The Invincible Verdehr

The Making of a Medium, Vol. 16: International Connections. The Verdehr Trio performs Higdon, Chatman, Rihm, Sheng, and Wolfgang. (Crystal Records CD 946)

Music From France. The Verdehr Trio plays Poulenc, Jolas, Milhaud, Manoury, Blasius, and Saint-Saëns. (Dux 0525)

Walter Verdehr's groundbreaking spirit has taken him from being the first violinist to receive a doctorate from Juilliard in 1970 to creating a whole new genre of chamber music—a trio comprised of violin, clarinet, and piano. Together with his wife, clarinetist Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr, and pianist Silvia Roederer, he formed the Verdehr Trio, an ensemble that has commissioned more than 200 works, including pieces by some of today's leading composers. The Verdehr (Ver-DARE), which holds a residency at Michigan State University, has documented its commissions through a series of CDs, videos, and printed music, collectively titled "The Making of a Medium." The 16th and final volume came out last year and it includes several of today's most prominent composers.

Particularly striking is Bright Sheng's Tibetan Dance, a three-movement piece based on Tibetan folk material that the composer heard as a teenager living in a bordering Chinese province. Revealing Sheng's ear for instrumental color, the piece moves from a subdued opening movement, with its hints of temple bells, to a manic finale with wild bended pitches and clarinet shrieks. Other pieces seem to play up the clarinet's jazz connections. The Los Angeles-based composer Gernot Wolfgang features swooping rhapsodic gestures and a funky piano groove in his Reflections while Canadian composer Stephen Chatman quotes Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in the "Blues" movement of his Trio. Rounding out the disc are Wolfgang Rihm's Gesangstuck and Jennifer Higdon's Dash, dense, moody and at times exhilarating works.

The Verdehr has also recorded transcriptions and a handful of pre-existing works for their medium, and particularly worth seeking out is its recording of French composers. Highlights include Milhaud's witty, colorfully orchestrated Suite for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano, a charming transcription of Saint-Saëns's Tarantella, Op. 6, and Poulenc's delightful Suite from L'Invitaion au Chateau. Here's hoping the Verdehr continues its pioneering work for years to come.



Russian Soul of the Violin

Ballet for a Lonely Violinist: Music for Violin and Piano. Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe. (BIS CD-1592)

Violinist Vadim Gluzman and pianist partner (and wife) Angela Yoffe demonstrate their flair for compelling programming on this disc of works by Shostakovich and fellow Juilliard alum Lera Auerbach. The couple—who are both Juilliard graduates and who perform on April 9 with the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players at the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church, just a few steps down the street from the School—deserve particular credit for tackling Shostakovich's Violin Sonata, Op. 134, perhaps one of the ugliest works ever written for violin and piano. Composed in 1968, this is late Shostakovich, writing dark, tormented 12-tone music with an agitated, world-weary style. The performance here is rock-solid. Gluzman plays the gritty scherzo with almost frightening intensity. A dramatic change of tone comes with Shostakovich's Jazz Suite No. 1, in a 2005 transcription by Gluzman's father Michael, and the pair milk the three movements—Waltz, Polka, and Foxtrot—for all they're worth.

Auerbach's Lonely Suite for solo violin is a loosely programmatic piece, which, as the composer points out in the liner notes, is based on "themes of loneliness and fragmentation." Each of its six brief sections expresses a situation or mood, presumably afflicting the soloist, from "Boredom" (which sounds like a double-stop étude) and "No Escape" to "Worrisome Thought" and "Question," which consists of three notes and ends unresolved in Ivesian fashion. The program concludes with Auerbach's 9/11-inspired Sonata No. 2. Filled with bravura writing for the violin, it also includes an eerie reference to "America, the Beautiful" interwoven throughout the deeply expressive work.

Brian Wise is a producer at WNYC radio and writes about music for The New York Times, Time Out New York, Opera News, and other publications.