Amy Beach: Fire Flies
AfterBy the Still WatersandUnder the Stars,Fire-Fliesis Joanne Polk's third and final recorded volume devoted to the piano works of the American composer Amy Beach, who was born in 1867 and died in 1944. The varied and always beguiling works span the composer's career and include "sketches" and "improvisations" as well as her piano transcription of Richard Strauss'slied(German art song),Standchen. Polk's interpretations are fluid and clear, by turns impassioned and ethereal. In the laudable effort to bring Beach's music greater recognition, Polk is in good company; the Hildegard Publishing Company has recently reprinted a number of Beach's works and Adrienne Fried Bloch has written aBeach biography, published this year by Oxford University Press.--Gwendolyn Freed