A fleeting and powerful voyage in song
Kate Wakeling is swept along by Caroline Shaw’s journey between worlds
Caroline Shaw
Narrow Sea; Taxidermy
Dawn Upshaw (soprano), Gilbert Kalish (piano); S Percussion Nonesuch 7559791789 28:22 mins Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw continues to make waves with her imaginative and expressive works that glide effortlessly between genres. This short but exquisite disc showcases Shaw’s 2017 Narrow Sea, recorded by its outstanding original performers: S Percussion, soprano Dawn Upshaw and pianist Gilbert Kalish. Exploring the importance of refuge and the idea of water as a passage between this world and the next, Narrow Sea draws on texts from The Sacred Harp, a collection of American hymns first published in 1844. Shaw reworks these powerful texts with new melodies, adding fresh colour but retaining the emotional directness of the original hymns themselves. The gentle, tonal piano line (played with subtlety and grace by Kalish) is cast as a ‘grounding force or a familiar memory’ set amid an intriguing and exploratory battery of musical timbres, including ‘ceramic bowls, humming, a piano played like a dulcimer by five people at once and flowerpots’. The resulting fivemovement work is at once joyful and mesmeric. Its instrumental harmonies and textures are often spare, but Shaw is unafraid to spin a tune and the paired songs that open and close the work have a wonderful lilt which Upshaw carries off with gorgeous lyricism.
The album is completed with the one-movement work Taxidermy (2012), which again makes creative use of the muted, bell-like timbre of flowerpots, combined here with hypnotic overlapping speech patterns. Performed with assurance and poise by S Percussion, Taxidermy offers an aptly delicate and thoughtful close to this beautiful disc. PERFORMANCE ★★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★★
The five-movement work is at once joyful and mesmeric
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Corpus Christi motet Homo quidam fecit coenam magnam in a version not previously recorded; a lush setting of the Stabat Mater fleshed out in the late 16th century, long after Josquin’s death; and a mellifluous version of the motet O bone et dulcissime
Jesu, again with additional voices enriching the stark original. The disc also includes several works of uncertain authenticity, including Usquequo, Domine, whose dolorous text unfolds at an aptly measured tread here, and the poignant psalm setting Domine, ne in furore tuo, its penitential words uttered with a sense of quiet resignation.
The ensemble’s sound is clean and ingenuous throughout: boyish sopranos and altos are balanced by fresh-voiced tenors and basses, intonation is nigh flawless, the recording limpid. Stephen Rice and his singers subtly capture the emotional and spiritual gamut of these works – from the joyful serenity of the Annunciation sequence Mittit ad virginem to the dark anguish of Huc me sydereo – Maffeo Vegio’s poetic meditation on the Passion of Christ, which the ensemble delivers with haunting intensity. Rice’s detailed liner notes, which include a summary of the scholarly debates surrounding the spurious works, wrap up this treasurable anniversary disc.
Kate Bolton-porciatti PERFORMANCE ★★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
Medtner
Six Poems by Pushkin, Op. 36; Five Poems, Op. 37, etc.
Sofia Fomina (soprano),
Alexander Karpeyev (piano)
Chandos CHAN 20171 57:11 mins Though Russian soprano Sofia Fomina has created a stir in the opera house, this all-medtner disc would appear to be her first commercial Lieder recording. Rather than cherry-pick across the opus numbers (as did the survey curated by pianist Iain Burnside for Delphian a couple of years ago), she opts for four complete sets of songs: two composed before Medtner fled the aftermath of the Russian Revolution; and two composed in Brittany before London beckoned in 1936. And while Russian poets fuel Opp. 36, 37 and 45, Op. 46’s Goethe, Eichendorff and Chamisso settings reflect Medtner’s German sympathies – nurtured through family links stretching back to Goethe himself.
The pianist’s role is crucial. Medtner was a fine performer, and the piano is so often in the driving seat as words blossom into song. Alexander Karpeyev provides the ideal grounding for Fomina’s famously silvery tone (which can assume a hard-edged glint as required). How weightlessly it hovers over his sumptuously rippling accompaniment at the start of ‘The Angel’ (Op. 36/1), and how hollowed out is the desolation of ‘The Flower’ which follows. Karpeyev takes the ever-changing emotional temperature of the Pushkin-setting ‘Elegy’ (Op. 45/1) with an unfailing sensitivity to its rise and fall; and he seizes the reins of ‘The Wagon of Life’ (Op. 45/2) with robust determination, egging on the scornful disdain of Fomina’s ‘easy now, you fool’. Her colouristic range can be a little circumscribed, but this is a rewarding addition to a still unaccountably underpopulated discography. Paul Riley PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★
Stanford
Songs of Faith, Op. 97;
Three Songs of Robert Bridges; Nonsense Rhymes; Songs from Shamus O’brien, Op. 61;
The Triumph of Love, Op. 82 Roderick Williams (baritone), James Way (tenor), Andrew West (piano) SOMM SOMMCD 0627 78:50 mins There are quite a few rarities here, including the 1891 Three Songs of Robert Bridges and the 1903 The Triumph of Love. The former include some of the simpler and more appealing settings, with Roderick Williams’s lucid tone, straightforward manner and ability to match words and notes helping him realise effortlessly sincere and sympathetic performances.
Partly due to overwrought texts by Stanford’s cousin, the minor poet Edmond Gore Alexander Holmes, as a whole The Triumph of Love forms a less successful collection; in them Stanford’s Brahmsian heritage is at its most thick-textured and at times overbearing – though the simplicity and unaffectedness of ‘I think that we were children’ make it a real
gem. Despite the mixed quality of individual songs, tenor James Way gives The Triumph of Love eloquence and sweep, while Williams does equally well by Songs of Faith
(1906), settings – again uneven – of Tennyson and Walt Whitman.
The two singers share the more attractive Four Songs from Shamus O’brien (1896) – Stanford’s most successful opera – embodying its various male characters with dramatic vitality and conviction. They also divide between them the Nonsense Songs, settings of limericks by Edward Lear (or in one case, Anon) whose humour – mainly involving quotations from other composers – can be heavy handed. Several of them start promisingly enough, though just go on that little bit too long: but a couple at a time would go down well enough, or even just one as an encore.
Fine playing throughout from pianist Andrew West, and impressive sound. George Hall PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★
Villa-lobos
Choral Transcriptions of works by JS Bach, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, etc
São Paulo Symphony Choir/ Valentina Peleggi
Naxos 8.574286 58:32 mins
While much of Villa-lobos’s music deserves to be far better known, it is yet remarkable to have a disc where the overwhelming majority of pieces are new to the catalogue. The explanation is that the newcomers are transcriptions for a cappella choir of famous pieces by Beethoven, Chopin, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninov, Schubert, Schumann and, especially, Bach. Given Villalobos’s close affinity with the last of these it’s no surprise that the various Bach Preludes and Fugues are generally the most convincing transcriptions. If the D major fugue brings The Swingle Singers to mind, the D sharp minor fugue is redolent of polyphony and the B flat minor prelude is especially poignant.
Also effective are Mendelssohn’s E major Song Without Words and the only two pieces with texts, Massenet’s Élégie and, in Portuguese, Schubert’s ‘Ständchen’, the latter having a deliciously swaggering insouciance. More problematic are the transcriptions of various Romantic piano works. The faster sections of Chopin’s C sharp minor Waltz, rather than an outpouring of free-flowing lyricism, evoke intemperate gabbling. Similarly, the imperious drama of Rachmaninov’s C sharp minor Prelude is replaced by farce, opening with absurdly pompous basses followed by what sounds like a flock of ducks. Whether the São Paulo Symphony Choir and their director Valentina Peleggi exacerbate such misfires is a moot point, even if various rough moments of intonation undermine this challenging labour of love. Individual transcriptions are intriguingly impressive, but collectively they are distinctly indigestible. Christopher Dingle PERFORMANCE
RECORDING
★★
★★★
I Wonder As I Wander
Beethoven: An die ferne Geliebte; plus songs by Britten, Mahler and Schubert
James Newby (baritone),
Joseph Middleton (piano)
BIS BIS-2475 (CD/SACD) 75:26 mins
It would be fair to say that things are not looking up for the fictional protagonists of baritone James Newby’s debut recording. From the restless, bleak voice of Schubert’s
Wanderer (D489) to Mahler’s doomed soldier (‘Zu Strassburg auf der Schanz’), wonderfully evoked here, deserting to answer the longedfor call of his homeland’s Alpine horn, redemption seems beyond reach. These are songs for the still grey skies of winter, filled with yearning for the other – whether a love unrequited or lost, a life that falls bitterly short, a homeland viewed from exile – coloured with Newby’s elastic vocal tone, sense of drama and attentive articulation.
This is a fine debut disc, its repertoire giving Newby ample chance to demonstrate his expressive and dramatic range, whether in the cold of the Britten song which gives the album its name – superbly accompanied throughout by Joseph Middleton, who brings understated life to Britten’s still, pinched piano fragments – or the half-deranged Mahler ‘Reveille’, in which singer and piano drum relentlessly over the bloodied battlefield towards death.
If this series of brooding, bitter and desperate voices is ever in danger of evoking a sense of melancholic navel-gazing – although largely beautifully done, not least Schubert’s ‘Abendsterm’ – there are moments that bring a lighter cast to the theme, such as an exquisitely sung ‘Im Freien’ (Schubert), or Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte. But it’s short-lived, as Mahler’s ‘Urlicht’ aches emotively from singer and pianist, delivering Newby to the quiet ecstasy of Britten’s ‘At the mid hour of night’. Sarah Urwin Jones PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★
Violins of Hope
Heggie: Intonations – Songs from Violins of Hope*; Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 6 in F minor,
Op. 80; Schubert: Quartettsatz *Sasha Cooke (mezzo-soprano), Daniel Hope, Kay Stern, Dawn Harms (violin), Patricia Hellier (viola),
Emil Miland (cello)
Pentatone PTC 5186 879 75:14 mins
The Violins of Hope project brings together instruments played by Jewish musicians before and during the Holocaust – painstakingly restored by Amnon and Avshalom Weinstein as a living reminder of those dark days and an expression of faith in the future. The instruments have subsequently travelled the world, but the concert enshrined on this disc marks a landmark premiere: an artfully-conceived song cycle by Jake Heggie to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Scored for mezzo, solo violin and string quartet, plus a young violinist, Intonations tells the stories of some of the instruments, including one which was found to contain human ash. The third song describes a concert taking place in a gas chamber under ‘shower heads that have never shed a drop of water’.
Heggie, celebrated for his opera Dead Man Walking, accomplishes the task with incontestable fluency, opting for a musical language that marries the contours of Jewish melody with popular idioms; and, in ‘Motele’, he isn’t afraid to quote Mendelssohn who is name-checked in the text. Whether the music penetrates fully the horror is for each listener to decide; but there’s no gainsaying the power and sincerity of the performance headed up by the probing mezzo of Sasha Cooke and impassioned eloquence of the aptlynamed solo violinist Daniel Hope. The quartet, drawn from members of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, also volunteers visceral accounts of Schubert’s fevered Quartettsatz and Mendelssohn’s quartet ‘Requiem’ for his beloved sister Fanny. Paul Riley PERFORMANCE
RECORDING
★★★★
★★★★