(+++) SOUNDS FOR ALL SEASONS

A Lullaby Carol: Christmas at Christ Church. Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, conducted by Steven Grahl. AVIE. $19.99.

Lee R. Kesselman: Vocal Music. Haven Trio (Lindsay Kesselman, soprano; Kimberly Cole Loevano, clarinet; Midori Kogo, piano); Allison Rich, cello. Blue Griffin Records. $15.99.

Cantus: Alone Together. Signum Classics. $17.99.

     Despite the seasonality of Christmas, its underlying messages of wonder and hope transcend any specific time of year, and even penetrate the thoughts of many who may look for routes to salvation that differ from those based on Christ. Notwithstanding the tremendous commercialism that has come to pervade the season, Christmas remains a time for reflection, beauty and thoughtfulness for a great many people – and music, both old and new, is a major element of it. The Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, does a particularly lovely job of communicating the sacred underpinning of the holiday on an AVIE recording called A Lullaby Carol – a title reflecting such contents as Lullay, lullay, litel child by David Maw (born 1967), O nata lux by conductor Steven Grahl (born 1979), and the spiritual Glory to the newborn King as arranged by Robert L. Morris (born 1941). Maw’s work is surprisingly dissonant despite the beauty of the vocal blending; Grahl’s has the flavor of plainchant; and the Morris arrangement effectively sets different vocal ranges as well as chordal and melodic elements against and beside each other. These three works and the 18 others here show just how wide a variety of music can be used to express the feelings underlying the Christmas season. And the musical selections, although mostly written comparatively recently by such composers as William Walton and Peter Warlock, also include some traditional material such as Silent night! Holy night! (arguably the most beautiful Christmas song of all) and Maw’s arrangements of I Saw Three Ships and Away in a Manger. It is in this more-familiar material that the choir shows its fully devotional side. The prayerful quality, for example, is brought to the fore in Silent night! Holy night! The simple beauty of Away in a Manger – which includes accompaniment on organ (played by Benjamin Sheen) – is inspirational. And Sheen is also heard in the organ solo Improvisation on Adeste, fidelis by Francis Pott (born 1957), a piece that strays rather far from the work known in English as Oh come all ye faithful but that shows to what extent music of Christmastime can go beyond the slow-paced homophony so often associated with carols. Like all releases focused on this specific time of year, this one is unlikely to be played repeatedly after the Christmas season is over. But the beauty of the singing and depth of expressiveness of the music will make its annual reappearance in listeners’ homes likely.

     Contemporary vocal music tends to reach out to a narrower audience than do seasonal Christmas works – and composers generally want to make points that have meaning at any time, not just in specific seasons. The Blue Griffin Records collection of world premières written for and performed by the trio known as Haven is a case in point. Lee R. Kesselman (born 1951) draws on a variety of sources for these seven works, two of which are song cycles. He looks back to some earlier composers, sets some lyrics from non-Western sources, and also produces music in which he is both lyricist and composer. Thus, Piangerò (2012) is loosely based on music from Handel’s Giulio Cesare but is thoroughly contemporary in harmonic and declamatory style. I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise is Kesselman’s 2018 arrangement of the Gershwin song – and is effective precisely because it pays close attention to the original and does not try to force it into an entirely new form or guise. Make Me a Willow Cabin (2014) is entirely Kesselman’s own music, but the words are Shakespeare’s, from Twelfth Night; and the accompaniment, which starts out as both perky and dissonant before becoming slower and serious and still dissonant, is largely at odds with the lyrics (for example, multiple repetitions of “my soul” make the point less rather than more effective). The words for How I Hate This Room (2007) are scarcely Shakespearean – they are by James Tucker – but Kesselman’s style fits better with this more-modern, more-prosaic and less-poetic verbiage. As for influences from abroad, the CD opens with Kesselman’s 2018 arrangement of the Japanese folksong Sakura, handled with the same sensitivity accorded Gershwin, and then offers the eight-movement Ashes & Dreams (2016) based on Japanese poetry. A societal point underlies this work – it alternates haiku, traditionally written by men, with waka, traditionally written by women. From a musical standpoint, the poised and graceful, wordless Prelude introduces items that are indeed made to sound different in accompaniment based on their form, but that all share a certain predisposition to push the voice in ways that reduce, sometimes greatly, any elegance inherent in the original poetry. The other song cycle here, which has both words and music by Kesselman, is Would That Loving Were Enough (2021). It includes four explorations of contemporary personal issues that are of little consequence objectively but that loom large in many relationships. It strives for significance and meaningfulness but comes across as more assertive than convincing. Kesselman does have rather wide-ranging interests that may make at least some works on this disc attractive to listeners interested in modern art songs.

     There are some world premières as well on a new Signum Classics CD featuring the low-voice vocal ensemble Cantus: seven of these 19 works have not been recorded before. The theme stated as the disc’s title, Alone Together, is a typical one for contemporary composers – Kesselman’s How I Hate This Room and Would That Loving Were Enough fit right into it – but Cantus chooses to illustrate the concept with works as different as Beethoven’s Gesang der Mönche, Simon and Garfunkel’s A Most Peculiar Man (which immediately follows the Beethoven), and those seven first recordings (four by Libby Larsen and one each by Gabriel Kahane, Jeff Beal and Rosephanye Powell). The Larsen items – actually parts of a multi-movement work interpolated within and among the various other pieces here – are specifically about technology and the ways in which it both facilitates connection and undermines it. The other pieces on the disc connect to the overall theme, and to each other, in a variety of ways, some more apparent than others. What is true throughout, even when the concept overreaches and somewhat undermines its ideas through over-sincerity, is that Cantus is a very fine singing ensemble. Sharon Durant’s Chinese Proverb is practically whispered at times, but always with emotional impact; the Lennon/McCartney She’s Leaving Home is jauntier than the Beatles made it and for that reason more pointed in its message; Arcade Fire’s Deep Blue effectively sets foreground narration against a kind of sound-cloud background that highlights the words’ pathos to good effect; Saint-Saëns’ Calme des Nuits (arranged by Chris Foss) sounds forth as a choral hymn blended with beauty; and so on, and on. Whether the disc as a whole fully reflects its title is almost immaterial – not to Cantus, certainly, but to the audience, since the individual components of the recording are put across with such expressiveness that the CD is a pleasure to hear even if its title is something of an indulgence: should the theme of loneliness and disconnection be associated with so many vocal pleasantries? Individual listeners will come at this material in different ways and come away from it with different impressions – but of the sheer quality of the ensemble’s aural blending there will be no doubt.