COMPOSERS: Higdon,Scriabin,Singleton
LABELS: Telarc
WORKS: Higdon: The Singing Rooms; Singleton: Praisemaker; Scriabin: Poem of Ecstasy
PERFORMER: Jennifer Koh (violin); Atlanta Chorus & SO/Robert Spano
CATALOGUE NO: CD-80721
Robert Shaw’s legacy in Atlanta of choral excellence is evident in these two premieres of works by composers with strong connections to that city’s symphony and chorus.
For The Singing Rooms, Jennifer Higdon set a group of poems by Jeanne Minahan that seemed to the composer ‘lessons in life arranged like different rooms within a house,’ while Alvin Singleton’s PraiseMaker sets a ‘universal, secular, and celebratory’ poem by Susan Kougell.
His language, harmonically and texturally sparse, is quite appropriate for Kourgell’s philosophical musings to whose rhythms and structures his music is intimately wedded. Higdon, however, often lets the poems take a backseat to the concerto-like solo violin part (beautifully played by Jennifer Koh), resulting in a lavishness of musical gesture occasionally at odds with the intimate subject matter.
Scriabin’s purely orchestral poem is a fine companion here; Robert Spano focuses on forward motion and lucid textures – no mean feat in a work whose essentially static nature can often sag. I prefer the riper sound and finely judged flexibility of pulse Valery Gergiev offers (on Philips), but I also appreciate how Spano’s crisper approach places the Russian more in the European mainstream of Debussy and early Schoenberg. Howard Goldstein