What have the following
composers got in common? Jean Françaix,
Lennox Berkeley, Aaron Copland, Elliott
Carter, and Michel Legrand. Precious
little, you might say, but the answer
is that they all studied with Nadia
Boulanger. Once we know that, we might
begin to see a common factor in their
fearless pursuit of their own calling,
and the flawless technique with which
they were able to do it.
In the notes to this
album the late Christopher Palmer, a
leading expert in film music and associated
matters, remarks that "this popular
crossover-collaboration succeeds whereas
others have failed". It is not
clear whether by "others"
he means those by other artists or others
by Kiri Te Kanawa herself, but I rather
mischievously take it to mean the latter,
for my own reactions are that this style
of singing, which was frequently nauseating
in Gershwin and in "South Pacific"
- I didn’t have the stomach to try her
Kern album - works perfectly here.
And the reason, it
seems to me, lies in Legrand’s rigorous
studies with Boulanger; quite honestly,
this isn’t crossover at all. I know
that, if you listen with half an ear,
it sounds like light music, with
all the trappings of Hollywoodian sunsets,
springtimes and what-have-you, but the
melodies are too long and unpredictable
to have much appeal for anyone who only
likes light music. Maybe just one
or two songs by Legrand have that sort
of easy memorability to make real hits;
one, "The Windmills of your Mind",
is given here in a challengingly restrained
version, accompanied by piano only,
while another, "The Summer Knows",
is rather surprisingly not included.
For the rest, I would say that this
is the work of a cultured musician who
has analyzed the sound and style of
a certain type of light music and adopted
it as his expressive means, but who
is writing for an audience of cultured
listeners. It is classical music which
uses the bricks and straw of light music.
The words, too, almost
all by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, rhyme
and jingle like the words of popular
ditties, yet so often seem to reach
out towards something more:
And one day a child,
full of wonder,
Won’t fear the dark sound of thunder.
No dreams of danger
When a soldier’s a stranger
From a distant time, distant world.
So don’t make the mistake
of thinking this is any less serious
than the writing of the other Boulanger
pupils listed above.
In the same way, while
on one level Kiri Te Kanawa is using
all the trappings of a singer born and
bred to sing light music, the husky
chest tones, descending comfortably
and warmly to a low G (this from an
operatic soprano!) or extended upwards,
the white girlish tones and then the
rolling vibrato on a long single note,
in reality it is surely the fruit of
minute analysis, whereas a Barbra Streisand
presumably does it by instinct. The
result is a wonderful kaleidoscope of
vocal sounds which could never be applied
to classical music but which could only
have come from a classically trained
singer. When applied to Gershwin, Te
Kanawa invariably succeeds in pleasing
neither gut lovers of original jazz
nor classical musicians, but here it
works a dream. No doubt she would cheerfully
slaughter me if I say this is what she
does best, but when I think of the Puccini
album she recorded four years later
…
As Palmer says, "with
Kiri and Michel there seems to be an
inbuilt, intuitive combustibility. They
spark each other off ...". "Magic"
was actually written for Te Kanawa,
but all the songs were custom-arranged
for the recording – this in itself being
a tribute to the fail-safe technique
Legrand got from Boulanger. So here
is something really quite unique, recommended
to all who are prepared to open the
windmills of their minds.
Christopher Howell
Kiri Te Kanawa (soprano) 
