(+++) SING HIGH, SING HIGHER

Korngold: Lieder des Abschieds; Brahms: Songs; Clara Schumann: Songs; Robert Schumann: Liederkreis, Op. 39; Der Nussbaum. Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, countertenor; John Churchwell, piano. AVIE. $19.99.

Le Tre Soprano—The Three Ladies of Ferrara. Amanda Forsythe and Amanda Powell, sopranos; Amanda Crider, mezzo-soprano; Apollo’s Fire conducted by Jeannette Sorrell. AVIE. $19.99.

     Here are a couple of rather curious AVIE discs on which the mezzo-soprano turns out to be the lowest voice. Both recordings are certainly worth hearing for historical as well as purely musical reasons, but it seems unlikely that the music itself – as fine as some of it is – will be the main attraction for listeners to whom the CDs speak, or rather sing, fluently. Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen is the latest in a string of countertenors building on the legacy of Alfred Deller (1912-1979) and Deller’s advocate, composer Michael Tippett – but Cohen, unlike Deller and most of his successors, chooses to employ the countertenor voice in the service of Romantic music rather than works from the Renaissance and Baroque time periods. This is a trifle quixotic, as are the specific works that Cohen sings and the order of their presentation. The CD opens with Korngold’s rather dour four-song sequence Lieder des Abschieds, whose focus on death, love and farewell lies rather uneasily in the male falsetto range. Written for medium voice, the songs can be performed by soprano – or countertenor – but their Mahlerian approach to sorrow makes for an odd introduction to Cohen’s recital. He does sing with feeling and emotional, if not vocal, heft, and John Churchwell provides fine piano accompaniment, but the material itself is somewhat at war with the vocal range. The Korngold is followed by something else rather odd: an interweaving of four Brahms songs with four by Clara Schumann, perhaps intended to underline their relationship (a friendship rather than romance, but deeper than many romances ever become) after Robert Schumann’s death. The four Brahms songs are from Op. 59 (No. 7, Mein wundes Herz, and No. 8, Dein blaues Auge hält so still) and Op. 57 (No. 5, In meiner Nächte Sehnen, and No. 8, Unbewegte laue Luft). Clara Schumann’s are her Op. 13, Nos. 1-4: Ich stand in dunkeln Träumen, Sie liebten sich beide, Liebeszauber, and Der Mond kommt still gegangen. The unity of the Clara Schumann material is undermined by intermingling these songs with the four out-of-context ones by Brahms, and while Cohen’s singing – which is clearly the primary point of this CD – is quite fine and suitably expressive, the supra-musical point of alternating Brahms and Clara Schumann interferes with all the songs’ emotionalism rather than expanding upon it. The high point of the disc, by a considerable margin, is Robert Schumann’s Liederkreis, Op. 39, which is sung complete and in the intended order. This Liederkreis (not to be confused with Schumann’s other grouping under the same title, Op. 24) brings out the interpretative best in Cohen, who sings with commitment, delicacy and just the right combination of lyricism and naïveté: the very short and upbeat Die Stille encapsulates his approach beautifully, especially when contrasted with darker but scarcely depressive songs such as Wehmut. It is in this cycle that Cohen makes the strongest argument for the effectiveness of the countertenor voice in repertoire with which it is not generally associated. After Liederkreis, the CD concludes, for no very apparent reason except for a title matching Cohen’s middle name, with Der Nussbaum, the third of the 26 songs from Robert Schumann’s Myrthen. This sort of refocuses the recital on Clara Schumann, for whom Myrthen was a wedding gift, but there is no real musical point in doing so: this CD is overly concerned with matters that are in large part extraneous to the music itself. Listeners interested in hearing how a male falsetto handles music not really intended for this vocal range – and in absorbing, in particular, the pleasures to be had from Cohen’s presentation of Liederkreis – will be the most-satisfied audience for this recording.

     The disc called Le Tre Soprano misses out on some alternative title possibilities. Its chosen title should be in the plural, as Soprani or even Sopranos, and it would have been interesting to call the disc “The Three Amandas,” given the first names of all the featured singers. It is logical to think that the secondary portion of the title is intended to distinguish the CD from anything involving the operatic trio known as “The Three Tenors” (Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras), but in fact the Tre Donne di Ferrara predated the tenor trio by hundreds of years. In the late 1500s, instrumentalist/singers Laura Peverara (age 30), Anna Guarini (age 17), and Livia d’Arco (age 15) brought entertainment and a degree of fame to the duchy of Ferrara, and it is to their story that the latest recording by Apollo’s Fire and its leader, Jeannette Sorrell, refers. Like Cohen’s CD, this one is steeped in matters beyond the musical – Sorrell notes, in particular, that Guarini was murdered by the nobleman to whom she was married, who escaped unpunished (not a surprise in that time and place), while Ferrara itself was annexed to the Papal States in a matter of political intrigue peripherally involving the Tre Donne di Ferrara. Also as with Cohen’s CD, the sociopolitical freight is of little consequence when it comes to the music, providing context but no particular insight. The music itself is what matters here, as it should, and its enjoyment will depend on listeners’ affinity for works of this time period – many of which are heard here in arrangements by Sorrell and others. The pieces presented are unrelated to each other and are presented in five sections designed to show their topical similarities, if not necessarily their musical ones: “Dance of Life,” “In the Palace of Ferrara,” “Love Is Too Much,” “Disdain,” and “May I Have This Dance?” A short work by Monteverdi is the only one from a composer who remains well-known today. The other pieces are by such unfamiliar names as Andrea Falconieri, Luzzascho Luzzaschi, Alessandro Piccinini, Biagio Marini, Samuel Friedrich Capricornus, and others. The music is very much of its time, and as always, the period instruments expertly played by Apollo’s Fire – from Baroque violin and theorbo to Baroque triple harp – create a highly appealing sound world that is quite different from the ones more commonly heard and experienced today. In the vocal offerings, the three Amandas all sing stylishly and with a fine sense of phrasing, whether performing solo or together. The topics of the songs are very much of their time, and the settings fit the words well throughout, so even though there is nothing especially revelatory here either verbally or musically, the CD offers a finely honed, very well-performed journey through the centuries to an aural landscape that may not be to all tastes but that will be a real delight to listeners interested in experiencing some unusual and unusually pleasant material – despite the horrific-by-modern-standards circumstances in which these works were originally created and performed.