PLAYING ON THE EDGE 2 follows up Navona Records' first Gramophone-lauded album in this series for string quartet. Like the first installment, the award-winning Sirius Quartet plays the entire catalogue to perfection. Bruce Babcock opens the album with Watcher of the Sky, a piece commissioned to celebrate the sesquicentennial of the birth of American astronomer George Ellery Hale. Four movements chronicle the astronomer's achievements throughout the course of his career: the listener follows the rise from humble beginnings to great discoveries, always enveloped in a sense of marvel at the infinity of outer space. The Canary Who Sang by Dayton Kinney is a politically-inspired piece drawing parallels between the historical canaries in coal mines and today's whistleblowers: a musical testament on how one voice can potentially disrupt a larger society. Happiness, anger, sorrow and joy are the underlying emotions of Roger Fong's Variations on Emotions. Derived from a Chinese saying that it is these emotions that make up life, Fong examines the nature of these heterogeneous sentiments with great accuracy. Daniel Burwasser's Puck's Game is a cinematically illustrative characterization of Shakespeare's mischievous sprite Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Rhythmic and exciting, the work is somewhat reminiscent of Shostakovich, but more light-hearted and humorous. The first movement of String Quartet by John Summers is a meditation on sound, with thick harmonic layers and long, lusci ATTENTION: please remember that all Blu-Rays are Region A USA and all DVDs Region 1 USA and you will need a multi region Blu-Ray/DVD player to play them.