Emma Lou Diemer, Pacific Ridge

One thing you can count on with the Navona family of labels: they put out an ambitious monthly release schedule filled with the music of contemporary composers that may not be receiving a great deal of exposure, yet are often quite worthy of consideration.

One such release is Pacific Ridge (Navona 5898), a three work introduction to Emma Lou Diemer. An overture and two concertos for soloists and orchestra are on the program.

Ms. Diemer (b. 1927) resides in California, for that she may be envied given the recent winters and their chill factors here in the east. Her music has some of the spirit, panache and personalized Americana of Gershwin and Bernstein without any direct imitation. The three works are "Santa Barbara Overture" performed by the London Symphony under Brynmore Llewelyn Jones, "Concerto in One Movement for Marimba" with Nathan Daughtrey taking on the solo part and the Slovak Radio Orchestra under Joel Suben supplying the orchestral punch, and finally the half-hour "Concerto in One Movement for Piano" with Betty Oberacker at the pianoforte, accompanied by the Czech Radio Symphony, Vladimir Valek conducting.

All three works have single-movement dynamic thrust, a sure handling of the amassed musical forces, and the personal stamp of Ms. Diemer's musical vision. This is music of a directly communicative kind, modern in the expressive and harmonically evolved senses, a hint of jazziness at times, rhythmically active and filled with shifting moods as a seascape, turbulent, choppy, becalmed, freshet driven and rollingly consistent in turns.

The solo parts are well handled by the principals, the orchestral performances leave nothing to be desired, and the music has a solidly cosmopolitan appeal. Here's one that's easy to like.

Sergio Cervetti, Nazca and Other Works

When a composer doesn't sound much like others there is cause for delight. But it is harder to write about the music. Sergio Cervetti is such a composer. His Nazca and Other Works (Navona 5872) provides four different takes, four different orchestral works by the composer.

They are something new under the sun. Maestro Cervetti has taken the orchestral color soundscaping advances of the experimental years of new music and put them into an expanded tonality and the syntactic discourse of the symphonists, if that makes any sense. This can especially be heard in the six movement work "Nazca".

"Madrigal III" has ravishing string harmonies that manage to suggest both Ives and Respighi, Ruggles and Sibelius, Messiaen and Arvo Part, Hovhannes and Berio. The piece suggests, but as a reverent revery that puts forward momentum to the forefront. It is beauty in the capital /B/ sense.

"Leyenda" brings in soprano Alena Hellerova for an evocative, atmospheric piece, where the beauty of the orchestration and the vocal part dazzles the listener. The text is based on the Uruguayan epic Tabare by Juan Zorrilla de San Martin. The mystically vibrant qualities of the large orchestra and the soprano's ornate and partially folk-oriented inflection evoke both Villa-Lobos and Crumb without sounding the least bit derivative.

Finally the second movement from Cervetti's "Concerto for Harpsichord" brings in a lively South American dance flavor with some brilliant multi-part writing that makes me smile very broadly.

Cervetti hails from Urugway and taught for many years at one of my alma maters, New York University. Somehow the world is in his music: his native world and the world-as-planet.

This is some extraordinarily interesting, exciting and beautiful orchestral music. It makes me want to hear more of him. Highly recommended.