Copland & Aldridge: Clarinet Concerto

Copland & Aldridge: Clarinet Concerto

Aaron Copland's popular Clarinet<br>Concerto, with its tender and poignant<br>opening, highly virtuosic central<br>cadenza and brilliantly jazzy final<br>movement, is preceded by Robert L.<br>Aldridge's Clarinet Concerto, which has<br>been described as the direct descendant of the Copland. Classical, folk, jazz and klezmer influences are brought together in a work which is infectious in its driving rhythms and soaring melodies. Aldridge's Samba for clarinet and string quartet is an attempt to make this instrumentation sound like a Latin big-band. David Singer, the acclaimed longtime principal clarinetist of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, is joined on this recording by the internationally renowned Shanghai Quartet and A Far Cry Orchestra, a Boston-based collective of young professional string players who perform without a conductor and with rotating leadership.