Interesting Listening Modern American orchestral music - heard by PATRIC STANDFORD '... highly imaginative elements ...'

Four younger American composers are each represented by a major orchestral work, a fine showcase for them, and efficiently performed and directed for the enterprising Navona catalogue, an independent label founded in 2008 and based in New Hampshire. Keith Kramer, who teaches composition at Bel Air, Maryland and has a successful guitar teaching studio there, is represented by a twenty-minute piece, Emerge, which plays confidently with the orchestral colours and effects, making of them a fascinating sound collage rather than a succinct musical experience with cohesion. His concertante piece Raining in Autumn for violin and orchestra (soloist Ondrej Lebr) is a colourful display which begins with impressive vigour and ends meditatively after eleven minutes, full of atmosphere and throughout with highly imaginative elements that are brought together well...

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA