(++++) VOICES OF YESTERDAY AND TODAY

Haydn: Symphony No. 103; Theresienmesse. Mary Bevan, soprano; Catherine Wyn-Rogers, mezzo-soprano; Jeremy Budd, tenor; Sumner Thompson, baritone; Handel and Haydn Society conducted by Harry Christophers. CORO. $18.99.

William McClelland: Songs. Krista River, mezzo-soprano; Thomas Meglioranza, baritone; Alex Guerrero, tenor; Robert May, Margaret Dudley, Thomas McCarger, and Suzanne Schwing, narrators; Donald Berman and Blair McMillen, piano; David Enlow, organ; New York Virtuoso Singers conducted by Harold Rosenbaum. Naxos. $13.99.

György Kurtág: Einige Sätze aus den Sudelbüchern Georg Christoph Lichtenbergs; Katherine Balch: Phrases; John Aylward: Tiergarten; Emily Pretorius: Immensity Of. Departure Duo (Nina Guo, soprano; Edward Kass, double bass). New Focus Recordings. $16.99.

Daniel Carr: Nine Bethany Swann Songs; Vocalise; Piano Trio. Mindy Ella Chu, mezzo-soprano; Benefic Piano Trio (Misha Vayman, violin; Cello [Qiele] Guo, cello; Sunhwa Kim, piano). MSR Classics. $14.95.

     The fascinatingly quirky – and revelatory – series of releases mixing Haydn’s symphonies with his Masses, performed by the Handel and Haydn Society under Harry Christophers and released on the CORO label, continues with a pairing of the “Drum Roll” symphony with the Theresienmesse. Like previous similar releases – Symphony No. 99 with the Harmoniemesse, Symphony No. 100 with the Nelson Mass – this CD sheds new light both on the choral work and on the instrumental one, without attempting to draw unwonted (and unwanted) parallels between them. The high skill level of these period-sensitive performances is pretty much a given – Christophers is one of the world’s best conductors of music from this time period, and the Handel and Haydn Society has existed since its founding (1815) with a focus on repertoire of this sort (at the time, the society’s name referred to “old” music [Handel’s] and “new” music [Haydn’s]). The Theresienmesse, the fourth of six that Haydn composed for the name-day of the wife of Nicolaus II, Prince Esterházy, got its title because a copy was acquired for the library of Empress Marie Therese. Like all these Masses – written more than a decade after Haydn stopped producing symphonies – the work has characteristics all its own: it is primarily intimate and lyrical; it uses clarinets rather than oboes; and Haydn reserves a special surprise for the start of the Agnus dei, which is sung in loud unison rather than the far more common hushed gentleness. This Mass also includes a textual error, indicating that Haydn probably set the words from memory: in the Credo, the words et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum filium Dei unigentium are omitted altogether – with the music, unsurprisingly, not missing a beat (literally) due to their absence. The first-rate performance here is complemented by a rendition of Symphony No. 103 that plays games with the opening-movement timpani roll from which the work gets its title. Haydn did not indicate exactly how the drum roll should sound, or at what volume, and Christophers takes the liberty of having timpanist Jonathan Hess create a sit-up-and-pay-attention, loud and rhythmic bit of ebullience that takes the famous Paukenschlag of Symphony No. 94 several steps further. And when the drum roll reappears toward the end of the movement, it sounds very different, creating an even-more-unexpected experience for the audience. Details like this are characteristic of Christophers’ thoughtful approach to all these Haydn releases, as is the excellent, historically informed orchestral playing throughout the symphony (and in the Mass as well). More than two centuries after its founding, the Handel and Haydn Society still does its “new music” namesake proud.

     Choral music retains its fascination for many composers right up to the present day, and so do other vocal forms that are now “new music” but that clearly draw on the past. A Naxos CD featuring world première recordings of numerous vocal works by William McClelland (born 1950) offers insight into the way some contemporary composers use vocal material to enhance emotional connections with listeners. There are 18 pieces with voice here and, midway through the recording, as if offering a brief refresher between courses, there is the solo-piano work Five for Piano (2006), which evokes poetry in each movement but is wordless. The sensitivity of these little bits of pianistic expressiveness, played pleasantly by Blair McMillen, reflects the care with which the vocal works on the disc are created and performed. The most-elaborate setting here is Cædmon’s Hymn (2018), using the text of an Old English poem that is attributed to Cædmon as his only known surviving work. McClelland ingeniously uses four separate narrators, along with organ and chorus, to put forth what is essentially a simple, brief poem in praise of God. The use of fairly substantial performance forces does not overweight the poem’s sentiments, thanks to the judicious way McClelland employs narrative and song alike – and although the music lasts more than nine minutes, it does not seem overly stretched out. Another choral work here, Hail Lovely and Pure (2011), is even more extended: at 13-and-a-half minutes, it is the longest piece on the CD. This is strictly a choral work, one that shows McClelland’s skill at disposition of the full chorus and of sections within it. The only other choral piece heard here reaches back even further in time than Caedmon’s Hymn. It is These Last Gifts (2015), for tenor and chorus, and is based on the Roman poet Catullus’ heartfelt elegy after the death of his brother. Here too the choral setting is notable for its emotional expressiveness, which is never overdone but is always effective in putting across depth of feeling. The remaining pieces on the disc are for single voice (mezzo-soprano or baritone) and piano, and are mostly settings of works by American poets. The female voice is given Autumnal (2005), Poem Composed in Sleep (1997), Sea Rose (2002), Insomnia (1987), Memory of Summer Facing West (1975), Garden Abstract (2008), and To One Who Revisited an Old Garden (2005). The male voice sings Autumn 1964 (1995), Going (1993), Labrador (1990), Storm (2011), The Fields of November (2013), The Defective Record (2005), Snowstorm in the Midwest (1989), and The Politician (1998). Although written during a period of more than 40 years, the songs all share elements of careful construction and devotion to evoking the emotions behind the words, with the piano underlining passages of particular strength or import. McClelland is here shown to be a composer for voice whose considerable skill shows not only in his choice of material but also in the adept way he crafts music that both illuminates and enhances the meaning of the words.

     What McClelland is not is avant-garde – that adjective applies much more clearly to the composers heard on a New Focus Recordings release featuring the highly unusual performance combination of soprano and double bass. “Quirky” describes this disc as clearly as it does the Haydn symphony/Mass combinations, but to very different effect: there is no way that this music, a little of which goes a long way, will appeal to a wide audience – but it will be very appealing indeed to those seeking to experience forms of composition and sonic display that frequently border on the weird. There is nothing particularly new about mixing very high musical elements with very low ones – for example, part of the exceedingly strange effect of Alkan’s Chanson de la folle au bord de la mer comes from doing this on the piano, and Alkan thought of it in 1844. Nevertheless, the mixing of soprano vocal parts with a solo double bass is not one most audiences will have heard, and it creates odd and at least intermittently effective aural landscapes in all four of the works on this disc. Those landscapes do not bear particularly long visits, though: even at only 51 minutes, the CD as a whole is a bit much. But, interestingly, its longest work – György Kurtág’s Einige Sätze aus den Sudelbüchern Georg Christoph Lichtenbergs – is the one that most involves listeners and best repays attention. That is because this piece, “Some Sentences from the Scrapbooks of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg,” a physicist well-known in the 18^th century, includes no fewer than 42 tiny movements, half of them being settings by Kurtág of Lichtenberg’s aphoristic thoughts, the other half being English-language readings offered by Nina Guo and Edward Kass immediately prior to each piece – allowing English speakers to hear just what points Lichtenberg was making and to figure out how effectively Kurtág turned the thoughts into music in his 1996 work. This is a wonderful approach that generates real anticipation for hearing the musical settings. “A gourmand: he could pronounce the word ‘succulent’ in such a way that upon hearing it one believed one bit into a ripe peach.” “Steeple: upside-down funnel to lead prayer to Heaven.” “Audacity: he wasn’t ashamed, even ex officio.” “The good tone: the good tone is there, an octave lower.” “Effort in vain: blushing in the dark.” These scrapbook notes (published posthumously) are not deep thinking or greatly revelatory, but they are kernels of contemplation or amusement that Kurtág sets with considerable skill and a sure understanding of the capabilities of voice and double bass (both sometimes at their extremes). The remaining works on this (+++) CD, however, are not at this level. Phrases by Katherine Balch features standard-sounding screechiness from voice and instrument alike, its four short movements (not as short as the individual elements of Kurtág’s work) quickly outstaying their welcome through repetition and preoccupation with sonic oddities for their own sake. Tiergarten (“Zoo”) by John Aylward is not a complete menagerie but a study of three creatures: swan, panther and unicorn. Here too is a composer considering the words (in German) not as vehicles for expression but as building blocks of sound-for-sound’s-sake – the extended hiss of “s,” for example, and the pervasive atonal Sprechstimme, and the click of the consonants, all mixed with double-bass groans and shivers. Finally, Immensity Of by Emily Praetorius is a work of long (very long), slow (very slow) expression, voice and instrument alike spinning individual phrases out and out and out with occasional intercessions of brief contrasting sounds. The piece is effective tone-painting in its own way, but is about twice as long as it needs to be to make its point: its nine minutes seem much longer, while the 21 minutes of Kurtág’s work seem to zip by. This disc as a whole will be a treat for listeners enamored of unusual contemporary vocal material, although it is unlikely to reach (or reach out to) a wider audience.

     Two Daniel Carr pieces “for High Voice, Violin, Cello and Piano,” heard on a (+++) MSR Classics disc of world première recordings, are also for specialized tastes. The Nine Bethany Swann Songs were composed in reverse, as it were: Carr wrote the music and then Swann created texts to go with the notes. Carr (born 1972), like McClelland, offers settings where the words are paramount – or perhaps it is better to say that Swann found a way to put words in the forefront of Carr’s music. Either way, this nine-movement cycle is as much in the pop-music vein as the classical one: harmonies and words alike tend to be simple-to-simplistic, with the more-effective elements, such as the opening of “The Somnambulist” and parts of “Light Sources,” being entirely without vocal material. The cycle sounds as if it is trying to attain an overall meaning of some sort, but neither its musical arc nor its verbal one is particularly cohesive: the songs, even when they have similar titles (“A Return” followed by “Song of Returns”), are thematically disconnected, and the music never settles into a discernible stylistic pattern. The short Vocalise works better, treating the voice as a fourth instrument in addition to the three in the Benefic Piano Trio; however, the vocalise material itself is not especially involving, and the overall mood of the piece is somewhat disjointed. The vocal works on this disc are joined by Carr’s Piano Trio, which is the most appealing piece on the CD. Although here, as in Nine Bethany Swann Songs, there is no real sense of continuity and connection among the four movements, there are some well-done instrumental contrasts within and among them. “Shanty” is full of instrument-to-instrument gestures, with an underlying sense of drama; “Ritual” contrasts a pleasantly thoughtful opening with a much-more-intense central section; “Hymn” has a simplicity and gentleness that contrasts well with the mood of the preceding movements, if it is perhaps a little too much on the naïve side; and “Dance” is strongly rhythmic, dissonant, and apparently intended as being as different from the preceding movement as possible. Carr’s music on this disc – the third release in an ongoing series – is well-crafted but not highly differentiated from the chamber works (with or without voice) of other modern composers, and is as much on the bland side of contemporary music as the pieces by Balch, Aylward and Praetorius are on the acerbic end of things.