Product Description
The transcriptions and concert pieces collected here are all big, beautiful, examples of nostalgic American music. But this is timeless music too, and its romanticism, spirit of adventure, playfulness, and purity tap into our collective memory, our underlying, ongoing, deeply American nostalgia for what we all know as, simply, some other time.
Review
Bailey reaches from the soul of his instrument to our own. --San Francisco Classical Voice
Lara Downes has created the perfect hyperlink from composer to performer to listener. --Examiner.com
"Simple Gifts" is the title of a Shaker song from the mid-1800s here arranged for cello and piano, but it could also serve as the title of this luscious, moody and dreamy recording of American songs, many of which just happen to pose as instrumental works by Bernstein, Barber, Foss and others. Zuill Bailey's soulful cello and Lara Downes' clean and sensitive piano playing prove perfect travel mates. --Fonseca-Wollheim, The New York Times, May 2014
New Release of the Week:
Pianist Lara Downes and cellist Zuill Bailey have each, in their own way and quite often together, been credited with seeking out new ways of presenting classical music, of reinventing the art of the recital. Their quest owes everything to the pioneering spirit of earlier American composers. The new album from Downes and Bailey looks back fondly with new arrangements of music by four giants of the 20th century - Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss and Leonard Bernstein. --WFMT New Releases, May 2014
"What more could you ask for than a collaboration between preeminent cellist Zuill Bailey and innovative pianist Lara Downes? I've admired their work separately for several years already, and now they've produced an album together.... The music, the performances, and the sound are extraordinary.
....The nostalgia is for the four American composers represented on the program and for a "golden" time in American culture when concert music held a more-important place than it does today. As such, the music is romantic, adventurous, sweet, and utterly delightful, presented lovingly by the two star performers." --Classical Candor
Here, performed by a notable young cellist and pianist, is a burgeoning mutual admiration society in American classical music... Lovingly and superbly performed here.
-- The Buffalo News
These pieces, a couple of them substantial cello-and-piano pieces and the rest arranged for that pair of instruments, look back fondly at what the booklet terms a golden age of American concert music.... Bailey and Downes put the listener in the midst of an era of musical conversations: between different composers (several short piano pieces are addressed from one composer to another, with delightful effect) and, always, between classical and popular music, the central dialogue of American concert music.... The recital as a whole is engaging, original, and insightful, bringing together a particular musical scene in a fresh way, and the studio sound is superb. Highly recommended. --Allmusic.com, April 2014
- Product Dimensions : 5.28 x 5.91 x 0.39 inches; 3.25 ounces
- Manufacturer : Steinway & Sons
- Original Release Date : 2014
- Date First Available : March 31, 2014
- Label : Steinway & Sons
- Number of discs : 1
