Vocal and Choral

Nicholas Marshall – Songs and Chamber Music
James Gilchrist; Various Artists; Manchester Chamber Ensemble
Metier msv 28552 divineartrecords.com

This CD showcases songs and instrumental music by British composer Nicholas Marshall, born in the 1940s and still busily at work today. Marshall’s musical influences and talents are many and varied, and while certainly having his own inventive voice he follows in the musical footsteps of Warlock, Delius, Vaughan Williams and Sir Lennox Berkeley, with whom he also studied. The disc opens with The Birds, a song cycle of poetry by Hardy, Belloc, Yeats and others set beautifully for tenor voice, recorder and piano.  A brief but evocative Plaint for cello and piano precedes The Falling of the Leaves, another cycle set for tenor voice, alto recorder, cello and harpsichord on six poems by Yeats. The balance between all three voices is delicately well struck, in the writing as well as in performance; tenor James Gilchrist sings exquisitely, and Harvey Davies sounds equally at home on both harpsichord and piano.

Other songs on the program feature the poetry of James Reeves (Music in the Wood) and G.K. Chesterton (Three Short Songs), very deftly matched in character and spirit by Marshall’s writing. Two pieces for recorder and string quartet round out the program: Marshall’s Recorder Concerto, of which the slow movement is particularly beautiful, and The Nightingale, a short and sweet fantasia on a Welsh folk song. These are played with attentive affection and deserve more attention from other recorder players out there!

Aaron Jensen: From Sea to Sea – Vocal works featuring Canadian Poetry
Various Artists
Centrediscs CMCCD 20815

In an interview with The WholeNote’s David Perlman, composer/singer/impresario Aaron Jensen stated that “vocal music is flourishing in Toronto, and we plan on leading the singing revolution.” And he went on to do just that as artistic director of the Harbourfront SING! Festival. That and more so, representing all of Canada with the 2013 debut of his song cycle From Sea to Sea. It was eight years in the making, with Jensen first choosing poetry from each province and territory. Then came the arduous task of obtaining rights from each poet (or poet’s estate), and then the craft of honouring each poem with its own unique musical treatment. The result is a delightful and most interesting variety of styles within the one work, perfectly matching Jensen’s description of the “abundance of wit, craft, and poignancy” of the texts. In addition to expressing through the genres of folk, classical and jazz, he invokes overtones of Inuit throat singing (Uvavnuk Dreams), pointillist notation mirroring the Braille alphabet (Poems in Braille), bodhrán rhythms (Rain in the Country), as well as many more highly effective musical sketches and characterizations. Most of the vocal groups who performed the work at SING! appear on the recording and deliver exquisite performances: The Elmer Isleler Singers, The SING! Singers, Countermeasure, Cawthra Park Chamber Choir, KAJAK Collective and the Canadian Men’s Chorus.

Bach – Cantatas Vol.1 (182; 81; 129)
J.S. Bach-Stiftung; Rudolf Lutz
Bach-Stiftung A909

The J.S. Bach-Stiftung, a Swiss enterprise, is committed to performing all of J.S. Bach’s vocal music. Many of these performances (we are not told how many) will also find their way to CDs. This is the first installment; recorded in 2007 and 2008 and published in 2011 but only now released in North America (the project has now reached volume 12). It contains recordings of three cantatas: the early Himmelskönig, sei willkommen (BWV182), written for Weimar in 1714, and two cantatas which belong to Bach’s first Leipzig cycle: Jesus schläft, was soll ich hoffen? (BWV81) and Gelobet sei der Herr, mein Gott (BWV129).

The conductor, Rudolf Lutz, uses a small chamber orchestra and a small chamber choir. The size is in between the strictly one-to-a-part approach of Joshua Rifkin and the slightly larger ensembles employed by conductors like John Eliot Gardiner or Philippe Herreweghe. The singing is strong (I especially liked Claude Eichenberger, one of the alto soloists) but the real glory of the performances is in the instrumental work. There is a wonderful duet between violin (Renate Steinmann) and recorder (Armelle Plantier) at the opening of the first cantata and an equally fine oboe d’amore obbligato part (Esther Fluor) in the alto aria of the final work.

Of the three cantatas on this disc only the second is at all well known (it is described in great detail in John Eliot Gardiner’s recent biography). I was glad to make the acquaintance of the other two.

Mozart – Desperate Heroines
Sandrine Piau; Mozarteum Orchestra, Salzburg; Ivor Bolton
Naïve V5366

Sandrine Piau has not recorded the music of Mozart since her Mozart Opera Arias in 2001. The latest album on the progressive label Naïve (known for its recordings of the complete works of Vivaldi) is dedicated to Mozart heroines, but not necessarily the best-known ones. The disc is certainly filled with arias that rarely receive recording treatment. This speaks to Piau’s in-depth knowledge of the composer’s output and her security in the belief that as a soprano in demand all over the world, she has arrived and does not have to cater to more common tastes.

The former harpist is particularly celebrated for her vocal performances of the Baroque repertoire – the music she discovered after an encounter with William Christie, the period performance guru. It was Christie who encouraged her to forgo the harp and start singing. Piau’s voice seems uniquely suited to Baroque music, with its singular clarity and purity of line. This is a voice with a lean, almost austere tone. There is no velvet here, no softness and padding – just a simple strand of gold. That is why some, including this writer, may find her interpretations of Mozart’s music somewhat lacking. Then again, after her transformative recordings of Vivaldi and Handel, it was time to balance the score. As the artist herself says: “Mozart allows me to regain my focus; he preserves that miraculous balance that can so easily be disturbed in the whirlwind of life.”

Chansons Perpétuelles
Marie-Nicole Lemieux; Roger Vignoles; Quatuor Psophos
Naïve V 5355

Fin de siècle chansons reflect the obsessions of the age: decadence, degeneration, neurosis and ennui that were exquisitely expressed in sublime melody, drawing the listener ever inward to explore psyche’s secrets. A rich and rarified tapestry created by composers of the age is fertile ground for a singer possessing an affinity for the texts as well as great depth of expression in vocal performance. Marie-Nicole Lemieux has carefully studied, crafted and delivered this to perfection, bringing to life all the dishevelled beauty this repertoire offers. Guided by the deft hand of pianist Roger Vignoles, joined by Quatuor Psophos in the Nocturne from Guillaume Lekeu’s Trois Poèmes and in Ernest Chausson’s Chanson Perpétuelle, she rides the instrumental undercurrents with poetic charm and grace. Lemieux’s light touch and agile playfulness in Fauré’s Mandoline contrasts nicely with a sorrowful Mein Liebster singt from Wolf’s Italianiensches Liederbuch and excerpts from Rachmaninoff’s Six Romances which highlight the sheer drama of her rich contralto. The character of the CD is largely intimate – the final track around which she chose the program, Chanson Perpétuelle, is the most operatic of all the selections: Lemieux’s portrait of an abandoned woman’s angst skillfully intertwined with the quartet’s mesmerizing performance.

Wagner – Parsifal
Royal Opera House; Antonio Pappano
Opus Arte OA 1158 D

The sacred forest of the Grail a sterile hospital ward... Parsifal’s bow a broken bicycle wheel… The symbol of the Holy Grail a bleeding innocent young boy... The Knights look like a bunch of football hooligans. These and more are some of the disturbing images of this latest incarnation of Parsifal from the Royal Opera House, conceived by British director Stephen Langridge and Britain’s sole contribution to Wagner’s 200th anniversary. A controversial new production aimed to shock and wake up a supposedly smug, complacent audience to realities of today’s world? Perhaps, but nevertheless Parsifal is still a Bühnenweihfestspiel (“A Festival Play for the Consecration of the Stage” – Wagner) that must transcend the mundane into an exalted domain, as certainly achieved recently by the Met. Whether achieved here visually I am not so certain although the hypermodern cubistic set (by designer Alison Chitty) does morph ingeniously into an impressive, luminous cathedral in the Transformation Scene of Act I. 

But if you are worried at all, please “Have no fear,” I heard Gerald Finley say, because this is indeed a glorious Parsifal thanks mainly to Antonio Pappano’s insightful, deeply felt and thoroughly understood musical direction. The faultless, mostly English-speaking cast has Simon O’Neill, a strong heldentenor from New Zealand (Parsifal), Sir Willard White, the formidable bass-baritone from Jamaica (Klingsor) and legendary English basso Robert Lloyd as Titurel. From Germany comes René Pape, today’s best Gurnemanz and the great singer-actress Angela Denoke whose radiant portrayal of Kundry is somewhat marred by her pronounced vibrato.

The biggest surprise and a great sensation, however, is Canadian baritone Gerald Finley creating a lasting impression as a newcomer to the incredibly difficult central role of the suffering sinner, Amfortas.

Robert Bruce – Songs of Light and Shadow, Vol.1
Various Artists; Robert Bruce
Independent (robertbrucemusic.com)

Robert Bruce is the composer, lyricist and pianist in nine pieces which border on new age, easy listening sentiments while exploring minimalism, simple harmonies and uncomplicated melodies.

Listening to Bruce perform his own work on piano is such a joy, and a perfect example of compositions played just the way the composer intended them to be performed. Sure he wrote them, but this is no easy task even for the composer himself. Bruce the performer plays with an appropriate degree of detachment to make Bruce the composer’s works elegant, unaffected and clear. Vocalists Janet Obermeyer, Amy Dodington and Karen Barrett-Grignon perform clearly and musically to Bruce’s accompaniment. The additional occasional instrumental inclusion of harpist Elizabeth Eastwood, oboist Nancy Neeson and percussionist Dave Simpson add much appreciated aural depth.

Bruce’s Songs explore love, dreams and the female life experience. The words may not be to everyone’s taste but are a tight fit to the carefully composed constructed lines and, like film music, image-evoking harmonic colours. Especially enchanting and beautiful are the repeated oboe line in Spirit of Song and the closing repetitive piano line of The Candle of Love. Too bad A Little Bit of Neptune ventures a little bit too much into the pop music planet for this reviewer, but that’s the only one which does.

Excellent production values, mix and levels complete the package. The haunting, enigmatic and ethereal tonal music of Robert Bruce makes this a satisfying listening experience.