PORTRAITS and ELEGIES Frank Almond (vn); Brian Zeger (pn) 1 INNOVA 763 (58:54)
LASSER Vocalise. Berceuse Fantastique. ROREM from Day and Night Music. LIEBERSON Elegy. PLATT Autumn Music.
I’ve had this lovely CD for a few months now, and have returned to it several times. Some readers familiar with my tastes might not expect me to laud it, but I’ve taken great pleasure for 1) the quality of the performance, 2) the similarly high quality of the music, and 3) the distinct point-of-view in the program.
That stance is an advocacy of music that is deeply lyrical, fundamentally tonal (though in various degrees and directions), and above all, influenced by an Impressionist aesthetic and legacy. The clearest embodiment of all three is the opening two work on the program, two movements by Philip Lasser (b.1963). He writes a music that easily could be mistaken for recently recovered works from Paris c.1880. (Personally I think a bit more of Fauré than Debussy.) What keeps it from being a cheap knockoff is that the tunes are also memorable, the harmonies always intriguing and rich, and the attitude utterly sincere and unironic. Overall it sticks in my memory.
Ned Rorem (b.1923) of course needs no introduction here. His instrumental music has always been similar to his vocal output, at least formally. Most of non-vocal pieces I know are strings of miniatures, rather like song cycles, and this set of selections from the album Day and Night Music fits that mold. An important distinction, though, is that Rorem here does not just write “songs without words.” The pieces are not only quite idiomatic for their instruments, but also suitably “abstract” where needed, i.e. a particular motive or gesture can give focus in way analogous to, but not the same as, a memorable tune.
Peter Lieberson’s (1946) Elegy is very much in his “Romantic” voice, more similar to the song cycles he wrote for his late wife Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson than the spikier modernist pieces such as his piano concertos. Like Rorem, his romanticism is tempered by an awareness of the chromatic advances made by modernism, without giving up on a deep lyric impulse. Russell Platt’s (b. 1965) Autumn Music is in two movements, and the first is similarly more “advanced”, but the second becomes a rapturous Brahmsian chaconne whose invention is up to its model. According to the composer’s notes, the piece has been excised from his Piano Sonata, dropping the original first movement. I find it a successful operation; the pairing works as a complementary call-and-response.
Almond and Zeger play this music with warmth and soul; it obviously fits their tastes and personalities. Almond has a Strad, and its full-throated voice is a sensual delight. The flow of the pieces in the program is sophisticated and satisfying. This is one of the best examples of a valid neo-romantic (or is it neo-impressionist? well, who really cares?) approach I’ve heard in a long time.
Robert Carl