<Marga RICHTER (b.1926)
Sarah, do not mourn me dead (1995)
Two Chinese Songs (1952)
Wild Moon (2009)
Two Shakespeare Sonnets (2007)
Dew-drops on a lotus leaf (2002)
William George (tenor)
Andrea Lodge (piano)
rec. Staller Centre for the Arts Recital Hall, Stony Brook University, New York, 27-30 August 2013
REDSHIFT TK435 [63.16]
Writing in the second volume of Alan Blyth’s compendium
Song on record (1988), those two redoubtable British critics John
Steane and Michael Kennedy both lamented the dearth of composers prepared
to engage with English poets in songs for voice and piano. Will Crutchfield
in the same volume pointed to a similar lack of successors to Copland, Barber
and Rorem in America. Well here, some thirty years later, we have an American
composer whose output for voice and piano extends far enough to encompass
three CDs of which this is the first to be released.
Marga Richter
is a very good song composer indeed. This disc includes a substantial cycle,
Dew-drops on a lotus leaf, comprising 39 songs — some admittedly
very brief — based on Japanese poems by Ryokan; two Chinese songs; one
modern American setting; one with a text drawn from a letter by a soldier
killed in the American Civil War; and, just to show convincingly that there
is life in the old dog yet, two settings of Shakespeare sonnets. So there
is plenty of variety here, both of mood and texture. The songs span a period
of 57 years, so there is a chance too to engage with Richter’s changing
musical style with the most recent song Wild moon achieving a positively
operatic grandeur in its treatment of a text by the composer’s friend
Phyllis Latimer Roberts (1923-2013). One looks forward with much interest
to what treasures may be forthcoming in the next two projected volumes of
the cycle.
At the same time one very much hopes that the performances there will be better
than they are here. Tenor William George is described in his booklet biography
as “lead singer-songwriter for the Vancouver roots-rock band Horse Opera”
as well as a widely performed composer. He is clearly an intelligent singer,
but his voice is far from classical in style, throaty and ill-supported in
places with some suspect tuning apparent. His diction is pretty abysmal too;
in the first song on this disc the line “How gladly would I wash out
with my tears every little spot upon your happiness” is delivered with
such distortion of vowel sounds and swallowing of consonants that the meaning
would be absolutely indecipherable without the provided text. He is not helped,
either, by the peculiarities of the vocal setting in Dew-drops on a lotus
leaf, which is described as a “song cycle for tenor (or counter-tenor)
and piano”. Now, the demands of a tenor and a counter-tenor voice in
music of the same pitch are inevitably going to be diametrically opposed.
A tenor voice rising into head voice and falsetto will be strongest on the
lower notes; a counter-tenor dropping down into the low alto register will
be weakest in the same area. At times Richter seems to expect both, which
is asking for the impossible in the same voice. Oddly enough George’s
sense of tuning and poise appears more assured in the upper counter-tenor
reaches than in his natural full-voiced tenor; there are some beautifully
floated passages in places. Elsewhere his tone, supported by a rather artificial-sounding
echo, does not do the music justice and the echo does sound artificial, if
only because Andrea Lodge’s well-delivered piano tone is seriously lacking
in reverberation. Indeed, in places it sounds almost like an upright or an
electronic instrument.
There are several other discs of music by the composer in the catalogues;
one, of orchestral music conducted by Gerard Schwarz, is entirely devoted
to Richter’s music, and very impressive it is too (Ravello RR7867).
Those who are interested in the output of someone who is clearly a very interesting
composer should probably investigate that release first. Then, if they find
the idiom attractive, listeners may care to explore this disc of songs bearing
in mind the fact that the performances may not be the final word in style.
The presentation of this issue, on the other hand, is very good. The attractive
gatefold sleeve contains a full-colour twenty-page booklet with copious and
well-chosen illustrations as well as the complete texts of all the poems set
– which, as I have observed, will be needed. The only oddity is that
no durations are given for any of the individual items, nor indeed for the
album as a whole.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
Other Marga Richter CDs reviewed on MusicWeb International:-
Orchestral Excursions - Leonarda
Snow Mountain - Leonarda
Riders to the Sea - Leonarda
Blackberry Vines and Winter Fruit - Leonarda
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