The playing on this CD is breathtakingly beautiful.

  Giacobassi's focus and intensity in each note, the sense of phrasing employed, and the care to shading, work together to produce lines that grow and recede in the most naturally beautiful way. In slow movements, the longer notes sort of burn into the heart of pitch center before vibrating slightly with life and subtlety, always leading inevitably to the next note, and making clear a pulse even in the longest notes.

  I was most taken with Eric Ewazen's piece, especially the Ballade, and John Thow's Musica d'amore, and everyone
involved plays at highest levels.  

  A real find and one of my favorite recordings.
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Joshua Kosman 
  Sunday, August 4, 2002
 

A DAZZLING HORNIST
 
JULIE ANN GIACOBASSI
Music for English Horn and Oboe d'Amore 

Julie Ann Giacobassi, English horn and oboe d'amore; Stephen Thomas, piano; members of the San Francisco Symphony Fish Creek Music, $18.00 

English hornist Julie Ann Giacobassi has long been one of the San Francisco Symphony's greatest assets, but somehow that doesn't translate into a lot of recording opportunities (an out-of-print Argo CD of Aaron Jay Kernis' concerto "Colored Field" has been her main recording). Now she's come out with a self- produced disc of recent music for English horn and oboe d'amore, and it's a dazzler. 

Together with several of her Symphony colleagues, Giacobassi offers five beautiful and accessible chamber works, all done with the extraordinary verve and coloristic flair that has marked her finest playing. 

Chief among the delights here is John Marvin's "Music From the Night," scored for two oboes and English horn. The combination ought to sound merely quacky and graceless, but the deftness of Marvin's writing combines with the elegant playing of Giacobassi and oboists Evgeny Izotov and Roger Wiesmeyer to create haunting magic. 

For Berkeley composer John Thow's tender "Musica d'amore," Giacobassi is joined by violist Geraldine Walther and harpist Douglas Rioth in a sweet bagatelle, and Eric Ewazen's Quintet for English Horn and Strings starts the program off in an enchanting flurry of subtly flavored tonal melodies.
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These exceptional works highlighting the plaintive, evocative song of the english horn and oboe d'amore each provide these instruments with an ideal context in which to sing and interact with the alternating texture of piano and full orchestra. Exploring neo-romantic, impressionistic and harmonically-daring contemporary writing, the composers, not to mention this exceptional musician, give their all to this collection: a fine representation of contemporary repertoire that celebrates and challenges this highly lyrical and distinct family of double reeds with remarkable expression and elegance. 
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The English horn isn't a horn and it isn't English--it's a wooden double-reed instrument pitched below the oboe. I used to believe that a combination of a double-reed and modern music was something to be dreaded, but my views have been changed! Ms. Giacobassi has great taste in performance and also in the selection of music for her album (Eric Ewazen's piece is simply wonderful). The quality of her playing could hardly be higher, and the pieces show that the art of writing lyrical music lives still. Ms. Giacobassi fills this disc (literally and figuratively) with all that a lover of double reeds could  ask for and does it so well that I, a bass player, made this my first CD Baby purchase.
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