Carlos Chávez: Complete Chamber Music, Vol. 4, brings to a close Southwest Chamber Music's outstanding series of Cambria recordings. This series has brought a lot of attention to Chávez's unjustly neglected chamber music, with two of the volumes earning Grammy awards in the process. Outside of the String Quartet No. 3, the Three Spirals for violin and piano, and the Trio for flute, viola, and harp, all of the works herein come from opposite ends of Chávez's historical spectrum, taken from his early and late periods. Of the ...
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Carlos Chávez: Complete Chamber Music, Vol. 4, brings to a close Southwest Chamber Music's outstanding series of Cambria recordings. This series has brought a lot of attention to Chávez's unjustly neglected chamber music, with two of the volumes earning Grammy awards in the process. Outside of the String Quartet No. 3, the Three Spirals for violin and piano, and the Trio for flute, viola, and harp, all of the works herein come from opposite ends of Chávez's historical spectrum, taken from his early and late periods. Of the three string quartets, the String Quartet No. 3, which relates to Chávez's work for Martha Graham, is easily the finest -- the outer movements percolate with insistent motor rhythms and the central Lento movement is one of the most moving and deeply felt moments in Chávez. However, one should not neglect the String Quartet No. 1, a rough-hewn work from 1921 that incorporates Indian folk material tempered with a generous amount of idealism -- it is a diamond in the rough. The String...
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