This intelligently planned album of music by American composers
is built around the concept of “Honor and remembrance”
in the words of the booklet annotator. It also serves as a demonstration
that “modern composers also contribute to remembering our
heroes, both personal and universal.”
In many ways it was a good idea to bookend the programme with
Samuel Barber’s noble
Adagio, not least because,
ever since it was broadcast on American radio immediately after
the announcement of the death of President Roosevelt in 1945,
it has gradually assumed the status of America’s unofficial
musical elegy. The fact that Barber never intended his piece in
that context, just as Elgar never conceived ‘Nimrod’
from the
‘Enigma’ Variations as an elegy, is
almost irrelevant; both pieces have come to be regarded in that
way in their respective countries. Since Barber himself made the
choral version of his piece, which closes this present programme,
it is authentic. I must say I’m never sure that it quite
works in this format, not least because the tessitura is so demanding,
especially for the sopranos. The singers of the Atlanta Symphony
Orchestra Chamber Chorus do the piece well but it’s noteworthy
that Robert Spano takes over a minute longer when he has the very
fine strings of the ASO at his disposal instead. After all, there
are limits to the capacity of the human lungs and that opportunity
for greater spaciousness is the other reason why I prefer to hear
this music played by a string orchestra - or indeed, by a string
quartet, as Barber originally conceived it. But in both forms,
Barber’s piece is well served here.
Having said that it was a good idea to open and close the disc
with Barber’s piece, perhaps a trick has been missed here.
There are moments in
On the Transmigration of Souls
that recall Charles Ives’s
The Unanswered Question
and I do wonder if it would not have made for an even more satisfying
and perceptive programme if that masterpiece had been substituted
for the
Agnus Dei
There’s a link with Barber in the short piece by John Corigliano
in that his
Elegy was dedicated to Barber, though the point
is properly made in the booklet that this was in no way a memorial
piece: Barber was very much alive in 1965.
Elegy was Corigliano’s
first work for full orchestra and the booklet includes a quotation
from him to the effect that the piece “identifies itself
with neo-romantic American style” as typified by the likes
of Barber, William Schuman or Walter Piston. I’d not come
across this piece before but I was very impressed by it. It certainly
inhabits the same musical territory as the afore-mentioned composers.
It has a strong melodic base and Corigliano shows himself to be
in command of the orchestra, first orchestral piece or not. It
seems to me also that it’s a disciplined work, both in terms
of its scoring and its succinct length. I admired very much the
nobility and restrained tone of this fine piece and it receives
a dedicated performance from Spano and his orchestra.
Another piece new to me was Jennifer Higdon’s
Dooryard
Bloom. However, I’ve come across Miss Higdon’s
music before, most notably in 2004, when I reviewed a fine disc
devoted to her music, also by Spano and the Atlanta orchestra
(Telarc CD-80620
review).
Miss Higdon, whose teachers have included Robert Spano and Ned
Rorem, frequently writes to commission and this present work was
commissioned by the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, who gave
the première in 2005 when the soloist was Nmon Ford, the
soloist in this present performance. I noted with interest a comment
made in the booklet for that earlier CD by Nick Jones, who is
the annotator of this latest release also. Jones said then of
Miss Higdon that she is a composer who “tends to think in
terms of melody and color when she composes, rather than thematically.”
I only came across that comment after completing my listening
to
Dooryard Bloom but it’s very apposite to this
latest work, I believe.
Dooryard Bloom is a substantial setting for baritone and
orchestra of Walt Whitman’s elegy on the death of Abraham
Lincoln,
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.
Paul Hindemith made a notable setting of these words for chorus
and orchestra in 1946 (Telarc CD-80132) and other composers, including
Roger Sessions (set in 1964-70 and recorded on New World Records
80296), have been drawn to the poem also. Miss Higdon’s
is a most impressive piece of work. I admire it for several reasons.
For a start, for all the high-flown rhetoric of Whitman’s
verses, her setting is notably restrained - there are only two
or three climactic outbursts in the whole score and the very scarcity
of such passages adds to their effect. Secondly, the orchestral
writing is inventive and evocative. The vocal line is never submerged,
nor does the instrumental detail distract from the vocal part
but rather it enhances and complements the singer’s line
most effectively and imaginatively. And then there’s the
vocal part itself. Almost throughout the work the singer is given
striking and lyrical music to sing and the strongly melodic music
fits into what would be natural patterns of speech most convincingly.
Though the vocal line, which often lies in the upper register
of the baritone compass, sounds very grateful to sing it’s
still a significant challenge to the soloist, who sings almost
continuously. There’s one fairly short orchestral interlude,
lasting about a minute (from around 12:20) but otherwise the soloist
never has more than a bar or two of rest at any time. It’s
a tribute to Nmon Ford’s concentration and vocal stamina
that he seems to sustain this long timespan effortlessly. His
is a fine voice, light and easy at the top but with a good, solid
middle and bottom. His voice is produced evenly and pleasingly
throughout its compass and his consistently clear diction is a
delight. He puts the text across with conviction but without exaggeration.
I was reminded on more than one occasion of the vocal music of
Samuel Barber, the doyen of American songwriters. Not all listeners
will respond to Whitman’s somewhat overwrought imagery but
I think Miss Higdon has produced a very considerable work here
and my impression is that it could scarcely receive finer advocacy
than it does from Nmon Ford and Robert Spano.
If
Dooryard Bloom was new to me then John Adams’s
On the Transmigration of Souls is not, for I
reviewed
its first recording here in 2004. For a more detailed discussion
of the work itself and its structure I’d refer readers either
to that review or, even more pertinently, to the
review
of the same disc by Neil Horner. That first recording was made
at the first run of live performances by Lorin Maazel and the
New York Philharmonic, who commissioned it, and there was nothing
else on the disc. In my review I commented that “it would
have been an impertinence to include any other music on the disc.”
I think that view was right at the time but we move on. The events
of 9/11 are still raw in the consciousness of the world, but perhaps
just a little less so, with the passage of time, and Telarc’s
decision to programme
On the Transmigration of Souls
with other music and to set it in a wider musical context is surely
appropriate.
I find there’s not a great deal to choose between the two
performances, though I note that Robert Spano’s account,
presumably made under studio conditions, takes a little less time
that Maazel’s reading, which comes in at 25:04. The Nonesuch
recording seems to have been cut at a slightly higher level and
one benefit of this is that the innocent, everyday street sounds
that are heard at the start of the piece - and at other points
during the work - register with a bit more clarity.
One difference between the two recordings concerns the references
to Ives’s
The Unanswered Question to which I referred
at the top of this review. This occurs particularly at around
3:50 where a soft trumpet solo recalls Ives’s masterpiece.
Maazel brings out the reference, quite naturally - and in the
booklet the solo trumpeter is even credited. However, in the Spano
version one has to strain to hear the (uncredited) trumpeter.
That may be in part because the Atlanta chorus is recorded just
a bit more closely than Maazel’s choir. But perhaps Spano
doesn’t view the Ives reference in the same way.
Though I’ve mentioned a couple of points of detail I certainly
wouldn’t want to suggest that one performance is “better”
than the other for both, it seems to me, realise Adams’s
imaginative and dignified musical soundscape very successfully.
I most certainly won’t be parting with my copy of Maazel’s
recording, not least because it’s an important document
in its own right. But Telarc have done the right thing in allowing
us now to hear
On the Transmigration of Souls in company
with other music, rather than in isolation.
I’m still uncertain whether
On the Transmigration of
Souls will stand the test of time. I don’t doubt its
sincerity, and Adams’s artistic courage and inventiveness
in taking on so challenging a subject and in fulfilling the commission
without descending into bathos or resorting to bombast is greatly
to be admired. I just wonder, however, if
On the Transmigration
of Souls is linked so intimately to one catastrophic event
that it can never escape that link and become a work of art with
a more general application. That, perhaps, is where pieces such
as
Dooryard Bloom may come to have an advantage in time.
This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking disc and one that contains
a good deal of fine and moving music. All the performances are
of premium quality and Telarc’s recorded sound - I listened
in conventional CD format - is superb. Nick Jones contributes
an excellent booklet note, though David Schiff, who had the luxury
of being required only to write about one piece, produced an even
more detailed note about
On the Transmigration of Souls
for Nonesuch and newcomers to the work will learn even more about
it if they can complement Mr Jones’s note by reading Schiff’s
thoughts.
I congratulate Telarc on this enterprising and rewarding disc,
which evidences some of the most intelligent and perceptive programming
I’ve come across in quite a long time.
John Quinn
Nmon Ford (baritone: Higdon); Gwinnett Young Singers (Adams); 
