DASHOW Archimedes: Scene II (Young Archimedes), lor Mime, Lasers, Computer Graphics, and Electronic Stagecraft. Mnemonics, for Violin and Computer. Oro, Argento, & Legno, for Flute and Computer. • Mario Buffa, violin; Marzio Conti, flutes. • WERGO WER 2018-50 [DDD]; 51:20. (Distributed by Harmonia Mundi USA.)

This is another in Wergo's Digital Music/Music with Computers series, and one of its best. James Dashow, born in Chicago in 1944 and a resident of Italy, directed the Forum Players of Rome, a contemporary music group, and currently directs the Studio di Musica Electrónica Scia-doni. He serves also as teacher-composer at the University of Padua's Centro di Sonologia Computazionale. The notes, consisting largely of an interview from an Italian periodical, offer valuable glimpses of the composer's methods, views, and intellect. Dashow expresses himself succinctly and well; that I understand perhaps half of what he says doesn't much affect (I hope) one's sense of the music's worth.

Archimedes (1988) survives CD excision from its mixed-media context as an intricate and subtle electronic work, neither bone-dry clever nor overrich in spacy effects (this by now having become the young medium's abiding cliché). In Mnemonics (1982/4/5) and Oro, Argento, & Legno (1987) the interplay of solo instrument (violin and flute respectively) and computer-generated sounds is as beautifully done as anything I can think of; the two pieces balance on elegantly honed tensions and impress me as masterworks. Dashow, the least bombastic of composers, wields a fine Italian hand. Probably the highest praise I can think to give the two acoustic-electronic works is to observe that the computer's participation sounds to these ears utterly unforced, its autonomy as but another means of musical expression in a master-composer's secure care. The two acoustic-electronic works spin internalized dramas in which the fieetingest gesture tells. The soloists are excellent, as is the sound. Strongly recommended.

Mike Silverton