The Listener’s Gallery
2021; Routledge; Volume: 78; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.53830/addo4946
ISSN2769-4046
Autores Tópico(s)Diverse Musicological Studies
ResumoThe Listener's Gallery Gregory Berg (bio) Birds of Love and Prey: Song Cycles by Eric Kitchen, Andrew Earle Simpson, Gabriel Thibaudeau. Deborah Sternberg, soprano; Andrew Earle Simpson, Mark Vogel, piano. (Naxos 8.579064; 61:09) Andrew Earle Simpson: Birds of Love and Prey: "Prologue—Bird Cadenza," "O Beloved Nightingale," "The Tit and the Lovebird," "The Eagle," "Night Interlude," "The Owl and the Nightingale," "The Turtle Dove," "Blest are the Birds on the Wing." Eric Kitchen: The Olney Avian Verse of William Cowper: "The Faithful Bird," "To the Nightingale," "On the Swallow," "Sparrows SelfDomesticated," "Invitation to the Redbreast." Gabriel Thibaudeau: Cycle Avicellus: "De ton perchoir," "Blanc harfang," "Ils partent," "Envoi." Planet earth is home to approximately fifty billion birds representing some ten thousand different species, ranging from the tiny hummingbird to the intimidating ostrich. That means that there are roughly six birds to every human being, which makes it all but impossible to imagine the world without them. Birds have served as potent inspiration to artists and musicians of every kind over the centuries, whether for their lovely appearance, astonishing agility, or the singing in which so many of them engage. Countless art songs over the years have been inspired by birds, but surprisingly few recordings have been crafted around this theme. Soprano Deborah Sternberg's Birds of Love and Prey is one of the newest such programs, and it is as fine as any of its predecessors. The genesis of this project, according to Sternberg's program notes, was when a friend of hers, composer Eric Kitchen, shared with her a set of songs he composed back in 2000 for his daughter: The Olney Avian Verse of William Cowper. Kitchen, who has composed several works specifically for Sternberg, obviously had a clear understanding of her voice and knew that these earlier songs, which had yet to be publicly performed, would suit her perfectly. After learning and falling in love with the work, Sternberg knew that she had the start of an exciting project of avian themed art songs. From there she approached composer Andrew Earle Simpson, who happily responded to Sternberg's request with the work that gives this recording its title. It was at Simpson's suggestion that Sternberg contacted Canadian composer Gerald Thibaudeau, whose Cycles Avicellus completes this marvelous project. Kitchen's set of five songs features the poetry of Englishman William Cowper (1731–1800), who is probably most famous for a passage from his 1779 hymn, "Light Shining out of Darkness": God moves in a mysterious way,His wonders to perform.He plants His footsteps in the seaAnd rides upon the storm. Cowper was also a vigorous abolitionist, and Martin Luther King would often quote Cowper's poem, "The Negro's Complaint," more than 170 years after it was penned. More to the point, Cowper wrote some of the most compelling poetry of his day that described otherwise ordinary scenes from the English countryside, but with a poetic flourish that made them seem anything but ordinary. These five avian themed poems are a perfect example of this, and Kitchen matches their rhapsodic exuberance with a neoromantic approach that suits these texts perfectly. The composer tells us in the notes about this work that he actually attempted to base some of his harmonic language on actual birdsongs. Regardless of the extent to which he succeeded, these songs are thoroughly engaging and unfailingly beautiful. The title work of this disk, Birds of Love and Prey, is a fascinating piece by Andrew Earle Simpson, who has won great renown not only as a capable composer in many genres, but also as one of the country's best known silent film accompanists and an exceptionally gifted improviser. This song cycle features an amazing array of colors and moods in settings of texts by Keats, Tennyson, Aristophanes, and Barbier, plus several anonymous texts as well as two "bird cadenzas" in which the "words" consist solely of "Ee, yakakaee!" Simpson's harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic language is by far the most modern that we hear on this disk, and it serves the wide ranging themes and moods of this work very effectively. The initial sequence of songs serves notice of what...
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