Jennifer Higdon – Cold Mountain
Gunn; Leonard; Fons; Hunter Morris; Honeywell; Santa Fe Opera; Miguel Harth-Bedoya
PentaTone PTC 5186 583
The PentaTone series continues with yet another world premiere recording, this one better known as an award-winning novel (and a Hollywood movie starring Nicole Kidman and Renée Zellweger). A Civil War epic detailing the desertion and journey home of confederate soldier W.P. Inman and the struggles of his faithful wife Ada, Cold Mountain is much admired by both readers and filmgoers. This creates a problem of its own – the towering libretto, faithful to the book, seems to subjugate Jennifer Higdon’s music and almost relegates it to a form of soundtrack. Higdon is a well-regarded composer and recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Here, the constraints of the opera bear heavily on her, stifling full creative freedom. She still delivers a score full of beautiful moments and mesmerizing violin writing, managing to endow each character with a musical signature of their own. While listening to this recording, one can only imagine how much greater the music could have been if only it were burdened with a lesser-known libretto.
I have no doubt that Cold Mountain was more successful on stage. In fact, the visuals would have helped greatly and perhaps this release should have been a DVD film. For listeners familiar with the book and the movie, it will be a fine reminder of their experience. For the rest of the audience, it may remain a mystery – an opera hesitant to assert itself beyond the libretto. The cast is uniformly good, and we must add a shout-out to Toronto’s own Robert Pomakov, whose agile bass is a pleasure to hear.
