Vocal and Choral

Rituals – Art Songs by Charles Ives; Reynaldo Hahn; William Bolcom
Laura Choi Stuart; Tanya Blaich
Acis APL78383 (acisproductions.com/rituals-art-songs-by-ives-hahn-bolcom-laura-choi-stuart-tanya-blaich)

In her first solo CD, American soprano Laura Choi Stuart presents a remarkably variegated program of 26 art songs, non-standard repertoire that celebrates “the rituals of community, relationship and home that make up our days” in “the form of traditions, ceremonies or habits.”

The great American maverick Charles Ives is represented by eight songs. Five are set to his own verses, including nostalgic texts about his own youth, “tunes of long ago” and “tunes we sang in school days,” incorporating musical quotations from familiar hymns and patriotic songs. Ives’ ethical values appear in The Innate – “the things true Pilgrims stand for,” Matthew Arnold’s West London honouring a beggar-woman and Robert Browning’s From “Paracelsus” – “what proportion love should hold with power in man’s right constitution.”

The seven songs of Reynaldo Hahn’s Études latines, set to poems by Charles-Marie-René Compte de Lisle, luxuriate in evoking the aromas and sacred rites associated with the exotic wines and mythical deities of Greek and Roman antiquity. Hahn’s sensual, languorous vocal lines are accompanied throughout by pianist Tanya Blaich’s gentle strumming, as if on an ancient lyre. It’s really quite beautiful.

In Briefly It Comes, Pulitzer-laureate Willam Bolcom’s nine-song cycle set to Jane Kenyon’s poems, Bolcom’s unembellished, conversational music mirrors Kenyon’s quotidian images – pots and pans, eating cereal, walking the dog – embedded in ruminations about poetry’s eternal trinity, Nature, Love and Death. Two of Bolcom’s Cabaret Songs – Waitin and Miracle Song – complete this very entertaining CD.

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i wish i were dead
Duo Étrange
ATMA ACD2 2935 (atmaclassique.com/en/product/i-wish-i-were-dead)

While the name Duo Étrange suggests an uncommon pairing of cello and soprano, in the hands of two friends—cellist Sahara von Hattenberger and soprano Vanessa Croome—the collaboration seems completely natural. Created to honour the past in classical music while also looking to celebrate the future (thus the album’s ironic title i wish i were dead.), the duo combines existing works by living composers with several commissions.

The album begins with Fong Jeffrey’s newly commissioned Dans un sentier tout parfumé/Danger, peur, honte, a dramatic and stunning opener presenting two scenes from a medieval poem about love as an alluring ideal as well as a psychological maze. This is followed by Luna Pearl Woolf’s nine-movement Rumi: Quatrains of Love, a cycle of poems arranged for the duo that speaks of passion, love and the transition between life and death, featuring deeply sensitive colours and tones from the brilliant pianist Joanna Kang. 

The Quatrains of Wisdom, Op.82 (after the Rubáiyát by Omar Khayyam), a lushly written quartet commissioned from composer and clarinetist Airat Ichmouratov, is destined to become a wish-list piece for this unusual configuration of instruments (soprano, cello, clarinet and piano). Ichmouratov’s writing, as well as his gorgeous lyrical playing, shines. Croome rises equally to the challenging ranges of the piece, and each of the four movements is beautifully captured to become a favourite of the album.

Another favourite is a short piece by Anders Hillborg, Kvell, inexplicably missing from the disc but included on the digital version. It’s a beautiful duo and offers no explanation of backstory or why it is absent from the disc; one can only presume the length of the album meant it needed to be cut, but it’s worth seeking out. Cellist-composer Maya Fridman’s duo version of her Tree of Life offers the duo an opportunity to explore what feels like the spiritual heart of the project and, at just over twelve minutes, anchors the album.

And there is still more: Laurence Jobidon’s Simone: mythe moderne is a one-movement operetta set to a text by Thomas Royer featuring contemporary themes, tonalities and humour. And finally, we get Nicole Lizée’s Urbexcelsis (Doesn’t it Fill Your Eyes), a fantastical journey of urban decay, scavenging half-intoned memories, gothic framing of crumbling walls and haunted dreams.

This debut album is not just epic in size; the quality and scope of the musicianship, as well as the newly commissioned works, is a statement that Duo Étrange plans to carve many new pathways for this unusual pairing.

New Jewish Music Volume 5
Chœur de l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal; Instrumentalists of the OSM; Andrew Megill
Analekta AN29265 (outhere-music.com/en/albums/new-jewish-music-vol-5-nobles-bardanashvili-klartag-trigos)

Just as the range of human experience is vast and wide, the expansiveness of Jewish music (Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Ladino, religious, secular) is equally nuanced, leaving a rich legacy of artistry and beautiful composition. Accordingly, New Jewish Music, Vol.5, is appropriately equally varied, a welcome collection platforming works of the 2024 laureates of the biennial Azrieli Music Prize: Jordan Nobles, Josef Bardanashvili, Yair Klartag, and Juan Trigos. 

Over 16 tracks performed by the Chorus of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) under the direction Andrew Megill, this fine new recording presents multiple musical traditions, experiences, and a diversity of voices while articulating themes from the cosmos during the time of the Aztec, to beautifully bringing to life the traditional Georgian influence heard on Bardanashvili’s five-part Light to My Path. 

Celebrating what is possible with a variety of ensemble sizes, this recording runs the gamut from the atmospheric sparseness and intimacy of Nobles’ a cappella piece Kanata – musically plumbing the vastness of the Canadian landscape – before augmenting in scope and size with members of the OSM for Trigos’ Simetrías Prehispánicas (Pre-Hispanic Symmetries). Bardanashvili adds saxophone, percussion and piano to the mixed choir for his work, while Klartag’s Parable of the Palace supplements the chorus with four double basses. 

New Jewish Music, Vol.5 is ambitious, musically satisfying and consistently excellent.

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The Long Walk Home
Nathan Keoughan; Peter Tiefenbach
Independent (canadianartsongproject.bandcamp.com/album/the-long-walk-home)

The Long Walk Home is Canadian Art Song Project’s (CASP) first independent release. Commissioned by CASP in 2015, this contemporary song cycle for baritone and piano is composed by Peter Tiefenbach with text by James Ostime. It premiered in March 2015 at U of T’s Walter Hall with baritone Geoffrey Sirett and pianist Tiefenbach. This recording features baritone Nathan Keoughan with Tiefenbach again at the piano.

This eight-movement song cycle has many musical styles like cabaret, musical theatre, Handel style operatic recitative, and art song. It tells the modern story of one man’s one-night experiences and emotional feelings. Opening Prologue starts with baritone “song” with wide ranging singing and chordal accompaniment until he meets a woman in a bar who invites him to her house. In Too Good …  (To Be True…) happy singing comes to a sudden silent stop when he sees another man in her house. An abrupt musical change of pace with grief stricken operatic singing and piano support. He runs away in Outta There to theatrical running music, then quiet singing above piano chords alternating with faster more atonal music. Message Received has operatic high pitch vocals and detached piano chords as he waits for his friend’s text answer. The other movements are equally mesmerizing.

Tiefenbach’s intelligent stylistic composing and piano performances are perfect. Keoughan’s vocal career in opera, music theatre and symphonic repertoire makes for great singing here. Ostime’s well written text runs the gamut from hilarious to emotionally sad. This is unforgettable, entertaining music!!

Paul Frehner – Horizon: Madog
Jeremy Huw Williams; Ensemble Paramirabo; Angela J. Murphy
Navona Records NV6819 (navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6819)

In the realm of rock music, the question “what was the first ‘concept’ album” is a good conversation starter for audiophiles and amateur music historians alike. While the debate often ends in a tie (between Frank Zappa’s Freak Out and The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), a better question might be: “what constitutes a so-called concept record in the first place?” And while that question will not be solved within this column, I am confident that a tri-language opera (French, English, and Welsh) that explores the theme of post-apocalyptic environmental renewal through the life of a “back-to-the-lander” named Madog who looks for non-technologically mediated means of connecting communication practices across diverse communities, would certainly count as “conceptual.”

Released on Navona Records earlier this year and composed by Western University professor Paul Frehner, with what I can only imagine was an extraordinarily challenging to write libretto by Angela J. Murphy, Horizon: Madog creatively takes fans of contemporary classical music and opera on exactly such a conceptual and exploratory journey. Calling upon his background as rock guitarist, Frehner takes inspiration from progressive rock and avant-garde jazz, blending diverse musical styles on this interesting and exciting project. Also featuring a new composition for analog synthesiser, the entire recording is a welcome addition to the canon of Canadian operatic composition and electroacoustic music, as well as offering a testimony to the creativity that can result when collaborations across composers, soloists, and ensembles work effectively and musically together to good end.

ArtChoral Volume 9 : Canada
ArtChoral
ATMA ACD 2428 (atmaclassique.com/en/product/art-choral-vol-9-canada-13-works-by-canadian-women-composers/?srsltid=AfmBOopAONdJfzD6t3YmW7bD2DEbyjH-sqpwqZxPkm1UC1VJ_Qq5Pzkv)

Volume 9 in the series of CDs by Montreal’s Ensemble ArtChoral presents 13 brief works by Canadian women, commissioned by ArtChoral with “complete freedom to choose their texts, themes and musical styles.”

Of those setting their own words, I particularly enjoyed Sandy Scofield’s The Sacred One, a strophic chant celebrating Indigenous women’s spiritual wisdom; Carmen Braden’s Now, at the First Fire of the Fall, a rhapsodic evocation of nature; and Sophie Dupuis’ Souv’nirs, sung in New Brunswick’s Brayon French dialect, confronting painful childhood memories with folk music-like simplicity.

Two spirited pieces employ Latin texts. In Marie Alice Conrad’s merry, foot-stomping Dum felis dormit, the chorus repeatedly sings the words of an ancient proverb – “While the cat sleeps, the mouse celebrates.” Kati Agócs’ propulsive Arise, Be Enlightened!, adapted from the Book of Isaiah, steadily gathers momentum until its final ecstatic climax.

I found two works especially moving. The emotionally stirring Dreamer’s Rock by Beverley McKiver, a Sixties Sweep survivor, is set to an inspirational, aspirational poem by Lisa Shawongonabe Abel, addressed to an Indigenous child. The haunting You’re Free to Love by Afarin Mansouri, herself a refugee from Iran, is adapted from her opera The Refugees, with text by Jennifer Wise. 

Pieces by Amy Brandon, Alice Ping Yee Ho, Katya Pine, Fiona Ryan, Karen Sunabacka and Leslie Uyeda complete this CD. Many thanks to Ensemble ArtChoral and its artistic director Matthias Maute for this remarkable compendium of Canadian (female) creativity.

Jim O’Leary – Echoes of a Vanished People
Helen Pridmore; David Rogosin; Karin Aurell; Eileen Walsh; James Gardiner; Dale Sorensen
Centrediscs CMCCD 34524 (centrediscs.bandcamp.com/album/echoes-of-a-vanished-people)

The Centrediscs label of the Canadian Music Centre seems to exist in the realm of the classical music landscape. That’s where they seem most relevant although they bloom in art and folk song and magically original expressions often merging both disciplines. The extraordinarily flame-haired and brilliant flutist Jaye Marsh sent me a copy of her ethereal work, Flute in the Wild (CMCCD 28921, 2021) and sent me scurrying for more from the intrepid landmark imprint. 

Point in case is Echoes of a Vanished People where we hear the luminous-voiced Helen Pridmore singing of people in the lonely landscapes of our vast exquisite country; six extraordinary works written by the eloquent Jim O’Leary – an expert craftsman specialising in Canadian art song.

O’Leary draws on poems and other lyrical works by the Newfoundland and Labrador author Michael Crummey and songs by Susan Pannefather Gray and others. The music and lyrics take us into the countryside of O’Leary’s childlike imagination where it mixes beauty and a long-ranging sense of love for the grizzled past. The songs are evocative of long rainy days and freezing nights. Each track takes us into a wild place with trusted and inspiring friends. Both O’Leary and Pridmore have their fingers on the pulse of a ruddy sanguinity of old in this auspicious offering.