Bacon: Cello Sonata; Binkerd: Piano Sonata

Bernard Greenhouse, cello; Menahem Pressler, piano; Stanley Fletcher, pianoVirgil Thomson, himself a singularly skilled practitioner of musical Americana, summed up in singularly apt fashion for the New York Herald Tribune the essence of Ernst Bacon’s music as he heard it in a concert devoted wholly to the composer’s work in 1946: “Since Mr. Bacon is a very good composer indeed, one of America’s best, last night’s concert was both an interesting and a pleasant experience. . . .“The mood and temper of Mr. Bacon’s work are chiefly a meditation on nineteenth- century rural America. He is full of our Scotch-Irish folklore, knows it from the inside, speaks and writes it as his own musical language. Mr. Bacon also has a modern musician’s knowledge of American speech cadences. . . .“Mr. Bacon’s work is remarkably pure in its expressive intent. It communicates its meaning with a straightforward and touching humanity. It is not got up with chromium-plated cadenzas or lace-curtainlike instrument