Adrienne and Amy [CF:144-40766]

Composed as a double tribute to Amy Beach and her biographer Adrienne Fried Block (and commissioned by Ruth Crawford Seeger’s biographer, Judith Tick), Elena Ruehr’s ADRIENNE AND AMY is at times hypnotic, at others playful, aggressive, mercurial, or sweet. Its three imaginatively titled movements are wonderfully different from each other, and equally engaging for both instruments. According to Ruehr, some of the piece’s materials are developed directly from Beach’s beloved “A Hermit Thrush at Morn,” and all of the ideas were inspired by “Adrienne and Amy, and the natural world they lived in; the professor, the artist, the historian, the tended garden of their lives.” For advanced performers.