January 11, 2017

  • Cadence: Choral/Vocal Compilation from Navona

     

    Cadence: New Music for Voices in Verse
    Jennifer Bird, soprano. Mutsumi Moteki, piano.
    Stanberry Singers/Paul Stanberry
    Vox Futura/Andrew Shenton
    Kuhn Choir/Marek Vorlicek
    Navona Records 6061
    Total Time:  45:26
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    Those looking for a few modern choral and vocal works may wish to check out Navona’s release, Cadence.  The compilation includes music by four composers focusing mostly on choral music, though the first work is a soprano song cycle.  The recordings were made over the past two years in a variety of venues.  The texts are included here, but additional notes for the pieces are at the label’s website as is often the custom with Navona.  It is an intriguing and eclectic collection.

    The song cycle here is by David Kirtley, whose wife is the dedicatee and pianist on this recording.  The piece consists of five haikus arranged to follow the life events of a daughter and her mother.  The texts create an overarching narrative here and are by Kaoru Karigane.  The sparse piano lines have a gentle quality adding to the reflective nature of the poetry here with a beautiful lyrical line floating above them.  The third of these features more vocal slides and slightly more dissonance.

    The Stanberry Singers are featured in two works which serve as bookends to the other two choral ensembles on the album.  They perform first in a setting of William Blake’s “The Lamb” by composer Joanne D. Carey.  Originally performed by the Dowland Consort back in 1978, Carey has done some revising for the two works included here.  The other is performed by Vox Futura and is a setting of Blake’s “The Tyger”.  As one might anticipate, these settings have a decided Renaissance feel with modern harmonic language.  The second setting is a bit more modern and includes some piano accompaniment.  The music features a bit more dissonance as things move along in close intervals with chromatic slides in a quite dramatic setting.  A sort of creeping feel further enhances this fascinating work.

    A setting by Timothy Kramer’s of the Lux Aeterna follows.  The piece was written for a performance in 2004 for performance on the Trinity University Choir’s German tour in 2005.  Intended to be performed in the reverberant Cologne Cathedral, the music explores a small pitch base to create long, extended harmonic ideas that would show off the space. These are connected to the opening text setting itself.  The voices then gradually grow in a somewhat chant-like style with the close intervals helping provide moments of beauty when they intervals open up more.  It is performed here by the Kuhn Choir.

    The final work is Remembering All which is a setting of five Carl Sandburg poems by Christopher J. Hoh.  The part-songs were composed in the 1990s and reflect on aspects of love.  The style here is closer to a post-Britten style with modern harmonic ideas and occasional florid lines that bring one choral section out over another with a brief solo idea.  The music tends to be fairly close knit harmonically with a style that connects to modern choral music of the latter 20th Century.

    Indeed, many of the choral pieces here feel like extensions of the sort of things composed in the 1960s/1970s with more modal qualities and close knit harmonics in a direction different from the spiritual minimalists.  That makes this a rather unique collection for fans of modern choral music.