George CRUMB (b.1929)
Sun and Shadow (2009) [15:24]
Voices from the Heartland (2010) [46:31]
Anne Crumb (soprano), Patrick Mason (baritone)
Orchestra 2001/James Freeman
rec. 27-28 July 2013, 12-14 October 2012 (Voices from the Heartland), Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.
Complete Crumb Edition - Vol.16
BRIDGE RECORDS 9413 [62:03]
The Bridge Records’ label continues its superb George Crumb edition
with another brace of significant song cycles. The title Sun and Shadow
comes from the name sometimes given to Spain as a land of ‘sol y
sombra’, and the cycle is a continuation of Crumb’s obsession
with the poetry of Federico García Lorca. If you don’t know
Crumb’s idiom, this is a good introduction to his songs, with directness
of communication when it comes to the text, and highly atmospheric and
imaginative use of the piano, with strings plucked and thrummed in a variety
of ways to create a gentle orchestra of stunning colours and effects.
Anne Crumb is as ever superb in giving clarity to the poems, which are
sung in English and printed as such in the booklet. It would be nice to
have had the Spanish originals as well, and with it being such a prevalent
language in both the US and elsewhere it seems a little contumelious to
have left them out, but this is a small point.
Contrast and surprise are ever present in Crumb’s songs. We hear
castanets here, the pianist bellowing lines from a distance, as well as
percussion sounds which reach a violent peak in Dance of the Moon
in Santiago. The cycle Sun and Shadow is an object lesson
in picturesque song writing, and uniquely Crumb.
Voices from the Heartland is subtitled American Songbook
VII, and is the final volume in a vast cycle with which Crumb was
occupied for more than a decade. With the Songbooks, Crumb takes
traditional melodies but arranges them into some of the most remarkable
settings you are ever likely to hear. The opening Softly and Tenderly
is spooky in the extreme, with a spoken and whispered voice garlanded
with sliding and shimmering percussion noises which create an evocative
and nerve-bending atmosphere which will have you believing in “the
voices of dead ancestors.” As with Sun and Shadow there
is never a dull moment, but contrasts here reach greater extremes, with
a battery of percussion and the rich baritone of Patrick Mason in rhythmic
songs of high impact such as Ghost Dance. Unmistakable African
sounds inhabit the rousing duet Lord, Let Me Fly! Deep nocturnal
evocations bring us back down to The Kanawha River at Dusk, and
Glory Be to the New-Born King is a remarkable mixture of rhythmic
‘swing’ and complicated variation in the piano and Indian
drums. The War of the Sexes actually mixes two songs simultaneously
in two different keys: Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maidens and
On Top of Old Smoky, a technical challenge and a fascinating
listening experience. The hymn Beulah Land is another beautiful
setting, the words emerging out of an aura of gently caressed instruments,
while Old Blue sees the dog engaged in sniffing around and brushing
and scratching the piano and percussion with paws and tail. The final
piece is Song of the Earth, and at just over 13 minutes the longest
in the entire American Songbook series. It “combines three
Navajo chants into a kind of suite”, starting with “In beauty
may I walk”, and ending in “Forever…”, a perfect
and profound, almost silent end to an incredible masterpiece.
If you have been put off listening to contemporary ‘art songs’
in the past you owe it to yourself to re-ignite the spark with the songs
of George Crumb. His world is uncompromising, but only in the demanding
of resources which express his chosen texts to the greatest effect. These
effects can be startling and brutal, but you can be sure than anything
Crumb does is in the service of poetry and a kind of lyricism which is
entirely natural to the human voice in all its breadth of potential. This
release is just one of many which have all of these qualities, and I would
hope that even the briefest introduction to Crumb’s imagination
would invite and reward the most far-reaching exploration.
Dominy Clements
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