Adler - One Lives but Once: A 90th Birthday Celebration - Records International

Adler’s first two symphonies (1953 and 1957) bear the most resemblance to such luminaries under whom he studied composition as Piston, Copland and Randall Thompson and are must-haves for American symphony collectors. As time went on, Adler added to his palette certain modernist trends that to varying degrees began to occupy him in the 1960s and 1970s: twelve-tone writing, aleatoric notation, and, indirectly, electronic music. One or another of these inform much of the rest of the music on offer here, which dates from 1983 to 2012, but they were never used as ends in themselves and insistent rhythmic material and the ability to spin a winning lyricism in slow movements should make everything presented here approachable even to the just mildly adventurous…