What She Saw is a new album of vocal music by New York composer Douglas Anderson. There are two works on the record. There’s a cycle of eleven Cassandra Songs for mezzo-soprano and piano and a monodrama for mezzo-soprano, piano and percussion called Through/In.
The Cassandra Songs each set an episode in Cassandra’s life dwelling, inevitably, on the “always right but never believed” motif and the ill treatment that gets her. The texts, by Andrew Joffe, are really rather good and they get a somewhat atonal setting; especially in the piano line. The vocal style varies from conversational to declamatory. The settings are actually quite varied though very much in the same sound world. It’s well performed by mezzo-soprano Rachel Arky and pianist Elizabeth Rodgers. The recording. was made in 2023 at Martin Patrych Memorial Studios in the Bronx an it’s clean and well balanced.
operaramblings 