STEPHEN SUBER (b.c.1950): Cumulus Over Tangipahoa, Enchantments - Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (David Evenson [piano], Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic Orchestra; Andreas Hèrm Baumgartner), Dithyramb, Starlit, Upon the Bank at Early Dawn for Tenor and Orchestra (Marc Deaton [tenor], Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra; Baumgartner), Soleil for Chorus (Ars Brunesis Chorus; Dan Kalosek).

Description: These attractive and colorful, basically tonal scores span the composer's career from the early 1970s to 2003. An assured and lively sense of rhythmic vitality seems to have been with him from the beginning, along with a feeling for orchestral timbre (the choral Soleil also treats the voices quasi-instrumentally, to powerful effect). The substantial piano concerto encloses a mysterious and meditative slow movement between an energetic, ostinato driven first and a playful third, incorporating elements of vernacular Americana. Elsewhere the composer's studies with Terry Riley appear to have left their mark in a fondness for propulsive, pulsating repeated patterns (which only persist for short sections, not being an end in themselves), as in the central part of the atmospheric Cumulus.