1991

{CD}

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Charles Ives was an extraordinary song-writer, capable of transcending the personal allusions that pepper his texts to produce settings of unusual poignancy and sensitivity. To be heard at their best, these pieces call for an American singer with a fine technique, excellent diction, a quite demeanour and impeccable tuning. All these qualities Jan DeGaetani possesses, and her selection of nine songs is most beautifully performed. Rubbing shoulders with the limpid early "Songs my mother taught me" and the delicate "Two Little Flowers" of 1921 are more famous manifestations of modernism such as "The See'r" and that elusive smudge of colour, "Afterglow"; but to my mind the climax of the recital is "Tom Sails Away", a gentle, subtle song that speaks of nostalgia and familial love in the delicate, wistful manner that singles out the very best of Ives's music.
   George Crumb's song-cycle Apparition of 1979, which is dedicated to DeGaetani and her accompanist Gilbert Kalish, attempts more and achieves rather less. Crumb's texts here come from Whitman, and are concerned with the experience of death, a theme that is rarely far from Crumb's vocal pieces. Characteristic too is the way in which his music relies upon onomatopoeic devices, primitive sounds and ecstatic melismas that set out to suggest ritual and mystery. Alternating with the songs proper are textless vocalises for the soprano; and the whole cycle is accompanied by a piano whose interior has been bugged in such a way that plucking, strumming and drumming of the strings by hand becomes readily audible to the audience at large. As so often with Crumb, the effect is primarily sensuous and evocative by intention, arguably shallow and strangely unmoving in overall effect. Certainly the composer has penetrated far less deeply into the interior of his texts than does Ives, a point that the juxtaposition of their songs on this record makes painfully obvious. Buy it, then, for DeGaetani's splendid interpretations of the Ives works; and incidentally, I was unlucky with my pressing, which was sub-standard.