Reviews
about The Lunch Counter
“Bassoon Transcended: Contemporary Music for Bassoon and Piano by Women Composers” MSR Classics MS1439
Christin Schillinger, bassoon
Susan Kander’s The Lunch Counter is a musical play for solo bassoon without a text except for the spoken descriptions of its seven movements. Each of them is named after a person sitting at the counter…This piece requires the utmost technique from the bassoonist, but it poses no terrors for Christin Schillinger, who plays her instrument with total mastery…Kander’s Lunch Counter alone is so fascinating that it is worth the price of the recording. — Maria Nockin, Fanfare Magazine
about Hermestänze and A Garden’s Time Piece:
“Hermestänze rises beautifully to the challenge of compressing a lot of musical information into a small space…swift, evocative pencil sketches. […] A Garden’s Time Piece…is equally lovely and evanescent – most of the songs take no longer than a minute and leave you at once satisfied and waiting for more.”
— Joshua Kosman, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
“…subdued and gentle Messiaen-like sonorities… sly humor…. Kander writes most graciously for the violin.
I think she has succeeded brilliantly, skillfully juxtaposing movements of greater and lesser tonality such that the listener’s interest never flags…. Kander in this recital proves herself to be a composer of vivid imagination and skill …. Twenty first-century music enthusiasts won’t want to miss this one.”
— David Canfield, FANFARE MAGAZINE
“The highlights…include ‘The Lyre’, which the violinist plucks out while simultaneously bowing a timeless lullaby against Lee Dionne’s lovely piano surreally doubling the tune. By contrast, Kander’s study of Apollo, another god of music, is raptly serene. [Solo Sonata for violin-viola-violin] is eloquent, impersonal and…wrenchingly powerful.”
–Laurence Vittes, GRAMOPHONE MAGAZINE