Vocal and Choral

Stravinsky, Janáček, Bartók: Village Stories
Prague Philharmonic Choir; Lukáš Vasilek
Supraphon SU4333-2 (supraphon.com/album/763075-stravinsky-janacek-bartok-village-stories)

Village Stories brings together the worlds of ethnomusicology and nationalism in one compelling package. The featured composers were all profoundly influenced by their interest in indigenous musical materials to varying degrees. Bartók roamed far and wide scientifically recording and transcribing source materials on Edison cylinders; Janáček did much the same, though more modestly, while also probing deeply into the melodies concealed in everyday human speech. Stravinsky took a more leisurely approach, shamelessly stealing his materials from pre-existing publications. (The eerie opening bassoon solo of his Rite of Spring, for example, is cribbed from a volume of Lithuanian folk songs.) 

The apogee of Stravinsky’s magpie-mania culminated in his explosive and highly influential ballet Les Noces (The Wedding) for chorus, four pianos and percussion ensemble, completed after many false starts in 1923.

Janáček’s whimsical Říkadla (Nursery Rhymes, 1926) is a late work based on humorous doggerel culled from the funny pages of his daily newspaper. Scored for ten instruments (including a toy drum and an ocarina!) and a small choir, it is a patently absurd and highly enjoyable treasure trove of good clean fun. He considered these Czech verses as “frolicsome, witty, cheerful – that’s what I like about them. They’re rhymes after all!” This delightful set of 18 choral miniatures is guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

Bartók’s Three Village Scenes, also composed in 1926, is scored for female choir and chamber orchestra. It is considered by some to be his response to Stravinsky’s Les Noces, but with a twist. The opening movement likewise depicts a wedding scene, though the agitated, asymmetric orchestral outbursts and minor key setting hint at a dim future; a line of the text reads, “I’m a rose, a rose, but only when I’m single. When I have a husband, Petals drop and shrivel.” The subsequent Lullaby touchingly laments an uncertain future for a mother’s child. A rollicking Lad’s Dance concludes the work on a more positive note.

Full English translations of the Russian, Czech and Hungarian texts are included with the physical product; unusually, the Stravinsky libretto is also provided in the Cyrillic alphabet. The perfoóóórmances are uniformly excellent and the audio production first class. Not to be missed.

Dean Burry’s The Highwayman
Kristina Szabó; Sarah Moon; Kornel Wolak; Gisèle Dalbec-Szczesniak; Wolf Tormann; Younggun Kim; Darrell Christie
Centrediscs CMCCD 32123 (cmccanada.org/product-category/recordings/centrediscs)

The Highwayman – a romantic and gory extended poem written in 1906 by the English poet Alfred Noyes – has been given a splendidly vivid and evocative musical setting by the Kingston-based composer Dean Burry. Burry takes as his model Arnold Schoenberg’s expressionist masterpiece Pierrot Lunaire, writing for the same forces: flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, cello, piano and mezzo soprano. While the two works share moon imagery and certain ensemble colours, Burry’s work has a bolder, more cinematic quality that complements the epic sweep of Noyes’ poem in contrast to Schoenberg’s spooky transparency. Indeed, it would be a treat to hear the two pieces together in concert. 

A powerful instrumental prologue sets the scene for a tour-de-force performance by the celebrated Canadian mezzo Krisztina Szabó who brilliantly dramatizes the story and offers up a varied and gorgeous sound throughout her extended vocal range. Her brilliant diction and operatic sensibility coupled with Burry’s clear and attractive writing keep the interest and intensity throughout the 17-movement work. The five instrumentalists contribute strong and confident playing under the sensitive direction of Darrell Christie, with violinist Gisèle Dalbec-Szczesniak being a particular standout. 

The project was recorded at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Kingston with Burry producing. The sound is first-rate. There’s an informative short documentary A Torrent of Darkness: The Making of Dean Burry’s The Highwayman available on YouTube.

Bramwell Tovey; John Murrell – The Inventor (an opera in two acts)
Soloists; UBC Opera Ensemble; Vancouver Symphony Orchestra; Bramwell Tovey
Centrediscs CMCCD 31723 (cmccanada.org/product-category/recordings/centrediscs)

Although the conductor and composer Bramwell Tovey was born and educated in the United Kingdom, many Canadian classical music enthusiasts associate him principally with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, for whom he worked as music director from 2000 until 2018. Tovey died in 2022 but his name lives on in Vancouver, as his significant contributions to that city’s musical culture and community is reflected in the renaming of the Tovey Centre for Music that now houses the VSO’s School of Music. How fitting then, that the Canadian Music Centre should put out a new release of a 2012 recording of Tovey’s first opera, The Inventor with a libretto by John Murrell, that in sound and script tells the story, heretofore unknown to me, of Alexander “Sandy” Keith.

Although the narrative and back story is indeed compelling – Keith was a scoundrel, con artist and murderer, who attempted to take down a transatlantic steamship with a bomb – knowledge of this tragic and decidedly Canadian story is not a prerequisite to enjoying this fine new release. Recorded at Vancouver’s beautiful Orpheum Theatre and featuring the VSO with Tovey at the helm, The Inventor is a sprawling two-disc double-act modern opera that clocks in at over two hours of music. Capable of inspiring a thesaurus worth of musical descriptors (modern, dissonant, lush, romantic, cinematic, declamatory), this ambitious project both deserves and needs to be heard to appreciate the magnitude of its creativity and breadth. Although the closest analogue to my ears is Alva Henderson’s work with Nosferatu, I suggest that this 2023 release would be enjoyed by opera and modern classical music enthusiasts alike.

Ispiciwin
Luminous Voices; Andrew Balfour
Leaf Music LM267 (leaf-music.ca)

Having had the good fortune to review both a CD (Nagamo) and a live performance of Andrew Balfour, the Toronto-based Cree composer and member of Fisher River First Nation, I looked forward to exploring Ispiciwin (Journey), a project on which Balfour serves as composer and creative lead. Once again, I was tremendously impressed. Impressed by both the ambition of the conceit of the project, as well as the resulting beautiful sonic capture from either the Bella Concert Hall at Mount Royal University in Calgary, or the Chapel at the University of Alberta’s Augustana Campus Camrose, both fitting venues for this haunting and engaging set of new music.

A meaningful attempt in sound to explore the concept of artistic reconciliation, Ispiciwin pairs Balfour’s immense talent, creativity and insatiable desire to push musical borders with the vocal group Luminous Voices, Timothy Shantz artistic director, along with Jessica McMann on bass flute and Walter MacDonald White Bear on Native American courting flute. The result is an expansive set of new choral music sung in Cree that derives from, explores and celebrates various histories, backgrounds and extractions (from Sherryl Sewepagaham to Sofia Samatar to John Dowland). 

Although this recording most certainly does not prioritize a political agenda over the music, there is indeed something inherently political about the fact that, as Balfour acknowledges in the album’s liner notes, such a recording would have been virtually unthinkable some 30 years ago when he was coming up as a young choir boy and lover of Renaissance vocal music. The result writes important new voices into the canon of choral music and is recommended listening indeed. 

Listen to 'Ispiciwin' Now in the Listening Room

Wound Turned to Light – New Songs by James Rolfe
Alex Samaris; Jeremy Dutcher; Andrew Adridge; Lara Dodds-Eden
Redshift Records TK540 (redshiftmusicsociety.bandcamp.com)

We ought to have been done with COVID-19, but the effects of “The Pandemic of the Century,” has had a lasting, profound psychological and sociological effect on humanity, even as the health of the species bounces back. Happily, we have been rescued (again) by poets, the very tribe that Plato – who disparaged them for relying on imagery at some distance from reality – would rather have nothing to do with in his Republic of Grecian times. But oh… how times have changed!

Former Poet Laureate of both the City of Toronto and the Canadian Parliament, George Elliott Clarke commissioned 15 Canadian members of this very (disparaged) tribe to lift our sinking hearts. The result is some edifying poems – including two of his own – the eloquence of which James Rolfe has turned to exquisite music. And so, our existential angst has been briefly assuaged, and Rolfe lifts our hearts with his Lieder. 

Wound Turned to Light dwells not in some forgotten utopia or impending dystopia, but in nature, dreams – broken and fulfilled – and in the mysticism of life and death asking, as Schiller once asked in Die Götter Griechenlands: “Schöne Welt, wo bist du?” (Beautiful world, where are you?). 

Alex Samaras does much of the lifting of Rolfe’s music with a combination of rich and lofty vocals in his singular, delicious tenor sound (cue Marigold). His mature insights into the lyrics are utterly convincing, all but eclipsing the celebrated Jeremy Dutcher who shines on Set me as a seal. Andrew Adridge is elegant on Bombastic. Pianist Lara Dodds-Eden is the uber-sensitive accompanist.

Listen to 'Wound Turned to Light: New Songs by James Rolfe' Now in the Listening Room

Frank Horvat – Fractures
Meredith Hall; Brahm Goldhamer
I Am Who I Am Records (iam-records.com)

Canadian composer and environmental activist Frank Horvat’s most recent album, Fractures, is a cycle of 13 songs performed by soprano Meredith Hall and pianist Brahm Goldhamer. Inspired by the 2016 anthology Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America, this work explores the controversial practice of fracking, a method used to extract natural gas and oil from deep rock formations known as shale. With lyrics curated from several Canadian and American writers who have been directly affected by fracking, the song cycle explores various viewpoints that surround the procedure. 

Horvat’s song cycle speaks to the ramifications of fracking, from the resources required to the impact on both the land and surrounding communities. Each song has an independent theme and musical structure and the cycle is unified by recurring motifs of fire and water. Although Hall and Goldhamer, both seasoned performers, demonstrate great commitment to the text and the music, listening to Fractures is, at times, difficult, for it requires a certain window into the knowledge of fracking to better understand the ironies and or musical choices that accompany certain texts. To the uninitiated, a more relatable song can be found in Lullaby in Fracktown, where a mother sings to her young child against the backdrop of her husband’s employment insecurity. 

Notwithstanding, it is a gift when living composers take time to explain their work and thought processes, which is what Horvat does in the generous liner notes of Fractures. His explanations enhance our ability to reflect more deeply on fracking and our environment. Horvat’s activism and dedication to this project (and others) are reminiscent of R. Murray Schafer’s soundscape work and that’s a very good place to be.

Listen to 'Frank Horvat: Fractures' Now in the Listening Room

Jérôme Blais – Mouvance
Suzie LeBlanc; Jérôme Blais
Centrediscs CMCCD 31223 (cmccanada.org/product-category/recordings/centrediscs)

It is on notes to this disc Mouvance that Jérôme Blais – a Québécois – alludes to the “…sense of uprootedness despite our migrations within the same expansive and culturally diverse country, Canada.” Meanwhile, in music of uncommon beauty, Blais gives wing to the poignant lyrics by Acadian poet Gerald Leblanc. His poem, parts of which appear four times during the recording, not only makes for the theme of the album but also sets the tone for Blais’ music, voiced with featherlight expressiveness by Suzie LeBlanc, a Vancouverite of Acadian descent. 

Blais has also set the exquisite elegiac work of nine other poets all of whom explore bluesy emotions – of otherness and unbelonging – so deeply felt in the proverbial “mouvance” of migration. Eileen Walsh’s woody, eloquently dolorous clarinets, Jeff Torbert’s lonesome twangy guitars, Norman Adams’ soaring cello and Doug Cameron’s often rumbling hand drums and hissing and swishing percussion heighten the atmosphere and bring experience and technique to these pieces. 

All this is just as well, given the varied types of text setting involved. LeBlanc is exquisite in her many contributions, her creamy soprano soaring in the four iterations of Mouvance, and in the finale Tu me mouves, deftly supported by the instrumentalists playing Blais’ distinctive music. 

The close, slightly resonant recording is never uncomfortable and weaves voice and instruments into a kind of damask musical fabric. Discerning lovers of song – particularly Francophonie Canadians – will enjoy investigating these charming works.