I welcomed Rorem's chamber music of the 1980s when Winter Pages and Bright Music appeared together on New Albion (10/92). These two complementary cycles for violin and piano (available in the USA on LP since 1973/4) have many of the same qualities—they are rewarding to play, easy on the ear, and stem from a natural enjoyment of the composer's function. All of that comes from Rorem's adopted French roots grounded in Milhaud, Poulenc and Messiaen. Both cycles are well served by the two violin and piano teams—Carlyss and Schein went straight into the recording studio with Night Music the day after the premiere. The recorded sound, from 20 years ago, is adequate, with slightly more background noise in the second work.
Rorem's approach to assembling each of the two works is to alternate between effervescent, helter-skelter fast numbers and slow pieces with a kind of Mediterranean lyricism. There are some eccentricities in the titles given to each movement—''A Game of Chess Four Centuries Ago'' is the substantial finale to Day Music. From the melodic point of view ''Pearls'' (track 2) might almost have been written by Milhaud and the next number, ''Extreme Leisure'', with its tolling E flat in the piano, has the rapturous mood of some of Messiaen's adagios. Rorem's own personality is more elusive—he despises the idea of striving for originality. Some of the virtuoso writing, especially for the violin, is undeniably conventional but his hallmark is a kind of exhuberant, often refreshing spontaneity, a quality which he shares with his teacher Virgil Thomson.'