March 6, 2017

  • Choral Music from New England

     New Choral Music by Jonathan Santore
    Emily Jaworski, mezzo-soprano.
    New Hampshire Master Chorale;
    Manchester Choral Society and Orchestra/Dan Perkins
    Navona Records 6086
    Total Time:  63:52
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    Dan Perkins teaches at Plymouth University in New Hampshire and is the founder of the New Hampshire Master Chorale featured on this new release.  The ensemble is featured here in music by Joseph Santore who also teaches music at Plymouth University and is the ensemble’s composer-in -residence.  The collection here features eight works all written out of his collaboration with Perkins.  Each piece was composed for thematic concerts thus allowing Santore a variety of texts to explore. The larger work is a requiem for soloist, chorus and orchestra which caps the recording.  Santore’s choral writing tends to be done in harmonious blocks of sound with a rather open feel.  It is when this texture changes that the music becomes even more compelling.  And by the end of the release one gets a firm sense of the composer’s style and hopes for some future examples of his orchestral writing as well.

    The first work is Walden Recessional, a setting of a paragraph from the conclusion of Thoreau’s work.  It was composed for the 150th anniversary of this seminal American texts as the final work on the program.  Cellist Linda Galvan performs an interesting somber line that runs through the work.  The choral writing has a nice open quality in a very reflective work.

    A collection of three texts, two from a WWI English soldier, and the final one from Robert Louis Stevenson.  “The Return” focuses on the first images of war.  We move into a more American feel with the march-like shift in the central song with hints of lighter music in the piano line.  The final poem is a reflection of the battlefield years later.

    In Kalavela Fragments, the choral writing shifts more from the homophonic chordal style of the earlier pieces to more interaction between the upper and lower voices.  The men’s voices have a hypnotic ostinato line while the women’s voices declaim the text often with interesting close intervals from time to time.

    Using the Brahms’ Zigeunerlieder, Op. 103, as inspiration, Santore selected eight texts which he then freely translated and arranged into a choral cycle that explores the history of the Roma peoples.  The Eight Gypsy Songs After Brahms introduce some lighter musical touches and more vocalizations to add rhythmic motion against the text.  It creates a rather folkish feel and a more upbeat tenor coming here about mid-program.  Some of the more beautifully lyric writing here is often quite stunning.  Overall, this particular work is a nice collection of Santore’s text-setting and different choral approaches.

    We move to France next with a setting of a text by Victor Hugo set for chorus and soprano saxophone, played here by Rik Pfenninger.  “Love Always” is a good, and often quiet beautiful work with the solo touch providing an interesting texture that is similar to the use of the cello in the opening work.

    Things turn a bit dark as we move into the second half of the program beginning with a setting of three e.e. cummings poems.  O Sweet Spontaneous Earth adds a string trio (Eva Gruesser, violin; Daniel Dona, viola; and Leo Eguchi, cello) for this meditation on our use and abuse of the environment.  This is a rather intense piece with an angular ostinato idea that kicks off in the violin with dense string textures weaving against the punctuating text.  Ideas are also spread between the vocal and instrumental lines that sometimes seem to work against one another and other times come together in collusion with one another in fitting text setting.  The final setting does allow for a brief moment of beauty and hope.   This is probably one of the better works on the album, with the next piece slightly outshining it.

    The larger work on the program is the aforementioned Requiem: Learning to Fall.  Critic Philip Simmons was diagnosed with ALS and returned to live in his boyhood home of Sandwich, NH, as he neared death.  His final work, Learning to Fall: the Blessing of an Imperfect Life grew out of the communal support and care he received there.  Peggy Johnson, his musical collaborator, took 12 texts from this work and these form the basis for Santore’s requiem performed by the Manchester Choral Society and Orchestra featuring soloist Emily Jaworski.  Her performance is beautiful.  The music feels to fall closer to a post-modern style with some gorgeous solo writing for the orchestra along the way.  It is not quite a purely romantic approach, but certainly has its touching moments.  As one might suspect, having the text at hand is going to be more necessary for this work.  The music lies firmly in the American choral tradition of Randall Thompson.

    The brief Forgetting features the same forces and has another connection to ALS in that the poem was written by Jane Babin, a former Plymouth University faculty member who suffered and died from the disease.  The piece has a personal connection for Santore and this is a new orchestral version of the work arranged to be performed on the same concert as the requiem making a fitting encore.  It is another gorgeously-scored work.

    The present recording includes texts for the works in the accompanying booklet.  Recordings were made across twelve years mostly in a church setting.  This helps add some extra ambience to the sound lending a fuller quality.  Sometimes this can be a bit dry at times, but it works fine to show off the choir with the occasional instrumental soloists being equally well balanced.   The New Hampshire Master Chorale is in great form here obviously quite familiar with these pieces that appear to be recorded close to their inception.  The collaboration works very well here with some beautiful choral writing that is worth tracking down for those looking for very accessible pieces.