Two Cells in Sevilla
Sonja Bruzauskas, mezzo; Todd R. Miller, tenor;
Octavio Moreno, bass; Benjamin LeClair, baritone;
Greenbriar Consortium/David Kirk
Tali Margulis, piano.
Navona Records 6174
Total Time:  50:34
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Navona steps into the realm of contemporary opera with this new release of a brief chamber opera composed by Walter Steffens (b. 1934) with libretto by his son, Marec Bela Steffens.  The father studied with composer Philip Jarnach and later taught at the Hochschule fur Musik in Detmold, Germany.  He is noted for his operas and a tendency to base his work on literary sources or paintings.  In the latter case, he has written some 80 pieces inspired by the visual image.  The current chamber opera was part of a Theatre Forum at the Round Top Festival Institute exploring the Golden Age of theater in Renaissance Spain and England (2016).  The chamber opera was one of the forum’s highlights and was premiered at the forum in a production also supported by the Greenbriar Consortium (featured in this recording).

Two Cells in Sevilla, or: Don Quixote is Hungry, Op. 106 (2016) revolves around a cook whose job it is to feed a cloistered monk, and a nobleman in debtor’s prison.  When they discover she loves to read and the two set out to write stories for her with the characters Don Juan and Don Quixote figuring prominently.  The music is an interesting semi-tonal style with the winds adding interesting color to the general sound.  In the opening, the male leads are pleading their case in moaning style.  The orchestral accompaniment adds some aid for pitch location by the singers as it creates interesting sinuous lines against the unfolding story.  Soloists here acquit themselves well in this otherwise dark work exploring new takes on some classic literary characters.

The album concludes with the intriguing Five Songs on Holderlin, Op. 95 (2008).  These modern German lieder are based on the poetry of one of the leading influences on German Romanticism, Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843).  These are equally bleak little settings with dark harmonies in the opening “Hypersion’s Song of Fate”.  They each have a rather eerie, lyrical quality that provides some additional contrast to the opera setting which precedes it.  There is an equally delicate balance of pain and beauty in these settings.  Also fascinating is the way the accompaniment helps create the mood against the often beautiful lyric shape of the soloist.  Note that the German texts are used here.

Texts for the libretto and songs can be downloaded from the Navona album page for this release.  Less necessary for the opera, though it can help keep clear characters the first time through.  The chamber opera proves to be an interesting exploration of Renaissance themes in contemporary musical language.  The song cycle here is the work that will stand out though and might be worth listening to first to help get a better sense of Steffen’s style.

Ingrid Stolzel: The Gorgeous Nothings
Sarah Tannehill Anderson, soprano. Phyllis Pancella, mezzo-soprano.
Anne Gnojek, flute. Margaret Marco, oboe.
Keith Bohm, saxophone.
Veronique Mathieu, violin.
Ellen Sommer, piano.
Anne-Marie Brown, violin. Lawrence Figg, cello. Robert Pherigo, piano.
Navona Records 6169
Total Time: 52:39
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

In this new release we get a chance to explore the chamber music of Ingrid Stolzel who currently teaches at the University of Kansas.  The five works on the current disc feature two song cycles, two solo works and a brief work for piano trio all composed just over the past dozen years.  Stolzel’s music has been performed worldwide and is noted for her ability to create emotional connections to the listener.

Nineteenth Century American poets have offered a wealth of texts that have inspired composers for generations.  Stolzel has chosen poetry by two poets that exemplify that trends of transcendentalism and realism, in the case of Walt Whitman, and perhaps a further transition from those aesthetics with a touch of the sentimental in the work of Emily Dickinson.  In the opening work, The Gorgeous Nothings (2016), Stolzel has chosen several fragmentary texts from a collection of Emily Dickinson’s envelope writings.  These are rather intriguing texts lending a sense of the immediacy of Dickinson’s thought.  The music is set for soprano with a piano wind trio of flute, oboe, and piano.  “Clogged Only With Music” has a sense of a piece of music also gradually evolving.  The repeated piano arpeggio moves the music along helping to create an unsettled atmosphere with a rather haunting lyric line appearing in the soprano.  Stolzel’s music in these songs also has this sense of fragmentation that may move into a slightly more developed idea.  The accompaniment though tends to recede more as the vocal line soars.  An oboe statement opens “Paradise is No Journey” which sets a nice flowing quality over a more florid piano backdrop.  The vocal line grows out of this melody reaching ever outward quite beautifully.  A bit of slight amusing style appears at the end which becomes further pointed in the more erratic “The Little Sentences” that has a sense of the piece being thought up as it plays.  It is excellently handled here and provides great musical contrast with its somewhat jagged ideas and almost minimalist text repetition.  The final song brings us back to a serene sensibility with “It is Very Still”.  A quite good moment is the way the oboe line reaches upward to be continued in the voice.  The cycle overall is a rather engaging work.  Three poems by Walt Whitman are the basis for the second song cycle on the disc.  Soul Journey (2014) has at its heart a poetic and musical awakening that matches this sense of Whitman’s own concepts of spiritual awakening and transcendence.  The progression of the texts chosen here help aid the direction of the music.  One gets that sense of mystery and awe from the opening bars of the first setting, “Grand is the Seen” which gives us a sense of our own connection to the universe.  The nature of the texts makes the subsequent poetry feel far more reflective only to move to a grand exuberant burst of excitement in the final bars of “Darkest Thou Now, O Soul.”

There are two pieces for soloist and piano.  First is a work for violin and piano, “here there” (2006).  Musically, Stolzel explores the effects of language in this music as well.  In this case, it is the sense of perspective of musical ideas viewed from two directions.  The piano writing has this intriguing blend of rich harmony that might be a blend of romanticism and Impressionistic harmonic shifts.  The solo violin line takes the primary material and spins these out in beautiful writing whose very character is changed by the way the piano interacts harmonically.  The same might be said of the rhythmic writing when either becomes more agitated.  The result is a fascinating essay with a great sense of drama and excellent interplay between the two instruments.  With Eyes Open (2015) is a reimagining for alto saxophone and piano of an earlier work.  Here too is a similar approach though to the violin piece in its own exploration of musical material that shifts between soloists exploring musical ideas.  The music has a dreamier quality here as it unfolds with beautiful lyric writing for sax.  The piano’s motivic elaborations help connect out of the solo ideas as the two enter into this rather reflective discourse.

The final work on the album is a piano trio with violin and cello.  The Road is All (2007) brings this album of spiritual journeying and reflection to a close.  Here to the music wafts between these instruments creating a rather languid and serene musical quality that continues the general focus of the previous works on this collection.

Chamber music is the most intimate expression for a composer and in this release Stolzel moves us through the thoughts one has both in terms of how music itself comes into fruition and how it can help us contemplate our own being and place in the universe.