Serkin/Macomber/Mills/Martin/Sherry/Brentano Quartet
(Naxos)
One of the composers who has been well served by Naxos's American Classics series is Charles Wuorinen, even before he made headlines with the announcement that he was to write an opera based on Annie Proulx's short story Brokeback Mountain, due for performance in two years' time. Born in 1938, Wuorinen has long been a hugely respected figure in American music. It's his chamber music, though, that shows his dense, busy language at its most powerful, and the two major works here, his first String Quartet of 1971 and the second Piano Quintet completed three years ago, show its expressive range and the formal ingenuity with which Wuorinen deploys it. There are moments when the music's angularity recalls Elliott Carter, while the nagging opening of the string quartet could have come from Morton Feldman, even though what follows it is very different. The ensemble pieces are paired with substantial solo works ? the Scherzo for piano, dashingly well played by Peter Serklin, and the impressive Viola Variations, which Lois Martin turns into a tour de force.
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