Volume 28 Issue 1 | September 20 - November 8, 2022

Samuel Adler – To Speak To Our TIme
Gloriae Dei Cantores; Richard K. Pugsley
Gloriae Die Cantores GDCD 066
(gdcrecordings.com/new-release-samueladler)
! With over 400
published works to
his name, Samuel
Adler is a composer
who is difficult
to fit into a single
category or niche.
This recording
focuses specifically
on Adler’s religious choral music and how the
composer’s versatility and wide-ranging style
take us on a journey blending contemporary
musical techniques with the influence of his
Jewish heritage.
Adler was born in Mannheim, Germany,
where his father was a highly respected
synagogue cantor and liturgical composer.
Within a year after the nationally orchestrated
pogrom known as Kristallnacht, the
Adler family emigrated to America, where the
elder Adler obtained a position as a cantor
in Massachusetts and Samuel began demonstrating
his musical talents. He became his
father’s choir director when he was only 13
and remained at that post until he began his
university studies. During that early period,
he began composing liturgical settings, at first
under his father’s influence and soon developing
his own style.
From the very beginning of this recording,
the opening A Hymn of Praise demonstrates
this Jewish influence, setting the text to a
traditional Yigdal melody commonly known
as the hymn tune LEONI. The remaining texts,
taken from the Psalms and Old Testament,
recount God’s goodness on the journey of
life and through the hills, valleys and mountaintop,
and every emotion from pain to joy,
disappointment to elation and sorrow to
hope. The musical settings of these texts are
a delight to the ears, wonderfully rich and
robust, and brought to life with energy and
joy by Gloriae Dei Cantores and their director
Richard K. Pugsley.
Matthew Whitfield
Juris Ābols – Xeniae
Latvian Radio Choir; Sigvards Klava
LMIC SKANI 140 (skani.lv)
! When encountering
a piece of
music for the first
time, the brain
begins searching
for general
thematic similarities:
is this like
Bach or Black
Sabbath; Monteverdi or Miles Davis? While
this “compare and contrast” method works
well for most music, occasionally a listener
is confronted by a single work that contains
such a vast synthesis of styles that it is both
disorienting and astonishing; such is the case
with Juris Ābols’ opera Xeniae.
From the very first movement of this opera,
we are introduced to a staggering tapestry of
eras and references, including early-Baroque
recitative accompanied by guitar and smooth
jazz. As improbable as this may seem, the
effect is both successful and addictive, for
as we make our way through this staggering
work, we can never guess what comes
next, and this propels us forward with eager
anticipation. There is, perhaps, no parallel
to Xeniae in the world of classical music, for
the breadth of material is simply too diverse,
and it is rather similar in a number of ways to
Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
What cannot be overstated is just how
impressive the performance of the Latvian
Radio Choir and its director Sigvards Kļava is
on this recording, especially considering that
the entire opera was recorded in the basement
of Kļava’s home. Although an unknown
name to many, Ābols makes a tremendous
impact with Xeniae, and proves that he is
one of the 21st century’s most eclectic and
exciting composers. This disc is highly recommended,
not only to those who favour classical
music, but to those who appreciate
any music, for there truly is something here
for everyone.
Matthew Whitfield
La Zingarella: Through Romany Songland
Isabel Bayrakdarian; Gryphon Trio;
Juan-Miguel Hernandez; Mark Fewer
Avie Records AV2506 (avie-records.com/
releases/la-zingarella-through-romanysongland)
! Gypsies,
Romanies, Zigeuner,
Gitans – however
they were named,
the peripatetic
people from north
India who entered
and traversed
Europe in medieval
times were everywhere scorned as mountebanks,
maligned as thieves. Nevertheless,
the wanderers’ music, with its exotic timbres,
vibrant rhythms and soulful melodies, has been
an enduring source of inspiration for innumerable
composers, including the 11 on this CD.
Multi-Juno-winning soprano Isabel
Bayrakdarian, singing here in German,
Czech, Spanish, French and English, is
joined by violinist Mark Fewer, violist Juan-
Miguel Hernandez and the Gryphon Trio
performing vigorous, freshly created instrumental
arrangements by Peter Tiefenbach and
John Greer.
Accounting for 15 of the disc’s 27 tracks
are two song-cycle masterworks known
in English as “Gypsy Songs” – Brahms’
Zigeunerlieder, Op.103 and Dvořák’s Cigánské
melodie, Op.55 (including the much-loved
Když mne stará matka – “Songs My Mother
Taught Me”). Three sassy, saucy Spanish songs
by Sebastián Iradier are especially ingratiating;
the third, El arreglito (Canción habanera),
was the tune Georges Bizet borrowed
and slightly modified for the CD’s following
track – the Habanera from Carmen!
Bayrakdarian is in fine voice and exuberant
high spirits for these mostly high-spirited
selections, yet poignant or sensuous when
appropriate. Songs by Franz Liszt, Joaquín
Valverde and Henry F.B. Gilbert, plus arias
from operettas by Maurice Yvain, Franz Lehár,
Emmerich Kálmán and Victor Herbert, all
reflect these composers’ admiration (not
“appropriation”) of a marginalized ethnic
minority’s distinctively spicy, rhapsodic
music. This exhilarating cross-cultural excursion
is enthusiastically recommended!
Michael Schulman
James Kallembach – Antigone
Lorelei Ensemble; Beth Willer
New Focus Recordings FCR331
(newfocusrecordings.com)
! James
Kallembach’s
Antigone relocates
Sophocles’ seminal
Athenian tragedy
to the landscape
of Nazi Germany.
His libretto draws
inspiration from the
tragic poetry found in Sophie Scholl’s diary.
Scholl, a member of the non-violent student
White Rose Movement was arrested and later
guillotined – along with her brother Hans –
by the Nazis in 1943.
Kallembach’s Antigone unfolds in the
impassioned struggle of the title character,
a woman determined to fight for the truth
amid tyranny. The struggle features Antigone
and Ismene locking proverbial horns with
their dictatorial uncle Creon. Kallembach’s
narrative seamlessly weaves the characters’
lives in and out of Athens into the warp
and weft of Nazi Germany. Members of the
Lorelei Ensemble create a shimmering luminosity
as they delicately vocalize the sisters and
the powerful voice of Creon. In particular,
Christina English, Sarah Brailey and Rebecca
Myers Hoke sing with enormous sensitivity,
superbly characterizing everyone from
the sensitive Ismene to the powerful Creon
and the tragic Antigone who is none other
than Scholl.
The Ensemble delivers this outstanding
libretto, directed by the sensitive yet firm
hand of Beth Willer. In particular the encounters
between Scholl and Lisa Remppis, with
words from the former’s diary entries, have a
pared-down style, particularly effective in the
vignettes from late March, 1942. The reading
of Scholl’s pamphlets is expertly melded into
the disturbing backdrop created by moaning
cellos. Something elegant and different
emerges after each hearing of this disc.
Raul da Gama
52 | September 20 - November 8, 2022 thewholenote.com