Listening to this collection of piano and chamber works by Jan Radzynski (b. 1950) I sense a composer with a wide range of influences and a strong lyric, melodic gift that refuses to buckle, no matter how hard he tries to hide it. He spray-paints the lovely melodic twists and turns throughout Summer Charms Rag for violin and piano with dissonant raspberries and caustic backtalk (including a silly quote from Beethoven's Violin Concerto) that grows increasingly old over the work's seven-minute duration. Similarly, the petulant "modernisms" that occur during the Sarabande for Cello and Piano seem stylistically and emotionally at odds with the music's dark undercurrents (like inserting Boulez in the middle of Shostakovich).

By contrast the ambitious Canto for Solo Piano begins on a steady, vehement course that takes its cue from Messiaen's high-register aviary of runs and repeated chords, gradually winding down for a spacious drive on a highway sparsely populated with billboards advertising Stockhausen's Klavierstücke IX, Rzewski-like rumbles, and hammered-out repeated notes. Although the piece runs too long for what it has to say, its textural and dynamic progression promises to hold our attention over repeated hearings. Of the three solo-piano Dream Pieces, I'm particularly drawn to the Nocturne's delicate arabesques and cloud-shaped chords. The long, introspective middle movement of the three-part suite "Personal Verses" for violin and piano also represents how beautifully Radzynski can write when he trusts his ideas. The performers dive into these works one thousand percent, making the most of the composer's volatile dynamic shifts, and the engineering has marvelous presence and impact.

--Jed Distler