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Fanfare

I have enjoyed previous offerings by Aylish Kerrigan: her championship of Schoenberg’s Das Buch des hängenden Gärten is particularly notable (Fanfare 40:6).

The Ives songs are magical, illuminated by Kerrigan’s interaction with the text. (“O could it be, could it be! O could it me she smiled on me!” she sings, breathlessly at first; and how the music and her delivery turn when later there is “Another man with Sally.”) The sheer brevity of The Side Show (a mere 44 seconds) enables this ditty about a Mr. Riley to make full effect. In contrast, the mysterious song Old Home Day cites Virgil.

Those sudden veerings to the musical vernacular so characteristic of Ives are heard in all their glory in Old Home Day (complete with an imitation penny whistle played on the piccolo, courtesy of William Dowdall), while we hear Ives’s melancholic take on At the River as a stand-alone. The sudden contrasts of Walking are well delineated, as funeral moves suddenly to dance. There are surprises galore: the delicious curtailment of Maple Leaves; the spoken exclamation of “(Broadway!)”—the parentheses are those of Maurice Morris’s poem; the sudden or the fluid tempo of The Circus Band. There is also beauty: the piano opening to Afterglow, for instance. Ives’s very particular form of Sprechgesang is heard in Charlie Rutlage, with the piano providing the drama beneath.

Moving to maverick composer Henry Cowell, whose relationship with Ives was rather on-and-off, Kerrigan presents some 13 songs (out of an output of over 180). The series begins, though, with a piano solo, Tides of Manaunaun, with its heavy tread of tone clusters. The title refers to an Irish mythical sea god, and the sounds we hear from the piano reflect a majesty that, while tied to an on¬ward tread, somehow seems simultaneously outside of time, distanced from our physical experiences. The sheer sensual beauty of St. Agnes’ Morning offers high contrast, as a virgin dreams of her lover the night before marriage. The song The Dream Bridge is actually the title of this present disc, representing in Kerrigan’s eyes the “dark but hopeful dream bridge between Ives and Cowell”; it reveals an awakening from depression, and holds some beautiful consonances. Stylistically, Cowell seems to have a wide remit, as April utilizes rich, warm harmonies that are most definitely tonally- based; the sinewy voice lines, disjunct gestures, and celestial upper-register piano of Where She Lies emerge in high contrast, a reflection of the enigmatic side of Cowell.

A more identifiably Schoenbergian Sprechgesang emerges in the song How Old Is Song? Where the piano strings themselves form the elusive, enigmatic backdrop. Mouse and cat (as opposed to cat and mouse) form the basis of two songs that form a rather nice pair, Mice Lament’s humor (portrayed in Cowell’s sparse terms) moves to the sprightly Because the Cat. Impressionist orientalism informs the musical surface in the first of the Three Songs of Padraic Colum, a depiction of a crane (the bird, that is). One could easily imagine a Japanese print. It is only the second song, “I heard in the night,” that offers a solo flute as musical partner for the voice; suddenly the rug is pulled out and the music floats, magically, with the expressive instrumental voice of William Dowdall. Finally, for the trio of songs, “Night Flier” brilliantly and poignantly summons up a nocturnal scene, including moments that perhaps reference “Nacht” from Pierrot Lunaire in spirit. The piano solo Aeolian Harp is exclusively performed on the piano’s inner strings, as poignant an ending as could be imagined.

The discographical value here is concentrated on the Cowell songs, and while there is some overlap with Mary Ann Hart’s Albany disc (reviewed by James H. North in Fanfare 22:4), the two collections complement each other, and it is to there that the interested reader should perhaps head next. With Ives the choice is wider, and Naxos has recorded the complete songs over several vol¬umes; elsewhere, Gerald Finley and Thomas Hampson are notable interpreters. But Kerrigan’s brilliant coupling has its own value, offering its own unique experience. Recorded well and with excel¬lent documentation, it comes highly recommended. The sheer variety of expression held within the 29 songs on this disc is huge, while the remaining two tracks for piano act as a spur to explore that side of Cowell too.
Colin Clarke