NELSON An American voice - Albany TROY381 [WK]: Classical Music Reviews

Robert Nelson is an American composer based at the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston. He is known for writing in almost every musical style imaginable, from hard rock to Neo-Romantic. The works on this disc covers the somewhat narrower range from commercial to operatic.

Nelson sees his two African-American spirituals as belonging to a long tradition of setting such music for the concert hall. The disadvantage of this treatment is that the music is frequently over-elaborated and the performance over-dramatized. The first of these two pieces, “City Called Heaven“ suffers from both these problems while “My Soul Has Been Anchored” retains its original simplicity and is performed in an equally simple manner.

Charles Hausmann, choral director at the Moores School, commissioned Nelson to write an Advent cantata for the three choruses at the University of Houston. It is entitled A Nyw Werke is Come on Honde. The work alternates settings of seasonal texts with recitatives on texts from the Bible. The choral sections are too reminiscent of the commercial arrangements of Christmas carols all too prevalent in Advent, but the recitatives are genuinely moving and technically imaginative. They rescue the work from disappearing in the great ocean of seasonal music.

Nelson’s “Romantic Comic Opera” A Room with a View, based on Forster’s novel, premiered in 1993 and was well received. Five years later the composer arranged a shortened version for concert performance with a full orchestra. This version retains the heart of Buck Jones' skilfully written libretto and the alternating humour and dramatic sweep of Nelson’s music. However, the lack of scenic representation emphasizes the weakness of the original score, especially Nelson’s reliance on musical theatre formulae when an episode in the libretto fails to interest him. The strongest section of the score must be considered the Act 2 duet between Mr. Emerson (father of work’s here, George Emerson) and the heroine Lucy Honeychurch. This is music of great sincerity and deserves to be better known. Attention should also be called to the final scene of the opera - and concert version - in which Nelson dramatically and musically brings the work to a successful close.

In the role of Lucy, Elizabeth Wiles is extremely persuasive vocally, although it takes her a little while to inhabit her role dramatically. Justin White is a competent George but makes the character less forceful than he should be, while Debria Brown (very effective in the Two Spirituals) seems not to be in control of her characterization at all. Pride of place goes to bass-baritone Richard Paul Fink as Mr. Emerson. He invests this role with both simplicity and nobility. The Moores School Orchestra performs at a high level and both conductors keep them in good form. This disc was released in the year 2000 and serves as a good introduction to a composer of undoubted sincerity and ability, if sometimes too much facility.

William Kreindler

2023 Approaching 60,000 reviews and more.. and still writing ...	Search MusicWeb Here