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.

Kamyar Mohajer: Pictures of the Hidden
The Ives Collective
San Francisco Wind Ensemble
Raeeka Shehabi-Yaghmai, soprano. Karolina Rojhan, piano.
Alexander String Quartet
Navona Records 6180
Total Time:  62:21
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Composer Kamyar Mohajer embraces aspects of his personal and musical influences in this new album of chamber music.  His Persian roots appear through applications of modal musical qualities and exploration of and the poetry of Hafez (1325-1390).  His composition teachers have included Behzad Ranjbaran and Giancarlo Aquilanti.  A song cycle and a string quartet are the primary larger works on this new Navona release.

Three smaller pieces give us a flavor for Mohajer’s writing for strings, winds, and piano, respectively.  Prelude (2013) is an intimate work for string trio and takes its inspiration from Bach.  The work is a microcosm of how the Persian melodic contours and harmonies are intertwined with the three independent lines that weave through the work.  The woodwind quintet, Reng (2008, rev. 2017) is another way to transfer these different lines across a slightly broader palette.  Here they come together for some larger harmonic punctuations while the florid line flits along in this fun little dance-like piece.  Motifs are tossed between the different instruments with a variety of their own momentary interjections causing the whole group to respond and interact.  The album concludes with a Ballade in C (2013) which brings us a sense of the romantic tradition in more dissonant modern dress coupled with modal harmony.  It is a denser work than the others in this collection but no less fascinating a journey.

The album gets its title from the bookended poem used in Five Songs, Based on Poetry of Hafez (2014).  Here one gets a real sense of the ancient lullabies of Mohajer’s childhood that he reflects upon in the accompanying notes.  The work is set up with three poems used to create a sense of structure where the outer two movements are halves of the same poem and the central, third movement, its own textual focus.  The piano tends to add slight backdrops at first.  The style seems to blend a little Bach with modernist and Eastern modal qualities.  It tends to be almost like the transitional reflection on the vocal line with a style that is tied to 19^th-Century Art Song.  This helps lend the vocal writing a further ancient quality that moves toward a more modern feel at its center.  All told, it is a fascinating set of songs.

The string quartet (2012) is a four-movement work.  The opening “Andante” has a real emotionally-wrought thematic idea that has an almost reflective sadness.  There is some quite stunning writing here in a tonal language.  A more angular line opens the second movement with its folk-like modal qualities connecting to the composer’s heritage as well.  Things then take off in what is the scherzo movement of the larger structure with a style that has a slight Shostakovich edge.  The third movement “Adagio” returns us to this emotionally intense, and intimate reflection which seems to glance back to a happier time.  The long line has a warm quality with interesting turns that add interest as the harmony too shifts in subtle, unexpected ways.  The tempo picks up slightly with a faster-paced accompaniment that lies in contrast to the rich, beautiful thematic idea that soars over the top.  The fire-y last movement explore more fully the accompanimental rhythmic motifs that appeared earlier in a fascinating blend of rhythmic accents and modal writing that together has an almost post-Bartok quality.  When all is said and done this is a strong addition to the quartet literature.

Across these five pieces, one gets a sense for Mohajer’s embracing of his own musical tastes and influences which all come together in often dramatic fashion.  These are pieces that land in the modernist styles of today with strong thematic development and music that communicates great emotional depth and excitement.  The string quartet, woodwind quintet, and song cycle are the strong works on this album which makes this something to explore for those interested in 21^st Century music.