Dec 4, 2014

1865 (SACD review)


Songs of Hope and Home from the American Civil War. Anonymous 4, with Bruce Molsky. Harmonia Mundi HMU 807549.

The year 1865 marked the end of the American Civil War. It was also smack dab in the middle of the Romantic period in art, literature, and music. Romanticism flowed through American pop culture as well, so on this disc of Civil War-era songs, expect to hear music infused with highly expressive, sensitive, personal, ofttimes sentimental overtones.

Most of the songs themselves, eighteen of them, appeared during the Civil War, and many of them remained popular for a long while after, a few continuing in familiarity to this day. The group singing them is Anonymous 4, an American female a cappella quartet who often specialize in early music, medieval to Renaissance. This album, like their album of spirituals, is kind of a departure for them, but a wonderfully inspiring one. Joining the quartet (Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, Susan Hellauer, Ruth Cunningham, and Marsha Genensky) is two-time Grammy nominee Bruce Molsky on fiddle, banjo, guitar, and vocals. They make an impressive combination.

Now, before I utter another word, I have to issue a warning: Unless you have a heart of stone, you might find yourself shedding a tear or two. Usually, I'm immune to the hyperbole of PR agents to bias my opinion of things; in this case, Harmonia Mundi e-mailed me a sample song from the album, and it was all I needed to request the disc for review. The sample alone had me in tears. As I say, these are strongly moving tunes.

The vocals of Anonymous 4 are precise, articulate, and warmhearted; and the addition of the lower male voice complements their tonal and emotional qualities. They are an outstanding ensemble, gorgeous and heartfelt in their harmonies and presentation.

The opening song is "Weeping, Sad and Lonely," and it sets the mood, an a cappella number framed in five-part harmony. If it doesn't grab you from the outset, you'd have to be a rock.

"Darling Nelly Gray" adds Molsky's banjo to the arrangement, and it's effective in its simplicity. "Sweet Evelina" is, well, sweet, again sung a cappella, which after hearing it is the only way I could imagine anyone singing it. For changes of pace, "Bright Sunny South" and "Brother Green" feature Molsky singing alone, accompanying himself on banjo or fiddle, and "Camp Chase" with Molsky just on fiddle. Frankly, as nice as these are, I missed the ladies' voices.

On a few numbers we find solos, duets, and trios, and they work, too; however, I tended to prefer the quartet together with Molsky for their fuller body and sonority.

Then, there are the tunes we've come to know and love probably all our lives: "Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Ground," "Aura Lee" (think Elvis), "Listen to the Mockingbird" (think Three Stooges), "Home, Sweet Home," "Abide with Me," "Shall We Gather at the River," and the like. But you may not have heard them done quite like this, in, as the notes say, "something close to their original settings." Beautiful.

Anonymous 4 
Absolute favorites on the program? Well, I suppose so: the aforementioned "Weeping, Sad and Lonely," "Darling Nelly Gray," "Sweet Evelina," "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground," "Abide with Me," and "Shall We Gather at the River," plus "Faded Coat of Blue" and "The Picture on the Wall."

To say these are simply "sad" songs or mournful dirges would be a shame. Yes, you'll find them filled with sentiment and feeling, yet they're so extremely individual and affecting they transcend any facile descriptions. They are wonderful old songs, wonderfully performed.

This is another one that easily takes its place among my favorite albums of the year.

The disc comes fastened to the inside of a sturdy Digipak case, and an eighty-four-page booklet of notes, history, lyrics, and pictures completes the package. Just be careful how you handle the booklet; mine began coming apart at the binding shortly after I opened it.

Producer Robina G. Young and engineer and editor Brad Michel recorded the music in hybrid stereo/multichannel SACD at the Concert Hall, Drew University, Madison, New Jersey in June 2014.  I listened to the two-channel SACD layer. The sound is clear and ultra clean, the voices rich and full, a mild room resonance adding a welcome note of realistic ambience to the affair. The voices appear well grouped, too, with the ladies often slightly to the left and Molsky's vocals slightly to their side. Occasionally, Molsky appears in the middle of the female voices. In any case, it's all quite lifelike.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:


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Meet the Staff

Meet the Staff
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor

For nearly 30 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.

For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2024 Honda CRV Sport L Hybrid, I stream music from my phone through its adequate but hardly outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through a Roku Streambar Pro system (soundbar plus four surround speakers and a 10" sealed subwoofer) that has surprisingly nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence and reasonable price. Finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker and a pair of Google Pro Earbuds for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technologies that enable us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.

William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor

Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.

The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.

Ryan Ross, Contributor

I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.

I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.


Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst

I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.

Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio

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"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa