Amy Beach: morning glories
This CD, Volume 5 in the series of complete piano music of Amy Beach, reunites Joanne Polk with the Lark Quartet, in chamber music by Amy Beach, and includes her violin sonata, string quartet, and piano trio. The Piano Trio was written when Beach was 70 years old, as she dips her toe into late Romanticism and Impressionism. Beach was a Romantic composer, in spite of living almost to the middle of the 20th century. Her music was often dismissed as being naive and old-fashioned. But the string quartet does explore dissonances, while the violin sonata looks back to a more Brahmsian sound. Beach possessed a multitude of styles and techniques in her compositional tool chest. This CD gives a flavor of her compositional depth.