Taylor: Lost Orchestral Works, Vol. 2
Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra/Petr Vronsky
Navona Records 6066
Total Time:  15:39
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

You would probably not know it, but 2016 marks the 50^th anniversary of the death of American composer Deems Taylor (1885-1966).  Taylor was one of the most respected composers and music commentators of the early 20^th Century.  In fact, most film lovers will have seen him as the narrator for Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1939).  Taylor’s gorgeous orchestral music, a mixture of Impressionism and late-Romanticism, fell flat on the academic avant-garde by the 1940s and 1950s.  Like so many excellent American composer’s of the early 20^th Century, his music was all but ignored by those looking to take music on the often less accessible dodecaphonic and atonal route.  It is still fairly rare to hear a Taylor work in concert, let alone to find it on disc.

That makes this new Navona EP both exciting and frustrating.  One might have held out hope that maybe the Moravian orchestra might bring to light any number of Taylor’s works not committed to CD.  What is somewhat exciting is that they have recorded this Three Century Suite which was never published and is stored at the composer’s archives at Yale.  The five-movement work was written in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  It explores a semi-Baroque sense of the suite, a shift in music that one finds appearing in counterbalance to the folk-influenced styles of the period.  The opening “Pavan” moves through a few key changes with delicious orchestration.  It is followed by three brief dance-like movements: a sarabande, a scherzo-like jig, and a rigadoon (here recalling part of the second movement).  The piece concludes with a fairly romantic waltz, “Bartholomew Fair.”  The movements sort of play out continuously.  At times the music does feel a bit like an older man looking back to an earlier time as the piece seems to fall closer to a Delian or Holst orchestral piece.  Certainly it is reminiscent of Taylors work in the first two decades of the 20^th Century.

Navona recorded this performance back in June and rushed it to downloadable availability as well as a little album with notes.  The Moravian ensemble appears on many of Navona’s releases.  Here they manage fairly well through this music.  The sound feels just a tad dry at times where it feels the music needs more ambient luster, but that is not enough of a distraction to encourage any lover of American Music to track down this recording.  It just makes one wish someone would get around to recording the composer’s music more.  The ensemble does a fine job with the piece overall.  Other than a classic Gerard Schwarz recording for Delos (now on a re-issued Naxos) there is nothing to be had of this important American composer's work.

Kaviani: Te Deum
Prague Mixed Chamber Choir/Jiri Petrdlik;
Janacek Opera Choir; Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra/Petr Vronsky
Ravello Records 7937
Total Time:  29:51
Recording:   ***/****
Performance: (*)**/****

Nicolas Kaviani studied with David Cope at UC-Santa Cruz and in Avignon, France.  Here he takes on a familiar text with a massive forces and soloists.  The Te Deum opens with a long and slow building crescendo that soon opens into a large choral statement.  The orchestral writing tends to be relatively conservative, closer more to late-18^th Century style, though once the “Sanctus” section appears the music seems to be more closely aligned between classic Renaissance choral style with Romantic inflections.  This results in massive washes of sound with unisonal writing between choir and orchestra for extra support.  It is an overall interesting work with at times almost Brucknerian harmonic shifts and swells.  The music seems to climax a bit soon around 20 minutes in with another regrouping before a final push to the end.  Here the choral writing is interesting.

The hardest part though is that much of the text is very difficult to understand, an issue perhaps more with the chorus and miking, though this is not an uncommon problem with works of this type.  Though the work unfolds over the course of 25 minutes, there are some edits that might have been smoother suggesting it having been recorded section-to-section.  In writing religious music one has to run the risk of being either too avant-garde or to anachronistic.  Kaviani’s work tends to be more towards the latter suggesting an ease of grabbing the listener in a more traditional religious setting.  The performance here feels like it needs just a bit more time to get more familiar with the work and grasp the style explored here.  The choir feels like it is straining in the forte moments especially, but the quieter sections are often stunning.

Tous Les Matins du Monde (2014) is a brief work for 16 unaccompanied voices.  The music here is based on more dissonant clusters that unfold and are more intense as they come together and then flow back out into more chant-like statements.  It is not quite like Lauridsen.  The close harmonies are part of the work’s challenge here needing a full tone reproduction.  The result has a rather mystifying quality in this brief work.

The presentation here is a bit short musically, but that is due to an accompanying DVD that provides further background on this project.  Those interested in something new for their choral groups would likely find this an interesting piece to try as it is often quite beautiful and has some nice solo work.