Dec 28, 2014

Copland: In the Beginning (CD review)

Also, Four Motets; Barber: Reincarnations and other works. Sally Bruce-Payne, mezzo-soprano; Ben Parry, Dunedin Consort. Linn Records BKD 117.

You're probably wondering what the Dunedin Consort, a Baroque choral and instrumental ensemble based in Edinburgh, Scotland, is doing singing the music of two twentieth-century American composers, Copland and Barber. Good question. The way the program notes describe the situation: "Both Copland and Barber, in their settings for unaccompanied chorus, had an instinctive feel for the human voice, a natural gift for word setting, and a pure style of writing that rarely, if ever, obscured its literary dimension." So, for a musically dedicated choral group like the Dunedin Consort, the real question is, Why not do Copland and Barber?

Anyway, we get several works on the album for unaccompanied chorus, two from Copland and a few more from Barber, things getting under way with the appropriately named In the Beginning by Aaron Copland (1900-1990). Written in 1947, it's a choral motet with soprano soloist, inspired by the first chapter of Genesis from the King James Version of the Bible. Although it is probably not among Copland's most well-known works, many critics consider it among his best. Copland wanted the piece sung in a "gentle manner," which is exactly what director Ben Parry and his Consort do. Still, it's not so gentle that it excludes any life or liveliness. This is a vibrant, rhythmic, uplifting performance that commands respect and admiration from start to finish. The Dunedin singers sound crisply articulate yet convey much feeling for the music. The soloist, Sally Bruce-Payne, sounds fresh and alert, with a beautiful vocal tone. In fact, everyone involved with this sixteen-minute production does an outstanding job, including Parry, who never rushes the music but lets it unfold naturally and comfortably.

Next, we get Reincarnations, choral compositions for mixed chorus by Samuel Barber (1910-1981), a work he completed in 1940, followed by several other Barber songs. Reincarnations comprise three "contemporary madrigals," in this case English adaptations of early Irish poetry. Then, there are musical selections adapted from the writing of other British poets, including Gerard Manley Hopkins, concluding with Barber's 1967 choral arrangement of his own very popular Adagio for Strings, set to the words of the "Agnus Dei." Under Parry and his Consort, they sound expressive and Romantic, qualities Barber would exhibit throughout his musical life.

Dunedin Consort
Lastly, we find more of Copland's compositions, Four Motets, written early in the composer's career, 1921, during his student days. Copland wouldn't allow their publication until fifty years after he wrote them, saying, "Perhaps people want to know what I was doing as a student. The style is not really yet mine." Nevertheless, they are quite lovely, joyful and pleasing, and the Dunedin Consort performs them lovingly.

Producer Ben Turner and producer-engineer Philip Hobbs recorded the music at Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh, UK in October 1999. Linn Records originally released the album in 2000 and rereleased it in 2014. Capturing the natural sound of the human voice, especially in chorus, is among the hardest things for a recording engineer to do. Often, vocals come off too bright, forward, hard, or edgy. Maybe that's OK for a pop album, where you simply want the soloist or backup singers to come across as clearly as possible, but it doesn't work as well for a classical album where listeners expect the sound to remind them of actual concert-hall experiences. Moreover, listeners are probably more aware of what human voices sound like in reality than they are of musical instruments. So if the vocal tones aren't quite right, they become glaring inconsistencies in a recording.

Happily, the folks at Linn get it mostly right. The voices, singly or in chorus, sound lifelike, smooth, rounded, yet detailed. There is not much brightness or edginess here except in a few of the loudest passages. A mild hall resonance adds to the accuracy of the presentation.

JJP

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


Labels: ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for your comment. It will be published after review.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

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

Contact Information

Readers with polite, courteous, helpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@gmail.com

Readers with impolite, discourteous, bitchy, whining, complaining, nasty, mean-spirited, unhelpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@recycle.bin.

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa