Under the general title of ''Spring Music'' the Beaux Arts Trio are commendably offering three new American chamber works, all written in the early 1990s and all written for them. (Good booklet essay from Steven Ledbetter—''Three Different Ways to be American''—but do we need eight pages listing their other records?)
I have already reviewed a CD of Rorem's chamber music (10/92), which showed that he has a distinct instrumental personality apart from his substantial vocal output. The centre of this over-extended five-movement Spring Music is a ''Fantasia'', starting with improvisatory recitative elements. The soft centre of this, the longest, movement (3'26'') finds a violin melody soaring over piano ostinato patterns. The ''Fantasia'' has its own allegro section, another example of Rorem's rather predictable frenzy of activity. But the ''Bagatelle'' (track 4) is a Parisian salon waltz of characteristic elegance.
David Baker, born in Indianapolis in 1931, is barely known in the UK. His Roots II is a suite based on African-American idioms in the tradition of Henry F. Gilbert, who also wrote a Dance in Place Congo. In various works Baker has imported jazz players into chamber and orchestral ensembles. His ''Sorrow Song'' (track 8) is an interpretation of the blues; in his ''Boogie Woogie'' the violin and cello sing suavely over the piano's jerky bass; but the improvisational element in ''Jubilee'' and elsewhere seems too casual.
George Rochberg turned his back on serial music in favour of romanticism in the late 1960s so nobody can accuse him now of capitulating to market forces! (See7/91 for my comments on his Piano Quartet.) When he was first converted to romanticism it was that of Mahler and Berg. In Rochberg's Summer 1990 the Russians hold sway—from Tchaikovsky to Shostakovich. The work was a response to the collapse of the Berlin wall and is a kind of emotional blood-letting, expressing solidarity with the Russians at a crisis in their troubled history. Anybody could have written it but, in its way, it works.'