MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW
RECORDING OF THE MONTH


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
AmazonUK AmazonUS

 

American Orchestral Song
Virgil THOMSON (1896-1989)
The Feast of Love (1964) [9:08]
John Alden CARPENTER (1876-1951)
Watercolors (1915) [10:35]
Roy HARRIS (1898-1979)
Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun (1959) [14:39]
Charles Tomlinson GRIFFES (1884-1920)
Five Poems of Ancient China and Japan, Op. 10 (1915) [8:42]
Horatio PARKER (1863-1919)
Cahal Mor of the Wine-Red Hand, Op. 40 (1893) [14:14]
Patrick Mason (baritone)
Odense Symphony Orchestra/Paul Mann
rec. 11-18 June 2007, Carl Nielsen Hall, Odense Conzerthus, Denmark. DDD
BRIDGE 9254 [57:56]
Experience Classicsonline


Bridge keep a low profile so you might be forgiven for knowing little about them. Have a look at their website. They have eleven volumes of the music of Crumb, four of Stefan Wolpe, six of Elliott Carter, three of Mario Davidovsky, two of Stephen Jaffe, four of Poul Ruders, and a speckle of Wuorinen, Imbrie, Wernick, Lerdahl, Riegger, Perle, Lansky, Machover, Schuller, Bland, Harbison, Feldman and much else. I should also mention their 20+ volumes of historic Library of Congress chamber recordings and their enterprisingly open-minded reissues of Karl Krueger’s 1960s SPAMH analogue tapes of American orchestral music of the 19th-20th centuries – vital if this song collection enthuses you . House artists with a strong representation in the Bridge lists include Garrick Ohlsson, Bennett Lerner, Lambert Orkis and David Starobin.

Virgil Thomson is represented by The Feast of Love, music very different from the clever folksy-populist collage of the Pare Lorentz scores of the 1930s - The Plow that Broke the Plains and The River (also recorded by Kapp). This is more akin to the unashamed romanticism of Autumn for harp and strings (see review). With its gawky fascinating rhythmic setting of parts of the Pervigilium Veneris - the same sensuous poem set by George Lloyd – we encounter a Thomson adopting an idiom recalling Copland's Old American Songs but with a dash or ten of Finzi along the way (3:02). Carpenter wrote several song-cycles including one setting songs from Gitanjali several of which were recorded by Rose Bampton. Carpenter’s songs with piano are sampled at length on Albany TROY388. This one is subtly coloured and contoured with a Gallic accent that coasts very close to Ravel in On a Screen and to the lapidary orchestration of Canteloube in The Odalisque. There’s also an undertow from Coleridge-Taylor and even Ketèlbey. Highwaymen is Carpenter in the grand manner of Turandot, indeed Puccini must have registered strongly with Carpenter. Yet at 2:15 onwards the music breaks into a jazzy outburst that recurs. The final song To a Young Gentleman is instantly memorable and has some of the energetic charge of Sondheim's Pacific Overtures mixed with a hint of Bantock. The sing-song refrain Not that that would very much please me is catchy. The song and the cycle end with a clever half-squeak half-yawn.

Then comes a complete gear-change from the much more knowing Roy Harris. The 19th century is left behind and Harris instead calls up a symphonic power even if the Whitman words set are from the late 19th century. It has that frontiersman defiance. Harris was a remarkably original composer and his setting of Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun is typical and full of enthralling writing ranging from licking woodwind and string tendrils and an angular oratorical style. The vocal line is heavy with both nobility and ecstasy. Griffes five short oriental poems take us back to the world of Carpenter, Bantock and Mahler and of the writings of Lafcadio Hearn. These songs are perfect little aquatints written in a softly lyrical style with an oriental swerve to the line. As if to confirm the Bantock connection the last song is A Feast of Lanterns which was also set by Bantock. The name of Horatio Parker may well be known to you for his organ work, his oratorio Hora Novissima and possibly for his powerful Northern Ballad for orchestra (see review). The Rhapsody for baritone and orchestra, Cahal Mor of the Wine Red Hand is in late-romantic style using an orchestral apparatus that is heavier than that of Griffes or Carpenter - more Wagnerian-Tchaikovskian. It has just a dash of sentimentality with reminders of Bantock and Hiawatha’s Onaway Awake Beloved. Bantock’s Five Ghazals of Hafiz would in fact have fitted well amid these cycles – if only in stylistic terms. A lightness of spirit enters in the second song and there is melodrama the visionary dream of A Skeleton in the manner of Longfellow. The refrain binds the cycle together and the harpist’s delicacy brings it to an end.

The words are printed in full in the booklet and the font size makes reading the notes and poems no challenge at all.

All that remains is to ask Mason, Mann, the Odense players and Bridge for a sequel or better yet several. I know there are more Carpenter song cycles with orchestra and surely Farwell, Loeffler and others could fill out the picture. Certainly there are other Roy Harris works with voice and orchestra: Canticle to the Sun and Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight.

Rob Barnett

Reviews of Carpenter on MusicWeb International:
Piano music on New World
Symphonies 1 and 2 on Naxos


 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.