From the Valley of Baca: Chamber Music of David Carpenter
Rebecca Harris, violin. Myanna Harvey, viola. Cassia Harvey, cello;
Lawrence Indik, baritone. Charles Abramovic, piano;
Katelyn Bouska, piano.
Navona Records 6208
Total Time:  66:00
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

David Carpenter (b. 1972) is a Philadelphia-based composer whose music has been heard throughout the United States.  This release features examples of his music for string trio, solo piano, and a song cycle.

The first work is a String Trio (2014) cast in three movements.  The opening movement features a couple of key components which includes a small motive that recalls the musical signature of Shostakovich.  Carpenter admits his own fascinating with the composer’s music in his reflection on the work.  In particular, it is the eighth quartet that casts becomes submerged into this piece.  This can be heard in the somewhat modernist harmonic ideas and motivic development, but also in the penchant for long, intertwining lines that move across the three instruments.  A sixteenth-note pattern of this motive informs the central movement which also has some intriguing moments of dissonance with equally poignant lyricism.  The final movement features some more intense dissonance that seems somewhat more episodic at times.  But overall, the work has a very intimate quality that is held together by its consistent motivic references which help to unify the work.

At the center of the album is a song cycle for baritone and piano which lends its name to the release as well.  From the Valley of Baca (2016) features text by the Jewish poet Emma Lazurus.  Carpenter sets this poetry against the words of Psalm 84, sung in Hebrew.  The resulting work is a reflection on the plight of persecuted people and prejudice, here further inspired by the Syrian refugee crisis of 2015.  As a result, the work has this interesting shift of ancient problems that still plague the modern world.  The music is modernist in style with the vocal line providing a nice interpretive shape to the texts while the piano interacts and suggests mood and accents important aspects.  It is interesting to also hear how the music flirts with an almost Romantic sensibility for those moments when the hopes, dreams, and longings in the text are expressed.

The Sonata for piano (2015) is performed here by the person who originally suggested it.  It began as a rhapsody and was intended to accompany a performance of the b-minor Chopin piano sonata.  The little arpeggio fall of that work along with a sighing motive became the key components explored in this piece.  By extending the work to three movements, Carpenter has a chance to further explore the style of 19^th Century piano music by filtered now through a postmodern lens.  Like the trio, it too uses a motivic idea to help provide an overarching unity.  What is more fascinating are the sort of echoes of piano gestures one might hear in Chopin with new interpretations of what chromaticism in modern dress might do.

The release here gives a sense of some of Carpenter’s more intimate pieces and possible influences that inform his music.  In each case, one hears how these ideas are transformed and allow for reflection and reevaluation of contemporary directions post 1950.

Whispers of Heavenly Death: Vocal Works of Scott Perkins
Julia Mintzer, mezzo-soprano. Jamie Jordan, soprano. Dashon Burton, baritone. Zachary Wilder, tenor.
Helen Park, flute.  Eric Rudel, piano.
Navona Records 6198
Total Time:  78:01
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Last year, Navona released an album of choral music by Connecticut composer Scott Perkins.  That recording gave some insight into the sort of spiritual minimalist style that had haunting textures and an ancient quality.  This release brings us eight song cycles split between explorations of specific authors and themes, and those focusing on seasons of the year.  There are two cycles for each voice type which allows for additional variety on the album accompanied throughout by Eric Trudel.

The album’s title comes from the opening collection of five settings of Walt Whitman poetry.  Whispers of Heavenly Death is a rather bleak, but introspective contemplation of life and death.  The music maintains its mostly tonal roots with the vocal line moving over these in often twisted, chromatic lines.  Sometimes the bare piano support has carefully-conceived harmony that maintains a basis upon which the singer muses.  The use of repetition in the piano provides some of the extra aural shape.  The dark qualities of the mezzo-soprano voice are a good match for this material with Mintzer’s phrasing and color making these compelling works.  The overall shape of the cycle moves us from questioning to resignation of the inevitable.

Six Holy Sonnets of John Donne follow focusing on period themes of love and death and set for soprano.  As one might expect, the music has a slightly more impassioned feel as the poetry moves from its initial thought to its deeper reflection at the center of the sonnet and then resulting final thoughts.  Perkins’ music manages to guide the listener through these emotions rather beautifully with music that often uses small motivic ideas in the piano that provide the underpinning to the more florid vocal line.  The music still has that rather darker undertone.  The music practically explodes in “At the round earths imagined corners” with the most intense of the piano accompaniments adding to the declamatory opening and is the most “contemporary” sounding of the set.  Here and in the following setting, there is an increase in denser harmonies and clusters with a vocal line that expounds in ever more complicated outlines.  It makes the more traditional, almost Sondheim-like opening of the final “Death be not proud” all the more striking as the cycle concludes.

The two sets of songs for male voices focus on ancient texts.  Riddle Songs, set for baritone, is a collection of four Anglo-Saxon texts that have veiled sexual references.  These are four quite brief pieces with a great deal more dissonance in the opening song than what appeared in the earlier cycles and with a slightly more vicious feel (though this is as much to do with the ancient language itself).  It is followed by a more lyrical second setting with a mode modal feel to the music.  The third song is a jazzy setting which is perfect for its sexual innuendo.  The cycle closes with a brief reflective setting.  The tenor cycle is a setting of translated texts by Dogen Zenji.  Here Perkins music becomes slightly sparser with the piano becoming a colorful brushstroke, at both extremes of the piano, against the florid vocal lines.

The second half of the album explores poetry of the four seasons.  Spring and All, for tenor, collects three poems by William Carlos Williams that move us from awakening into the sultriness of the season.  The piano has a fuller sound here with the voice moving over this sound.  The quality manages to shift from a sort of romantic wonder to reflection and introspection which connects with earlier aspects of Perkins’ style culminating in the exciting final “The Right of Way” which dissolves into an eerie final moment.  Three settings of poetry by Robert Louis Stevenson are the focus of the Summer Songs for soprano.  These are in Perkins’ more lyrical vein with a sort of post-romantic style.  The music thus has a lighter feel overall.  The Three Songs for Autumn use poetry by Lia Purpura.  The addition of flute is a nice shift adding an interesting additional color in these more romantic-tinged songs.  It adds an exotic feel in the central song “Red Leaf”, where it first appears.  One might expect Perkins would be more drawn to 19^th-Century Decadent poets.  In his final cycle, Soir d’Hiver for mezzo-soprano, he pulls together poetry from Emile Nelligan, Rilke, Frechette, and Verlaine finding interesting parallels in their work collected here to move us toward the sort of eventuality of death implied, or stated clearly, in this colder poems.

This is an interesting collection of vocal music and any one of these cycles would have listeners of contemporary music sit up and pay notice.  Perkins tends to create crystalline textures throughout these pieces that move through sparse styles to richer, romantic gestures, but always with a sense of the dramatic introspection that one heard in his choral music.  The soloists here give excellent performances, all superbly supported by Trudel’s accompaniment.  Texts are included in the accompanying booklet as well.  Whispers of Heavenly Death proves to be an important release in American art song.