Reveiws

THE FIRST FAMILY OF CHAMBER MUSIC

Denton's Adkins String Ensemble has skill to match high-tech format

The Dallas Morning News / April 11, 2004
By SCOTT CANTRELL

This will be hard to beat for chamber-music recording of the year. It has three gorgeous works – by what might be called "The Three BRs" – magnificently played, and technologically it's quite a piece of work.

Forget the big-name groups. There simply isn't a finer chamber-music group than the Adkins String Ensemble, six siblings plus pianist Edward Newman, who's married to violinist Elisabeth Adkins. They play with great warmth, indeed passion, but everything is fastidiously balanced and contoured.

The real discovery here is the piano quartet by Douglas Briley, composed in 2002 on a commission from the Texas Music Teachers Association. It's too bad the lengthy program notes tell us nothing about him, but the Jabez Press Web site says he has bachelor's and master's degrees in piano performance from Michigan State University and lives in Granbury.

A response to September 11, 2001, this is deeply felt music, very much in the bittersweet-lyric vein of the French-influenced British chamber music of the first two decades of the 20th century. Retro it may be, but it's exquisitely crafted and breathtakingly beautiful.

Frank Bridge is mainly remembered as Benjamin Britten's teacher, but he was a superb composer in his own right. His 1905 Phantasy Quartet deftly balances lyricism, ardor and playfulness. The Brahms is an established masterpiece, of course, but it's still rarely heard in the concert hall.

All three performances are beyond first-class. Between the CD and DVD discs packaged together, you can listen in no fewer than four audio formats. I couldn't sample the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround option, but at least on my equipment the best of the others is the silken-toned High Definition format on the DVD. Next to this, the basic CD sounds a bit edgy. Although the overall sonics are quite fine, the bass is a little lean – and I'd prefer the microphones a little more distant, to capture more of the sumptuous acoustics of the Mesquite Arts Center.

If you don't find this in stores, you can order it for $19.95 from www.jabezpress.com.

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