Virko Baley was born in Ukraine in 1938 and came to the USA as a refugee in 1949, eventually making his home in Las Vegas. He has long been fascinated by the poetry of Emily Dickinson, as can be heard in the two moving works recorded here - one an orchestral song-cycle setting her texts, the other a suite for violin and piano inspired by those settings. They display an acute ear for orchestral colour, a fondness for dramatic gesture and a strong sense of lyricism, occasionally inflected by distant echoes of Baley's eastern European origins, the richness of the song-cycle placing him downstream from Mahler and Berg and the restraint of the Songs without Words occasionally evoking Arvo Pärt.
2 No. 2. Love Can Do All But Raise the Dead [02:42]
3 No. 3. Oh, Honey of An Hour [00:59]
4 No. 4. I Held a Jewel in My Fingers [02:39]
5 No. 5. Interlude 1 [01:05]
6 No. 6. There Is a Solitude of Space [04:23]
7 No. 7. Out of Sight? What of That? [02:24]
8 No. 8. "Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers [03:02]
9 No. 9. There Is a Pain - So Utter [03:22]
10 No. 10. Interlude 2: Tren [03:01]
11 No. 11. Epilogue: Little Cousins [07:08]
12 No. 1. Love Can Do All But Raise the Dead [02:48]
13 No. 2. Oh, Honey of An Hour [01:01]
14 No. 3. There Is a Solitude of Space [05:15]
15 No. 4. L'allegro [02:06]
16 No. 5. There Is a Languor [05:09]
17 No. 6. Out of Sight? What of That? [01:43]
18 No. 7. Der Abschied [09:59]
19 No. 8. It Struck Me Every Day [02:59]
20 No. 9. There Is a Pain - So Utter [03:16]
21 No. 10. a Poem for Aleks [05:05
Virko Baley was born in Ukraine in 1938 and came to the USA as a refugee in 1949, eventually making his home in Las Vegas. He has long been fascinated by the poetry of Emily Dickinson, as can be heard in the two moving works recorded here - one an orchestral song-cycle setting her texts, the other a suite for violin and piano inspired by those settings. They display an acute ear for orchestral colour, a fondness for dramatic gesture and a strong sense of lyricism, occasionally inflected by distant echoes of Baley's eastern European origins, the richness of the song-cycle placing him downstream from Mahler and Berg and the restraint of the Songs without Words occasionally evoking Arvo Pärt.
