Anne Akiko Meyers - The American Album (1996)

While I love orchestral music, I adore chamber music, but since my feeble brain often has difficulty processing multiple instruments, I resonate most intensely to compositions for one or two instruments. The heightened challenge for musicians performing those works is, of course, that the blazing Klieg light of our attention immediately exposes even the tiniest error in their interpretation or execution; there’s no place to hide or anyone else to blame. Only the most adept dare make a recording for posterity of the procedure.

Not only are Ms. Meyers and Mr. Schub up to the justifiably daunting challenge, they solidly connect with a low and outside slider and send it flying out of the park with the bases loaded. Not only are their performances beyond exceptional—the program itself is revelatory. I hadn’t heard of a single one of the pieces before, but they were clearly chosen to work together to form a seamless whole. If you didn’t know better you could be forgiven for thinking that a single composer wrote every note and in the order they appear on the CD. It’s an inspired selection.

Back to the performance—I don’t know if it’s the particular instrument that Anne is playing or it’s the way she is playing it, or both, but this is how every violin performance should sound. It’s not just the fullness of the tone, which is rich, warm, and never shrill, but how much control she has on the really quiet notes. On the glissando into the final note of Copland’s Nocturne, you can practically hear every hair of the bow sliding across the string. I’ve never heard anything like it before, and it makes the piece.

While the violin usually carries the melody here, the piano rarely just plays second fiddle (pun most certainly intended). The piano part is frequently far more interesting than the violin’s, so André-Michel’s sensitivity and precision are critical components to the success of each piece. His performance is a beautiful counterweight to Anne’s.

As for the individual pieces, The Piston Sonatina is a peppy and lighter-weight introduction to the program. Copland’s Sonata and Nocturne were the biggest revelations for me. According the the booklet notes, they were both written before his more famous ballet and concert pieces and I, for one, prefer these to those. They’re more sophisticated and indoorsy than the more simplistic and outdoorsy pieces he’s mostly known for. Ives’ Sonata is a more intimate setting of his idiosyncratic style and is a delightful counterpoint to the more moody Copland selections. David Baker’s Blues takes us out on a very American and (spoiler alert!) bluesy note.

Since I went on about how Ms. Meyers’ violin sounded, a final shout-out is required for the technical quality of the recording itself, which is balanced, crystal-clear and amazingly captures the subtlest detail, of which there are many. It is just as extraordinary as the musicians’ performances. Bravissimo and thank you, tech guys.

If you like concerts with as few performers on stage as I do, I whole-heart-and-soul-edly recommend this disc. It’s a most beautiful thing.