Album Notes

Tim Page wrote in the New York Times of Lousi Pelosi's music: "Mr. Pelosi specializes in contrasts that are unified and carefully argued. He has devised an ingenious method of making his work accessible on first hearing: he peppers the music, which is generally abstract and chromatic, with an occasional passage of consonance....."

This new disk offers the first recording of four mature works of Louis Pelosi, all composed between 1997 and 2008. It is the first of three CD's dedicated to the memory of his wife, the artist Rosemarie Koczÿ, a distinguished artist, and Holocaust survivor who dedicated much of her work to those dark years.

The two string quartets are a study in contrasts. The first quartet is a full length, four movement work of great depth and considerable beauty. The second quartet, written in one long, but fascinating movement, is a requiem to Pelosi's wife, but is also an act of homage to JS Bach, having as one of its main components the opening theme of his Harpsichord (or Violin) Concerto's first movement.

Both quartets are given masterly performances by members of the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, as is the Prayer Suite, in which Piotr Tarcholik, the first violinist in the quartets, is joined by pianist Monika Wilinska-Tarcholik.

The vocal sextet "I Weave You A Shroud" is an extraordinary work based on a poem written by TP Perrin about Rosemarie Koczÿ. "I Weave You A Shroud" was the title she gave to thousands of her drawings, memorializing the victims of the Holocaust - in her words "burials I offer to those I saw die in the camps." This is a live and, according to the composer, flawless performance by the outstanding New York Virtuoso Singers, conducted by Harold Rosenbaum.