Redfeld: A Hopeful Place
Kristi Holden, soprano.  Hollywood Studio Symphony/Dan Redfeld
Navona Records 6045
Total Time:  64:28
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

For film music lovers, Dan Redfeld’s name is more synonymous with a host of compilation releases from BSX Records of arrangements featuring a variety of contemporary film classics and surveys of popular television series.  However, with lyricists John Gabriel Koladziej and Christina Harding he had completed a musical version of Little Women.  A Hopeful Place is a rather lengthy song cycle for soprano and chamber orchestra.  Inspired by the soprano Kristi Holden, the composer worked on structuring a nine-movement work that would reflect the arc from life to death.  Some of the thematic threads introduced here provide links to specific themes in the texts.  The music has a rather fascinating blend of post-romantic writing that blends a bit of Horner, Menken, Williams, and a little Sondheim perhaps at times.  It makes the more serious music making in the work all the more inviting and accessible to listeners.  The piece was commissioned in 2009 by Ensemble Green and premiered the following year.

First, the piece is not surprisingly beautifully orchestrated.  One almost wishes Redfeld could get a full string complement to lend the sound a bit more depth, but this is really a minor concern because the use of solo instruments, the addition of piano to help add some light along the way, all work to provide a perfect backdrop to Holden’s voice.  The descriptive writing perfectly helps heighten the tension of the text and we can feel these shifts from light to reflective darker moments.  All of this is set out in the opening movement with its “Ruminations” text.  “Childhood” is a delightful blend of playfulness, and perhaps a touch of wonder.  A bit more darkness descends in “Words They Never Say.”  That sense of Broadway ballad appears more in “No Longer A Child/Somehow”.  The central “Vocalise” is a moment for Redfeld’s thematic thread to shine more and is a nice break from the text setting.  It helps to give the audience a moment to reflect more in this often haunting a moving movement.  Some jazzy moments and sexy harmonic slides lend a unique touch to “Bacchanal” (a little Bernstein and Gershwin) with its sexual overtness and ecstasy.  The title movement shifts to a more reflective style (with a Barry-esque flute idea and harmonic shading) and becomes gradually darker and slightly more impassioned.  This darker sense follows into the more sinuous “Evensong” as more dissonance and fugal-like entries add to the complexity of the music.  The final movement helps wrap things up with references to melodic ideas and a return to the ideas of the opening movement.  We have come full circle.

Admittedly, when presented with a modern song cycle of this length, the first thing that runs through the mind is how difficult this may be to get on a program.  But the accessibility of the musical language with its delightful orchestral writing that stands in a long line of orchestral song cycles, certainly makes this a truly delightful discovery.  The dramatic journey is filled with moments of romantic reflections that recall contemporary film music, but the music is often a bit deeper than that borrowing from the dramatic gestures of film and theater, recast into this interesting concert setting.  It is certainly a work informed by these musical genres and you can hear a number of stylistic footprints that Redfeld has morphed into his own musical language.  The vocal writing is equally accomplished and really draws in the listener with its melodic lines.  The text hovers as well between popular music lyrics and more poetic styles.  There is enough interesting music here that one will likely find this a piece they will return to enjoy repeatedly.  It is certainly a surprising release and one can only hope it can find a few more live performances.  Kristi Holden's voice is perfectly suited to these pieces and her interpretation is compelling.  The studio musicians, culled from many folks film score fans will notice from Hollywood studio work, respond well to the music as well.  It is probably one of the most enjoyable hours of contemporary music you will be lucky to enjoy again and again.  Personally, hitting the repeat button to hear the work again was very tempting in the midst of many reviews in the "to do" pile.

Rouse: Seeing; Kabir Padavali
Orion Weiss, piano.  Tavis Trevigne, soprano.  Albany Symphony Orch./David Alan Miller
Naxos 8.559799
Total Time:  63:36
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

After an earlier release this year of music by Alan Jay Kernis, the Albany Symphony Orchestra and their Music Director David Alan Miller turn to music by American composer Christopher Rouse.  Rouse’s music garnered attention back in 1993 when he received the Pulitzer Prize for his Trombone Concerto.  Since then he has created a massive and memorable body of work played the world over.  Here we get to sample two distinct works from 1998 receiving their world premiere recordings.

The first of these is Seeing, commissioned originally by Emanuel Ax and the New York Philharmonic.  The piece is a sort of distorted integration of Robert Schumann’s own Piano Concerto.  The latter was a work Ax had decided not to play in concert, and so this becomes a bit of a private musical joke of sorts.  But also underlying the work is its conception of how psychosis can impact a person’s view both spiritually and psychologically.  It is something more obviously relating to Schumann’s own struggles with mental illness, but also here refers to music by Skip Spence, from whom the work takes its title.  In some ways, the Schumann is taken apart and reassembled sometimes quite recognizably, and others less so as the concerto’s four sections unfold.  After a rather manic opening, an unsettling and somewhat macabre slower section appears with an almost disenchanted solo line against dark orchestral textures.  The adagio music is reminiscent at times of film score depictions of unsettled characters.  The final scherzo section continues through this rather unusual hallucinatory process with direct quotation and a rather intense series of dissonant crashes and brilliant pianistic flourishes.  Sometimes the orchestra tends to be almost mocking the music itself.  The piece is intense, but the dramatic quality of the music allows for the listener to enter in to this unusual soundworld and the more ethereal moments are quite compelling.  It is a sort of concert Altered States in its thrust and style.

The Minnesota Orchestra was behind the commissioning of Kabir Padavali with Dawn Upshaw the planned recipient of this song cycle for soprano and orchestra.  The Hindi texts are by the Indian poet Kabir (ca. 1398-ca. 1448) whose poetry has survived through oral tradition.  Six poems are used here.  They begin with two texts that use musical instrument imagery as their departure point.  The third song explores a sort of “peaceable kingdom” of animals.  Spiritual components help pull these threads together in the fourth and sixth song, bookending a text of love in these often allegorical texts.  Rather than utilize Indian ragas in the music, Rouse has instead created a more evocative atmosphere that provides its own sense of mystery.  Using an accordion and solo oboe he is also able to make the suggestion of the music against which the music unfolds.  Quiet string entries, making use of the Minnesota Orchestra’s string sound, also lend a dreamy atmosphere.  This is punctuated by brass before the vocal line appears to float above the texture adding another layer of sensuality.   The third song has an almost jazz-like rhythmic punch with equally interesting harmonies while the vocal line moves seemingly erratically amidst the fairly dramatic music.  A variety of unusual vocal sounds are also created in the often bizarre fourth song with its texts talking about a mad world and violence.  This is beautifully offset by the penultimate text of a woman at a spinning wheel connecting her thoughts to concepts of love and the threads she weaves.

The orchestra is on great display in these performances.  Weiss manages to assert himself well in this piece and he is also a student of Ax giving him another unique connection to Seeings.  Soprano soloist Talise Trevigne is familiar to fans of contemporary opera as she has been in a number of Jack Heggie’s operas over the past decade.   Her performance here is certainly exquisite and well balanced against the orchestra.  Both performances date from 2013 and are just now making it to disc, the result perhaps of a number of these modern American Classics releases being ahead on the schedule.  These world premiere recordings are excellently recorded and will be a good introduction to Rouse’s music for many new listeners.  It is sort of odd that at least the concerto has not made its way to disc yet.  Might be worth pairing it with the Schumann at some point to further link the way Rouse’s work unpacks and reuses it.  The song cycle is equally interesting.