us the animated spirit of Incantations and Dances, where the Da Capo Players blend their winds, strings and keys with a lush, cinematic flavor, while Two Sacred Songs pairs Marisa Karchin’s colorful soprano with Steven Beck’s finger acrobatics on piano for the lively and striking finish,

This body of work showcases an inestimable vision of chamber and orchestral ideas that are daring, intense, and eloquent.”