The New American Art Song is a CD of, unsurprisingly, American art songs. Canadian bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch is accompanied by the composers in four contrasting sets. The first set is Quiet Lives by Ricky Ian Gordon; eight songs setting texts by various poets. The music is tonal with occasional elements of minimalism but overall a bit of a retro “piano lounge” feel that didn’t particularly excite me.
Second up were two songs, Of Gods and Cats, by Jake Heggie to texts by Gavin Geoffrey Gillard. These are sly, witty, jazzy and much more contemporary sounding. Much more musically inventive too. It’s easy to see why Heggie is in the upper tier of contemporary American composers. The disc also has a bonus Heggie song; a setting of Browning’s Grow Old Along With Me, that I really liked.
Italian is still the most common language with 30% of recordings but German has moved up relatively from 24% to 27%. Perhaps surprisingly the proportion of recordings in English has hardly changed at all at 13%. I would have thought that the proportion of contemporary works, many/most in English would have impacted the stats more.
Last night at Gallery 345 Rachel Fenlon gave a preview performance of her new one woman show Fenlon & Fenlon:Liebesbotschaft. It’s a program of fifteen more or less well known Schubert lieder put together to create some kind of thematic arc around love and loss and redemption. There’s scarcely a Bächlein to be seen. The USP, of course, is that Rachel accompanies herself on the piano.
It’s that quiet time of year but this week there’s a bit of an unexpected bonus. Canadian soprano Rachel Fenlon, usually based in Berlin, is giving a somewhat unusual recital at Gallery 345 at 8pm on Friday. It’s a recital of Schubert songs in which she accompanies herself at the piano. Rachel is an accomplished pianist and could have chosen a solo career on that instrument rather than singing. Since there isn’t a Schubert cycle written specifically for female voice she’s curated one for herself and called it Liebesbotschaft. I don’t know if the manner of performance would have been common in Schubert’s day but surely not unheard of. Anyway, it should be fun. It’s also a preview of sorts as Rachel plans to tour this program in Europe.
The Royal Conservatory announced the concert line up for the 2016/17 season last night. As usual it’s a very eclectic mix with over 100 concerts in a rather staggering variety of genres. The one loose them is the Canada Sesquicentennial with 70% or so of the line up having some CanCon. Here are the highlights for the classical vocal music fan.
This review first appeared in the print edition of 
I had a curious operatic experience recently. I was listening to a CD recording of a new American opera; Cold Mountain to be precise, and it’s sung in rather distinct southern American tones. In fact, so much so that a different accent is given to the black character (I only recall one). I’m really not sure how I feel about this. Generally, I think, there’s a “standard” operatic version of each of the major opera languages and it’s usually only departed from for comic effect. Ochs’ rustic accent in Der Rosenkavalier being a case in point. I think I’d be surprised, maybe even shocked, to hear Peter Grimes sung in a Suffolk burr or Die Meistersinger in deepest Bavarian. Even Jake Heggie’s Moby Dick is sung in standard operatic English with a nary a New England “a” in earshot, at least in the SFO production. So why would anyone choose to break this convention for Cold Mountain? I’m really quite curious to canvass opinion on this. Do please share your thoughts in comments.
