Modern Ensemble Playing To Value

The most recent disk of music by Martin Butler is a disk called American Rounds featuring the talents of the Schubert Ensemble, both as a whole and as individuals. The title piece is a four part chamber work for piano quintet and is inspired in part by American folk music but also by more modern sounding motoric rhythms. There is that open ait Copland fell in parts but it is very much its own piece and refers back to some of Butler's earlier works too. This is followed by three solo pieces that first surfaced in Butler's chamber opera A Better Place. Siward's River Song features the cello of Jane Salmon, Nathaniel's Mobile the piano of William Howard and Suzanne's River Song the duo of Howard and violinist Simon Blendis. Howard also plays another extended piece for solo piano Funerailles. The inspiration of chiming bells is clear in this piece. Butler then shows the gift for arrangement displayed by one of his mentors Berio in the two Scarlatti Sonatas which he has adapted for the quintet. here is also a berio conncion to the other substantial piece for piano quartet Sequenza Notturna, written in the month after Berio's death in 2003 and referencing in the title one of his most noted works. The final piece, Walden Snow, acts as a gentle coda for a few minutes after the Sequenza with the viola and piano winding down as it were. A thoroughly enjoyable chamber disk proving that the art lives and flourishes. It also shows the Schubert Ensemble to be one of the best currently operating in the chamber field.