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 19th 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.
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