Recordings recall fine Somers days
William Littler
CLASSICAL REVIEWS
MONICA WHICHER, KRISZTINA SZABO, MICHAEL COLVIN
Singing Somers Theatre (Centrediscs)
Has there ever been a more high-powered Canadian
record launch than the one that took place Monday at the Windsor
Arms? The Governor General herself turned up to pay tribute to
her late friend, the Toronto composer Harry Somers, who died two
years ago.
Singing Somers Theatre is one of three Canadian
Music Centre Centrediscs CDs launched on that occasion, all of
them devoted to the vocal music of the man Deputy Prime Minister
Herb Grey characterized as "one of Canada's greatest composers.''
Other CDs, devoted to Somers' instrumental and operatic
music, will follow, as part of a series collectively labelled
(by Somers' widow, actress Barbara Chilcott) as A Window On Somers.
If they maintain the standard set by the first three, no Canadian
composer will have been better served on records.
Like Richard Strauss, Somers wrote with a special
feeling for the female voice. Listen to Monica Whicher's rendition
of The Skylark or The Visitor, each less than two minutes long,
sparely accompanied by flute, piano and cello, and you will hear
how he consistently took the voice where it would sound most effective.
This CD includes 17 of Somers' theatre songs, including
the celebrated Cree lullaby Kuyas from his landmark opera Louis
Riel, another of Whicher's interpretive triumphs. Don't miss the
witty meows and porcine oinks in his rhythmically spikey setting
of The Owl And The Pussycat, either.
BEN HEPPNER, VALDINE ANDERSON, JEAN STILWELL
Songs From The Heart Of Somers (Centrediscs)
Quite a coup, securing the services of Canada's
foremost tenor to sing four of the 15 songs on this CD, and Ben
Heppner performs them admirably. But it is soprano Valdine Anderson
to whom the most substantial items fall, the nine-and-a-half-minute
Shaman's Song and the 14-minute Love-In-Idleness.
Never a composer to waste notes, much of the time
Somers reduces the piano accompaniment in Shaman's Song to a spare
assortment of isolated struck and plucked notes in the low bass,
treating the piano almost as a native percussion instrument, heightening
the profile of the voice and giving it the freedom to soar.
A lover of words, he respected them too much to
want to cover them with a molasses of musical sounds. And in John
Hess, his songs have a piano accompanist who knows just how to
make the spare keyboard gestures count.
THE ELMER ISELER SINGERS
The Glorious Sounds Of Somers (Centrediscs)
Harry Somers knew how to achieve a grand effect
through economical means. Listen to the two fanfare trumpets and
organ supporting the Elmer Iseler Singers in the original setting
of Gloria. Giovanni Gabrieli himself would surely have been impressed.
Listen also to the way he uses mob cries, spoken
words and a truly pounding percussion accompaniment to create
a mounting sense of tension in Crucifixion, a score commissioned
by Vincent Tovell for a CBC television Easter special in 1966.
The whole score, complete with wonderfully effective
choral sighs, lasts just over seven minutes, yet as Larry Lake
explains in the accompanying program notes (all the albums contain
helpful notes) Somers has managed to pack into them the entire
drama of Christ's crucifixion.
The late Elmer Iseler was a major champion of Somers'
music; no vocal ensemble could have been more appropriately chosen
to perform Crucifixion and the other choral pieces than the Elmer
Iseler Singers, under the direction of Lydia Adams.
back to Window
on Somers
|
