Description

Nominated for a Grammy and reviewed in Time Magazine when originally released, this collection has been reissued by popular demand in connection with the four page profile of the artist by Michael Ullman that appears in the May 1998 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.

"A disk that includes both the brilliant, fleetingly angular visions of Elliot Carter's "Night Fantasies" and the slowly shifting harmonies and often hypnotic rhythms of John Adams's "Phrygian Gates." Her gift in the Carter is clarity and an almost Romantic sense of inevitability and flow. To the Adams she brings variety of color and a sense for drama."

–Allan Kozinn in The New York Times

"Oppens moves with aplomb from the tense colorfulness of Carter to the placid monochromaticism of John Adams, and from Rzewski's variations on the folk song "Mayn Yingele" to Picker's moody Old and Lost Rivers and Harbison's rigorous sonata."

—The Atlantic Monthly

URSULA OPPENS PLAYS AMERICAN PIANO MUSIC OF OUR TIME.

Conlon Nancarrow: Tango; William Balcom: The Dead Moth Tango; Elliott Carter: Night Fantasies; Michael Sahl: Tango from the Exiles Cafe; Julius Hemphill: Parchment; John Adams: Phrygian Gates; Lukas Foss: The Curriculum Vitae Tango; David Jaggard: Tango; Conlon Nancarrow: Two Canons for Ursula; Frederic Rzewski: Mayn Yingele; Charles Wuorinen: The Blue Bamboula; Tobias Picker: Old and Lost Rivers; John Harbison: Piano Sonata No. 1; Anthony Davis: Middle Passage.

Total Times:  CD1:  69:13   CD2:   65:10  (DDD)