LEO KRAFT (b.1922): Variations, 2 Pieces, For Those We Loved, The Vision of Isaiah for Chorus and Orchestra.

Description: The 1958 Variations is a genial, very tonal and attractive example of the form, nicely crafted and inventive. Five years later, the composer had moved into a more austere, chromatic style - still far from atonal, but with some distinct echoes of Second Viennese constructional and coloristic preoccupations. Kraft appears to have stayed with this idiom; the much more recent other works fall into a broadly similar category. For Those We Loved is a retrospective view back over a long life; not elegiac so much as a series of contrasting episodes depicting memories of all kinds. The Vision, with its optimistic vision - the text is the one with the line about beating swords into ploughshares - combines reassuringly tonal harmonies for the choir with a sinewy, chromatic, economical orchestral accompaniment. Text included. Slovak National Opera Chorus, Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra; Joel Eric Suben.