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Fanfare

Someone somewhere must be spending a great deal of time researching music for cello and piano by women composers. In this same issue of Fanfare I am reviewing A Cello Galaxy of British Women Composers as well as this collection by women of diverse nationalities. Both releases are on the same label, Divine Art. This one is titled In the Mirror: Music by Women Composers, and where A Cello Galaxy consists of music in a Romantic or late Romantic style, much of it in the British pastoral tradition, In the Mirror is more modern, though not particularly adventurous.

Cellist Heather Tuach and pianist Yoko Misumi put this program together wanting to emphasize its “soothing and contemplative qualities.” In a personal note Misumi writes about a cancer diagnosis in 2021 that put her career on hold as she underwent treatment. Her recovery allowed her to resume both her music career and her role as a mother. The music here is the music she and Tuach concentrated on after that traumatic experience, with its focus, as Misumi writes, on calmness and peace.

The composers represented here come from the U.S. (Montgomery and Higdon), England (Johnson, Hubicki, Maconchy, and Parkin), Canada (Coulthard and Morlock), Bulgaria (Tabakova), Estonia (Mägi), Germany (Heller), and France (Boulanger), which insures a variety of musical voices. The longest piece, at 12 minutes, is In the Mirror by Liz Dolnot Johnson, which is the album’s title work. Two of its four movements were originally composed for chorus: they were arranged for this program by the composer.

Two of the strongest pieces here are Jennifer Higdon’s exquisite Nocturne, which starts quietly, rises to an emotional climax, then retreats back into silence, and Jessie Montgomery’s Peace, which involves her personal struggle to come to terms with sadness. Candidly, although everything on the program is worth hearing, as an overall experience I found its lack of variety wearing. By the time I was halfway through, I found myself longing for the contrast of a spirited Allegro. A better way to experience this program is to listen to a few pieces at any one sitting.

There is a single upbeat work: the third of Nadia Boulanger’s Trois pièces, a vigorous dance marked Vite et nerveusement rythmé. It comes as the last of 18 tracks, and offers relief from the near stasis that preceded it.

The performances are strong, the recorded sound is natural, the program notes are helpful. There is not a single work that I was not glad to encounter, and I will return in the future, only not at one sitting.