PERFORMER: URSULA OPPENS
ALBUM: AMERICAN PIANO MUSIC OF OUR TIME, VOL. 2
LABEL: MUSIC & ARTS
THE BOTTOM LINE: Oppens shows what can be done when new scores are as well played as Beethoven or Mozart.
She has been called the Madonna of contemporary music, but when Ursula Oppens performs, there's nary a bustier in sight. Instead she is a madonna in a more traditional, iconographic sense -- serene, warm and motherly -- who has been nurturing the course of new music for more than two decades. Three generations of American composers turn to her when they have something new to...