Spring Forward

Spring Forward, the delightful title work by multi-talented Peter Schickele, is a gift to the composer/ humorist's many worldwide fans. This touching Suite represents a culmination of sorts "after a lifetime of entering sketches for such a piece into my notebooks," Schickele writes in his entertaining program notes. Richard Danielpour's moving Clarinet Quintet ("The Last Jew in Hamadan") was composed with Danielpour's memories of his childhood in Iran in mind. (The members of his family who escaped the country were the lucky ones.) Aaron Jay Kernis' intriguing Perpetual Chaconne reflects his fascination with the variety of approaches composers have used to develop and vary their ideas over the ages.