Gina
Gillie: Music for Horn. James Boldin,
horn and Wagner tuba; Justin Havard and Richard Seiler, piano; Scot Humes,
clarinet. MSR Classics. $14.95.
Music
Associated with George Sand—works by Chopin, Delibes, Leoncavallo, Liszt,
Offenbach, Francesco Paolo Tosti, and Pauline Viardot. Sonya Yoncheva, soprano and spoken voice; Marina
Viotti, mezzo-soprano; Adam Taubitz, violin; Olga Zado, piano. Naïve. $16.99.
The singing quality of non-vocal music is intimately associated with
Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words,
but it comes through in the music of many other composers as well – sometimes
because they themselves are vocalists, as is the case with Gina Gillie (born
1981). Although the chamber works on an MSR Classics CD of Gillie’s music are
purely instrumental, their strong focus on the horn – an instrument whose tonal
qualities have the richness of fine singing – and many of their themes and
approaches evince Gillie’s interest in the sort of expressiveness so often
associated with singing. Indeed, Gillie makes vocal associations explicit in
several of these pieces. Song for the
Lost for Horn and Piano (2021) has a yearning quality underlined by
delicate piano figurations; Reverie for
Horn and Piano (2019) has a suitably dreamlike demeanor and flow
throughout; and Romance for Wagner Tuba
and Piano (2019) effectively uses the darker tone of this brass instrument
to evoke a feeling of warmth above a delicately lyrical piano part that is
heard as a solo some of the time. Escapade
for Horn and Piano (2021) is a more strongly rhythmic work and one that has
less of the vocal about it, instead possessing an underlying dance rhythm in
the piano atop which the horn interjects exclamatory material. These
comparatively short works are offered in the middle of the CD, preceded by the
most traditionally structured piece on the disc, Sonata for Horn and Piano (2018). Written in typical three-movement
form, this begins with a horn exclamation and some pianistic scene-setting, and
then moves into well-developed interchanges between the instruments throughout
the first movement; considerable warmth and delicacy in the second, marked Melodie; and pleasantly uneven rhythmic
expressiveness and puckish bounce in the concluding dance. At the other end of
the CD is a foray by Gillie into the visual arts: Three Paintings for Clarinet, Horn and Piano (2021). The extent to
which the music reflects the movement titles – Highland Castle, Lavender Fields and Conneaut Rag – is arguable, but certainly the attempt is there. The
first movement’s initial horn fanfare has something majestic and martial about
it, while the later interplay of horn and clarinet is effectively managed to
bring out the two instruments’ distinctive sound worlds. The quietly evocative
second movement proceeds at a leisurely pace, in which the interweaving of all
three instruments is well-handled. And the brightly upbeat quick-step of the
last movement, led by the clarinet, makes for a fine finale that contrasts well
with the preceding material. Gillie writes quite well for the horn and
clarinet, and James Boldin plays all the works on the CD with style and a
strong sense of both commitment and enjoyment. Pianists Justin Havard and
Richard Seiler provide effective backup, and Scot Humes more than holds his own
in Three Paintings for Clarinet, Horn and
Piano – the intricacy of his handling of the last portion of the finale is
particularly notable. With its combination of singing elements and sure-handed
writing for instruments, the disc presents Gillie’s chamber works to very good
effect throughout.
The material on a Naïve CD focused primarily on soprano Sonya Yoncheva is also well-presented, and here the vocal elements are in the forefront from start to finish. But the disc is a curious one, highly personal in concept, design and execution, and less of a presentation of music than it is a tribute to famed 19th-century author George Sand (1804-1876) through music and words and the personal lens and viewpoint of Yoncheva and her collaborators. This is very much a self-limited CD, designed by and for Yoncheva herself and reaching out solely to an audience equally enamored of Sand and equally in tune (so to speak) with Yoncheva’s view of and tribute to her. The mishmash of music – interspersed with some readings by Yoncheva of Sand’s own words – makes sense only within the expressive envelope within which the total presentation is created. Thus, Chopin’s Casta diva (after Bellini) and Nocturne, Op. 9, No. 2 are both followed by verbal presentations (in French) by Yoncheva. Also here are Leoncavallo’s Nuit de Décembre; Delibes’ Chanson espagnole, “Les filles de Cadix”; the little ballade from Act I, Scene 5 of Offenbach’s Fantasio; five brief pieces by Pauline Viardot (1821-1910), with a reading from a Sand letter after one of them; Ninon by Francesco Paolo Tosti (1846-1916); and the third of Liszt’s Liebesträume, S. 541, which is followed by additional material from Sand’s writings. The performances on this (+++) CD are all fine, and Yoncheva’s collaborators are clearly committed to the whole endeavor, which comes across as more of an emotionally driven, musically illustrated academic exercise than a traditional recital or concert. The musical examples are not exactly irrelevant, but their importance is strictly that of a superstructure for the foundational tribute to Sand that is this disc’s reason for being. The concept is interesting, the execution skillful, yet it is only listeners who already feel a strong connection with and admiration for Sand who are likely to find the recording congenial. They are the members of an “in crowd” at whose center Yoncheva places herself; anyone outside this group of cognoscenti is unlikely to find the material here of more than passing interest.
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