Country



Holly Williams “Here With Me” (Mercury Nashville). Like her father, Hank Williams Jr., Holly Williams sometimes is overtly autobiographical. That’s certainly the case on the loving tribute “Mama.” (When she sang the song on “The Tonight Show” in June, her mother, one of Hank Jr.’s exes, provided harmony.) She even references Hank Sr. in “Without Jesus Here With Me.” Throughout the album, however, a big step up from 2004’s “The Ones We Never Knew,” the 27-year-old Williams establishes an identity apart from those of her grandfather, father and half-brother, Hank III. Williams’ singer-songwriter approach is colored as much by pop and folk as country, but the spare, glitz-free arrangements suit her husky voice and intimate, often introspective songs. “A Love I Think Will Last,” an engagingly upbeat duet with Chris Janson, is a sunny anomaly in a set that focuses more on life’s darker moments, which Williams explores with grace and honesty. ???( Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer)



Classical



Beethoven, Complete String Quartets performed by Gewandhaus- Quartett (New Classical Adventure, 10 discs). It’s hard not to be stunned here by the news that the first public performance of a string quartet with this name made from the principal players of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra was in November 1808. Whether or not that makes the quartet the oldest continuously performing string quartet in the world with the same name, it certainly forestalls all but the most devoted argument. With all that encrusted Leipzig tradition, this is, in its current incarnation, by no means an old string quartet, as ensembles go. The result is that its box set of complete Beethoven Quartets is very much of the most traditional cast in performance, with what is frequently a rich, oaken ensemble tone. If, for instance, the Gewandhaus Quartett’s performance of the Op. 132 seems to lack the soul-searing profundity you can find in recorded performances by other quartets (the Amadeus and Guarneri, for instance), it may be an indication of a collective classical sensibility quite pronounced and quite apart from what we now expect. It is, nevertheless, an excellent and quite well-turned out boxed set of the Beethoven quartets. ???( Jeff Simon)



•••



Balakirev, Complete Romances, 1855, 1909 (Delos, two CDs). Balakirev had his own peculiar, fiery imagination. He came up with the delirious “Islamey,” one of the most demanding pieces a pianist can master, and he had a strange magnetism. But Balakirev’s story is tragic. He underwent a kind of slide, vague in that tragic Russian way, and after a point he was a religious mystic and no longer himself. (He would not even swat bugs away, Rimsky-Korsakov remembered, but shooed them gently, saying, “Goodbye, honey, God bless you!”) This collection of little-heard songs is interesting because one is early Balakirev and the other is late Balakirev. It’s tempting to look for defects in the later work, and in some cases, the later pieces are more simply constructed. But it’s all enchanting. Balakirev’s gifts for melody and overall form were undiminished, and he understood the piano and its capabilities. The excellent singers are soprano Margarita Alaverdian, baritone Alexander Gergalov, mezzo Lyubov Sokolova and Georgy Seleznev, who has a magnificent Russian barrel bass. The virtuosic pianist is Yuri Serov. Bravo to the fine liner notes, texts and translations. What a portrait this is of a man and an era. ????( Mary Kunz Goldman)



•••



Copland, Symphony No. 3, Danzon Cubano and Dance Symphony performed by Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Mexico City Philharmonic conducted by Eduardo Mata and Enrique Batiz (EMI Classics). Copland’s Third may be the great American symphony— greater, even, than the Ives Fourth and the Piston and Schuman Third. You wouldn’t really know it, I think, from this 1986 recording by Mata and the Dallas Symphony, which is a capable but markedly pedestrian account of music that epitomizes the power and tender American nostalgia of Copland at his absolutely best. What Mata seems especially leery of is the secret grandeur—the sonic cinema—at the heart of Copland that makes it so easy, when it’s brilliantly played, for his countrymen to respond to his music with such irrational passion. More credible are the distinctly lesser works: Mata’s reading of the “Danzon Cubano” and conductor Enrique Batiz’s performance of the “Dance Symphony” with the Mexico City Philharmonic. ???( J. S.)



Jazz



Sonny Rollins, “Reel Life” (Milestone/Original Jazz Classics). When I interviewed Sonny Rollins before his appearance at the great and gone-but-not-forgotten Artpark Jazz Festival, he seemed to think that “Best Wishes” on this reissued disc from 1982 was among his more memorable performances, which has got to be one of the stranger things ever said to me by a jazz musician (explicable, no doubt, mostly by Rollins’ well-known discomfort in being interviewed and in a recording studio both). There is one gem on this fine but otherwise unexceptional disc of ’80s Rollins: “Rosita’s Best Friend,” a six-minute wonder in which Rollins’ solo rips and roars in that sublime way that makes every Rollins performance just seconds away from transcendence. ??? 1/2 ( J. S.)



•••



Jackie Ryan, “Doozy” with Cyrus Chestnut, Eric Alexander, Romero Lubambo and Jeremy Pelt (Open Art, two discs). At this stage, there doesn’t seem to be a force on earth capable of stanching the flow of newly minted jazz singers on disc. You would have a lot more luck sticking your finger in a dike. But as the flood swirls around us, you can, every now and then, hear something special—or at least something accomplished enough in the great tradition of jazz song that it’s worth taking major notice. Jackie Ryan hasn’t recorded much, to put it mildly, but she is not exactly just off the farm either (she performed for eight years at Ronnie Scott’s Club in London). She doesn’t need to sound like Diane Schuur as much as she sometimes does, but right off on the title tune, she puts words to a Benny Carter tune and you’re happily in Annie Ross territory. She is a versatile talent of a sort musicians tend to love, which is why she has musicians of the caliber of Eric Alexander, Jeremy Pelt and Cyrus Chestnut here with her. Chestnut was one of the pianists forged in the genius of Betty Carter U.—where jazz singing was at its zenith in the last 30 years—so his presence here is no small endorsement. ???( J. S.)



Pop



Brooke White, “High Hopes & Heartbreak” (June Baby). “American Idol” judge Randy Jackson has never executive- produced an album for any of the myriad contestants in the eight-year history of the popular program. Until now. It’s surprising to see his name attached to Brooke White’s first post-“Idol” release (she had issued “Songs From the Attic,” a promising indie album, pre- “Idol”). The gifted singer-songwriter played guitar and piano and sang well, but always seemed an anachronism on the teen-driven program when she somehow managed to make it into Season Seven’s Top 5. Her musical heroes, she had said, were ’70s icons like Carole King, Fleetwood Mac and Carly Simon, and her goal was to create an album for today that had the song-to-song flow of the oldies she cherished.



“High Hopes&Heartbreak” doesn’t have the import or musical heft of a “Tapestry” or “Rumours.” Some of the tracks, like the single “Radio Radio,” feel lightweight by comparison. Still, it’s thankful that Jackson allows White to continue in her easygoing ’70s vibe and doesn’t push her to be overly contemporary, even when she pulls out a credible Kings of Leon cover (“Use Somebody”). White is best in thoughtful singer-songwriter mode, as on this CD’s melancholic “Out of the Ashes,” a ballad that could easily have been plucked from a Carly Simon album, or the breezy “California Song” in which she name-drops America, the Mamas& the Papas, and Joni Mitchell’s early-period LP, “Ladies of the Canyon.” White ably evokes the sunny spirit of all of these icons without slavishly quoting them. The disco-lite title track is the closest to modernity Jackson prods White toward. But, even here, the infectious melody and reliance on timeless instrumentation— as opposed to trendy hardware—makes White’s engaging “High Hopes” a peaceful, easy feeling to take on the road. ???( Howard Cohen, Miami Herald)





•••

b> Polkastra, “Apolkalypse Now” (Ancalagon). Those silly Grammy Awards, knocking out the polka category. Here is the violinist Lara St. John playing polkas. If she’ll roll out the barrel, who won’t? St. John, born in London, Ont., has a reputation as a sexpot. She made waves when she posed next-to-nude on a Bach album (the rationale, as quoted on Wikipedia, was that unaccompanied Bach exposed the artist completely). So I love seeing her on the cover of “Apolkalypse Now” looking like a regular person you would see in a bar, another band member on her lap. Besides St. John, Polkastra boasts a folk fiddler, an Israeli accordionist and the Met’s contrabassoonist, among others. They have a distance to go in the grit department before they can approach Those Idiots. But this is a nice start. St. John sounds as if she is having a whale of a time, her bow bouncing happily on the strings as she and the band whirl through numbers like the “Clarinet Polka” (I know it as the “Jessie Polka”), the “Budapest Polka” and other lusty, hilariously diverse tracks. Classical music fans get their “in joke” with the Ludwig van Polka, which weaves in a bunch of Beethoven themes I don’t want to give away. ??? (M. K. G.)