Monday, June 16, 2014

CD Review: Songs of Madeleine Dring (Wanda Brister, mezzo-soprano; Stanford Olsen, tenor; Timothy Hoekman, piano)

This two-disc set, from the Cambria label, comes to me at a very propitious time: next year I’m teaching an art song survey at the University of New Hampshire and was hoping to find some conservative but finely crafted examples from the twentieth century. Well, I’ve found some. Madeleine Dring (1923-1977) studied at the Royal College of Music: violin with W. H. Reed, orchestration with Gordon Jacob, and composition with Herbert Howells and Ralph Vaughan Williams. She married Roger Lord, then principal oboist of the London Symphony Orchestra; according to Wanda Brister—an associate professor of voice at Florida State University, one of the singers on this excellent set, and not least an authority on the composer’s work—Dring wrote music “for the sheer joy of it.” Only four of the songs were published during her lifetime. (Josef Weinberger issued the late Five Betjeman Songs posthumously in 1980, and Thames Publishing Company began issuing collections of the songs in 1982, finishing the project only in 1999.) 

These songs bear a superficial resemblance to Roger Quilter with one important difference: they’re much, much better. The text-setting is perfect, the vocal lines eminently singable, and the piano accompaniments eclectic, always harmonious, and traditional-sounding without devolving into kitsch (as Quilter does too often). There are 50-some songs in all, spanning Dring’s short career, and not a bad one in the lot. I will describe two incredible examples from many. In the “Willow Song” from volume 1 (text from Shakespeare’s Othello), successions of third-related minor harmonies alternate with a very deft rehearing of English Renaissance song—Vaughan Williams offers the example, I’m sure, but Dring executes the alchemy with an enviably natural assurance that appeals to the listener more quickly than many songs from her teacher.  In “Through the Centuries,” from Four Night Songs (ca. 1976-1977), Dring’s harmonic vocabulary has become even more colorful, but the style of the music shows clear ties to the popular song tradition without simply repeating its tricks and conventions to no purpose: the turns of phrase respond simply and effectively to the various twists of Michael Armstrong’s poignant verse.

Brister sings a little over half of the songs; tenor Stanford Olsen (of the University of Michigan), the remainder. Both are exquisite artists who respond beautifully to the texts; I sense in Brister a particularly strong attachment to the music, which no doubt owes to her long acquaintance with the work as a performer and scholar; this composer fully deserves her excellent advocacy. Brister’s colleague at Florida State, Timothy Hoeckman, handles the piano accompaniment with great skill and beauty.

Trio Vocalise: Rachmaninoff, Chabrier, Saint-Saëns, McLarry, Bozza, Baldwin, Laitman

The medium of voice, bassoon, and piano is an unusual one, to be sure. And yet it’s not so outlandish as one initially expects—especially when the performers are as good as Trio Vocalise, the artists who recently produced an attractive program for Mark Records.

Much of the CD is taken up with duets. There are a number of arrangements of songs and other instrumental duets for bassoon and piano, including two songs by Rachmaninoff (the famous "Vocalise" and "Do Not Sing, My Beauty"), an Aria by Bozza (originally for saxophone and piano), Fauré’s Piece (originally another vocalise), and of all things the aria “Mon coeur souvre á ta voix” from Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalilah. Bassoonist Scott Pool, presently an assistant professor at University of Texas Arlington, plays them all with a restrained lyricism and very agreeable tone. Here and elsewhere he is very ably assisted by the pianist Natsuki Fukasawa (who among other positions serves on the artist faculty for the Orfeo International Music Festival). I am amazed at how beautiful her tone is despite the obvious limitations of the instrument and/or the inadequate miking for the recording.

Beverly McLarry’s unusual yet ingratiating Edgar Allan Poe Songs offers a very different kind of duet, for voice and bassoon. The distinguished mezzo-soprano Wanda Brister, a member of Florida State University’s faculty, performs the cycle superbly: her tone is rich, even creamy; she relishes the touches of humor McLarry brings to the opening song, “Thou Wouldst be Loved” and makes a good deal of sense out of the odd, mercurial setting of “Eldorado,” which I think aims to suggest that the persona starts his search for the fabled city as a young, naive man and gradually declines.


All three musicians unite for Chabrier’s L’invitation au voyage, a ravishing example of French song with a bassoon obbligato that makes its contribution simply and beautifully, just as one would expect from the refined composer. Here Brister’s luminous voice, impeccable diction, and compelling interpretation steal the show. The three artists are on more equal footing in the charming cycle Of Flowers and Thorns, by Daniel Baldwin. In short, this charming program demonstrates the considerable timbral resources of voice, bassoon, and piano, and the performers’ commitment to new music will, I hope, inspire many other composers to write works for them.

To purchase: http://www.hbdirect.com/album_detail.php?pid=2601399

Dionysis Boukouvalas, English Gardens

English Gardens is a CD on the Thalia label from 2011 by my friend Dionysis Boukouvalas. I promised him I’d write a review for my blog, but a number of momentous events in 2012 prevented me from finishing my task until now. All the works on the CD were captured in concert performances from 2004 to 2008, and a number of them suggest at least a partial role for improvisation. Boukouvalas is a wonderful pianist and, even acknowledging my own limited experience with the art, an inventive and surprising improviser. 

The CD’s eight tracks all cover very similar expressive terrain but from a number of different perspectives, so that the resulting program makes for a varied and satisfying concert experience. “A Dream Within a Dream” (2004) is the earliest work on the release. It is a post-minimal study beginning on a single D-major extended triad; gradually, he introduces a moving bass that reinterprets the upper parts into different harmonies, along with the introduction of a couple new pitches. Boukouvalas’s sense for harmonic change and constantly shifting but familiar patterns is quite deft. As the piece unfolds, small melodic motives eventually appear in the upper voices, and the rhythmic patterns become less regular and more expansive. This landscape is one familiar to many post-minimal works: Boukouvalas makes the experience more singular through his melodic ideas, which develop in unexpected ways, and through the ever-expanding garlands of sound articulated by the rhythmic patterning. 

Two of the works on the program exceed ten minutes—“Rustle of Light” (2005) is another essay in patterns that begins much like “A dream”; soon, however, the note choices introduce a few lovely cross-relations that perhaps suggest the choice of the album’s title: the expansive textures and wistful optimism evoke both William Byrd and Michael Tippett (especially his first sonata). “Autumn Path” (also 2005), my favorite track on the disc, is even more dynamic: a ruminative, mysterious opening with slow, resonant chords leads to an undulating, somewhat nostalgic-sounding melody. After five minutes the piece appears to reach its close, but one tiny element in that apparent final moment gives way to another lengthy section that begins by questioning what has come before and then reinforcing a feeling of even greater loss. The greatest surprise comes within the last 90 seconds: an explosion of sonority and figuration that ends in an ecstatic flourish in the keyboard’s highest register. What’s so compelling to me about this form is its inevitability: after my initial surprise, I couldn’t imagine the piece unfolding any other way, and experiencing it again and again makes the impression even more satisfying.  

The other works, while less ambitious, are equally effective. “Voyage to Innocence,” for instance, starts with a freer and somewhat more rhapsodic melody with spare but poignant accompanying chords. A simpler and eloquent melody contrasts from time to time and eventually prevails over the more rhapsodic, gestural ideas. It ends ambiguously: after all, innocence simply exists; it doesn’t need to make a grand statement. English Gardens, then, reveals a wonderful expressive range in Boukouvalas’s work that’s very hard to achieve.

For purchase, see http://boukouvalas.bandcamp.com/album/english-gardens