July 30, 2010

  • Review: UT-Austin choir American Choral Music

     

    American Choral Music
    University of Texas (Austin) Chamber Singers/James Morrow
    Naxos 8.559358
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

     

    American choral music has a long tradition from singing schools to the huge massed Midwestern choirs that equal orchestras in their sheer power.  The present Naxos disc provides an over of latter 20th century choral music from five distinct musical voices.  Most of the music is for a cappella chorus with Bolcom and Foss’ works adding two pianos. 

    The disc opens with the 1960 Mass by Vincent Persichetti.  The work is based on cantus firmus technique and stays close to a traditional liturgical setting of Mass texts (with chanted opening texts recessed in the sound picture).  The cantus firmus in the opening bars allows listeners to follow its development throughout the piece.  The style is like a post-modern Medieval Mass with fascinating shifts in tonal centers and rich harmonies that create moments of gorgeous light when they move into position.  In the central “Credo,” Persichetti has more time to create close harmony that then moves back out into linear textual settings.  The result is a natural dynamic ebb and flow that the choir handles here quite well. 

    William Schuman’s Carols of Death (1958) features three settings of Walt Whitman texts.  The opening “The Last Invocation” is a study in unisonal and stepwise motion that creates a variety of intriguing aural arrival points that blur dissonance.  The second song, “The Unknown Region,” reflects its text through a tense rhythmic canon that depicts great restlessness.  The final setting, “To All, To Each,” provides the sort of introspection that is illustrated through unsettling tension whose ending seems far off even as the piece comes to a close.

    The most recent work on the disc is William Bolcom’s The Mask (1990).  The six-movement work sets African American poetry of the post-Harlem Renaissance.  Bolcom explores close harmonic choral writing here along with intriguing rhythmic punctuations taken from ragtime, blues and jazz.  Expanded jazz harmonies are stretched to their emotional limits and an almost spiritual quality appears at times.  Ragtime is a big part of the accompaniment for the second song, “Heritage” in a very overt fashion.  One might argue that the style underlies each of these works even when the musical language has veered away from traditional harmony.  Each of the texts here deals with the idea of masks and hidden identity and taken as a whole the work continually engages by hiding behind lighter musical expression and more contemporary dissonance in good measure.    

    Irving Fine’s The Hour-Glass is the oldest of the works recorded here.  Composed at Tanglewood, the piece is a good example of Fine’s ability to craft clear text settings.  The texts here are all based on poetry by Ben Jonson and Fine moves between solo and complete choral statements of texts effortlessly in a piece that allows individual members of the UT-Austin choir to show off their vocal ability.  A hallmark of the work is the way almost every syllable is clearly audible in the choral texture.

    Psalms (1956) by Lukas Foss sets verses from four Biblical texts over three movements.  The opening movement features sparse piano accompaniment with florid solo vocal writing that is deeply moving.  The center of this work is also the longest and most energetic with exciting piano commentary and full choral statements that explore every register of the chorus quite fully from bass to soprano lines.  The music comes in fits and starts until it flows into a rich center section that Rutter fans should fully enjoy.  The work ends with texts from Psalm 23 in a hopeful lyric reflection. 

    Though often hesitant to review releases by college ensembles, there is no need to hold back one’s praise for this well-done performance by the UT-Austin group.  Their sound easily rivals the many British choral releases of similar period music one finds on the Naxos label.  The musical choices are intelligently chosen to both show off the choir, including several fine soloists, and to provide a cross-section of choral writing that explores different compositional styles and textual approaches.  Yet another fabulous choral music release from a label that continues to raise the bar very high for recordings of unknown repertoire.  Though these composers might at first cause you to hesitate, what you will discover here are a series of wonderful choral pieces that are quite engaging.