This disc presents a welcome and varied sampling of David Diamond’s output. Instrumentalists no doubt will marvel at this fine American composer’s brilliant writing, with its challenging solo licks and rhythmic figurations. The Chicago Chamber Musicians clearly embrace these challenges, meeting them with unerring skill and confidence. The opening Quintet for Flute, String Trio, and Piano (1937) is the most harmonically traditional of the five works assembled here, using a primarily tonal language spiked with tangy dissonances, all dressed in vibrant, dancing rhythms. The much later (1978) Concert Piece for Horn and String Trio utilizes a more aggressive musical language, but also features bravura writing for the horn and a wonderful blend of sonorities among the instruments. The Partita for Oboe, Basson, and Piano wears its dissonance loudly in the opening allegro’s oboe theme with its insistent repetitions of a grinding high A-flat. It might have seemed “advanced” in 1935, but today it sounds a dreary provocation.
Grim chords announce the opening of the Chaconne for Violin and Piano (1948), which soon turns into an upbeat and emotive rhapsody as well as a spectacular violin showcase. The 1958 Woodwind Quintet for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, and Horn can seem quite uncompromising. Diamond’s consistently dry tonal palette combines with a primarily dissonant harmonic discourse that, despite the Chicago ensemble’s valiant efforts to give it color, lends the music a gray-hued sameness–though, as always, the part writing is fascinating. Cedille’s clear, well-balanced recording presents each instrumental group in acoustically flattering settings.
