MAURICE GARDNER (1909-2002): Cello Sonata, SRUL IRVING GLICK (1934-2002): Chagall Suite, STEVEN GELLMAN (b.1947): Cello Sonata, HÉLÈNE RIESE LIEBMANN (1795-after 1835): Cello Sonata in B Flat, Op. 11.

Description: Many of Glick's works have a direct connection to his Jewish heritage, both in inspiration and style, and this is certainly true of his delightful Chagall Suite. The three movements wittily reflect the bold imagery, fantastical dynamism and humor of three paintings in music of broadly neoclassical idiom with a distinctly Jewish contour to the melodies. Gellman's Sonata is a tautly argued specimen of the genre, largely tonal, with suggestions of the harmonic approach of the composer's teacher, Messiaen, whose death influenced the mood of the songlike central movement. The trenchant scherzo-finale riffs on the pounding insistence of the heavy metal music the composer's teenage son was playing around the time of composition. Going back almost two centuries, Liebmann's sonata is elegant and very much in the spirit of early Beethoven or Mozart, the finale a set of variations on 'Là ci darem la mano'. Gardner was a successful composer of music for TV and radio in New York, who retired in 1970 to devote himself to 'serious' composition, one result of which was this fine, tonal, neo-romantic sonata with distinct echoes of French impressionism and Russian romanticism. Joan Harrison (cello), Elaine Keillor (piano).