Gayne Ballet Suite
Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978) has written some of the most recognizable music this century,  especially the "Sabre Dance" fromGayne(1942), which has appeared in everything  from movies, cartoons, television shows, even commercials. What we miss, of course, is all the other good  music in the rest of the suite, which is what we have here. This forty-six-minute suite starts off with the  "Sabre Dance" but moves immediately into a softer stateliness that calms everything down.  And speaking of movies: "Gayne's Adagio" was used by Stanley Kubrick in2001: A Space  Odyssey--the spaceship all alone in space. Spooky and sad at the same time.--Paul Cook