Title: Like Love Letters
Review: A sophisticated, wide-ranging musical mind is at work here. Several of the movements are ruminations on music history. The Duo opens with "Homage a Ravel" and ends with "Homage a James Brown." The Scherzo of the cello suite is a "Homage a Copland." The Suite for Viola (Prelude, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue and Postlude) refers to Bach's dance suites for solo strings. The Suite for Violin is full of the sorts of gestures found in the string quartets of Bartok, whose long shadow looms over almost everything on this disc. Though many allusions are highly specific and some of the sections are frankly modeled on historical precedents, Hagen is not merely aping or appropriating. He is responding, perhaps in the languages of other composers, but in his own voice and dialect. Hagen weaves about the idioms of Bartok, Bach, Copland, Ravel illuminate the older music and remind us of why we like it.
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