Dale Warland Singers
    Bernstein & Britten

* Britten: Rejoice in the Lamb
* Wertsch: Antiphon for God the Father
* Paulus: Pilgrims' Hymn
* Harlap: Bat Yiftach (Jephthah's Daughter)
* Albright: Kyrie from Chichester Mass
* Hovland: Gloria from Missa Misericordiae
* Rautavaara: Credo
* Albright: Agnus Dei from Chichester Mass
* Bernstein: Chichester Psalms

Soloists, Billmeyer (organ), Kienzle (harp), Johnson (percussion)
Dale Warland Singers/Dale Warland
Total Time: 66:33
American Choral Catalog 123

Summary for the Busy Executive: Wow.

Yet another winner from Dale Warland and his singers.  I have yet to
hear even a so-so performance from them.  I'd call them the best choral
group in the United States, except for the fact that I don't know every
group out there, but I will call them my favorite.  Warland has built a
choral instrument that does all the basics of choral singing - intonation,
diction, tonal beauty, ensemble, mastery of dynamics - as well as they
can be done.  Furthermore, he commits to a challenging repertoire, as you
can easily see from this CD's program.  Again and again, I found myself
comparing Warland's accounts to classic versions, something that's not
worth doing if the object of comparison is laughably worse.  If I gave
someone else an edge, it came mainly from "imprinting": rating something
high because you heard it first.  Nevertheless, Warland's performances
are all first-rate and beat out those of some much better-known names.

The program on this CD pleases me a lot: choral classics by Britten and
Bernstein mixed with the unusual and composers new to me.  It's all at
least attractive stuff and occasionally moving.  I liked best the mass
movements and Harlap's Bat Yiftach.  A native Canadian now an Israeli
citizen, Harlap provides what he calls a "mini-opera" and I call a cantata.
Certainly, the story drips with drama - a counterpart to the Sacrifice of
Isaac, except that, since it's a girl, there's no happy ending.  Also, God
commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.  Jephthah decides to sacrifice the
first person to greet him after he wins a battle; it happens to be his
daughter.  The subject is really a natural for opera, but I know of no
actual examples, though there's a wonderful symphony by Toch inspired by
the story (Albany Records TROY021-2).  Although Harlap gives us no opera,
he does generate very powerful music.  From opening wide leaps on the
french horn accompanied by open fifths in the voices, to motor rhythms
and canonic fragments (which reminded me of Ginastera's Lamentations of
Jeremiah), Harlap conjures up the harsh might of the Old Testament.  The
lyrical sections mainly evoke Jewish cantorial chant.  I can't pin down
the idiom.  Harlap has absorbed many sources, mostly neo-classical, but
the sources don't get in the way of individual expression.  Ten minutes of
in effect a cappella singing (the chorus functions as an "orchestral base"
supporting the vocal soloists and the horn), the work poses massive pitch
problems, particularly when choir and horn must match tones after extended
solo sections.  The horn keeps everybody honest in their intonation.
Furthermore, Warland sustains narrative interest throughout.

People probably know William Albright best as an organist and as a
champion of ragtime and stride, but he composed for a variety of forces
and in many genres.  I particularly admired his performances of J. P.
Johnson's stride pieces, boogie-woogie, and of his own works for organ.
Before this time, I'd never heard any of his a cappella choral music.
The movements from his Chichester Mass, written for the same cathedral as
Bernstein's work, use dense, modally-based chords with fleecy, cloud-like
dissonances.  There's a great tenderness to both works.  As one who spent
a good deal of time in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Albright's home, I actually
knew him to speak to and heard many things that haven't been recorded but
should be, including some wonderful theater music provided for local
productions.  Albright's death in 1998 (he had reached his early 50s)
shocked many of us not only with the surprise of it but with the
realization that we'd hear no more from him as performer or composer.

Norwegian composer Egil Hovland's "Gloria" and the Finn Einojuhani
Rautavaara's "Credo" use a similar language, heavily dependent on
rhythmic accompanying figures.  Both unsettle you emotionally.  The
excellent liner notes to the album describe the Hovland as "urgent music
which seems to speak more of humanity's need to praise than the Creator's
praiseworthiness." Rautavaara's work sparked an awareness of Finnish
composers later than Sibelius but of Baltic composers generally.
Rautavaara uses contemporary techniques with a classic Modernist sense
of cohesion.  He has produced music in so many different idioms, one can
tell a Rautavaara piece only with difficulty.  The unity of his work seems
more an emotional one - usually dark and intense.  Certainly, that's the
case here with his standalone "Credo." It tells of the fragility and the
nerve of faith.  Warland's singers keep up the rhythmic propulsion of both
Gloria and Credo, without pounding or over-insistence.

The two "star" works, written almost twenty-five years apart, share a link
with their commissioner - Dr.  Walter Hussey, who became Dean of Chichester
Cathedral.  I don't know of Hussey's other commissions, but he certainly
struck gold here, because he knew whom to ask.  Britten's Rejoice in the
Lamb, based on the composer's excerpts from a long poem by the 18th-century
"mad poet" Christopher Smart, shows Britten's literary sophistication,
among other things.  Not all that familiar to readers of the Forties,
Smart's madness consisted of religious mania.  He loved God to the point
where he would insist that passers-by on the street would get down on their
knees and pray with him.  He was committed on at least three occasions to
an asylum, which probably didn't help him any.  Samuel Johnson, coming to
the poet's defense, remarked that he would sooner pray with Kit Smart as
anyone else.  Smart's Jubilate Agno mixes daring imagery with at times mere
babble.  Some of it is incoherent as well as crazy.  Britten not only chose
well but organized the texts into a thematic progression.  His work begins
with a general praise to God, moves to Biblical figures praising God, to
animals praising God, to the flowers praising God, to even Christopher
Smart in his prison darkness praising God, to the letters of the alphabet,
to musical instruments.  Britten's music comes from, for me, his most
sheerly beautiful period, the early to mid-Forties, which also saw Ceremony
of Carols and the Festival Te Deum.  Just about everything he produced at
this time counts among the wonders of music, and Rejoice in the Lamb is
no exception.  It runs to several brief sections with opportunities for
chorus, soprano (here a male soprano), alto, tenor, and bass soloists,
and a kick-butt part for the organ.  My favorite part is the tenor solo:

  For the flowers are great blessings
  For the flowers have their angels even the words of God's Creation.
  For the flower glorifies God and the root parries the adversary.
  For there is a language of flowers.
  For flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ.

Words and music come together here to an effect greater than either of
them alone.  What Britten does with the word "peculiarly" you must hear
to believe.

My two favorite recordings heretofore were those conducted by George
Guest for British Decca and by Robert Shaw with his Chorale for RCA.
Philip Ledger's recent account on EMI disappoints big-time - clunky,
stodgy, no juice, despite the addition of percussion in the composer's
own arrangement.  Warland's choir takes a back seat to none of these, but
the soloists are weaker.  Shaw had the most exciting and rhythmically
buoyant account as well as the best soloists: Saramae Endich, Florence
Kopleff, Jon Humphrey, Raymond Murcell.  Guest had the advantage of the
British choral sound in a British work.  But for the soloists, Warland's
would have been my favorite recording.  As it stands, his choir surpasses
the Robert Shaw Chorale in its prime.

During his life, Bernstein suffered the dismissal of those who had
little idea of how a good deal of American art works.  Even now, I've
read clueless accounts of Bernstein's music, typified by the liner notes
to Cleobury's CD with King's College of Chichester Psalms.  The writer
deplores the mingling of vernacular idioms with hoch Kultur, as if one
contaminated the other.  Most American art - at least in this century -
carries on a dialogue with pop and folk.  This happens from at least
Whitman on.  One can also argue that the best of our pop has nothing to
apologize for.  If Schubert's "Wohin" is a great song, so is Ellington's
"Don't Get Around Much Any More." If Saint Joan is great drama, then so
is John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and one doesn't need to
invoke a different, easier set of criteria to hold that point of view.
Certainly Dean Hussey understood this when he wrote to Bernstein, "I think
many of us would be very delighted if there was a hint of West Side Story
about the music." Bernstein obliged, even to the point of rewriting a
discarded chorus from the musical for the psalm "Why do the nations rage."
The Chichester Psalms count as one of Bernstein's finest works and as a
major addition to twentieth-century choral music.  I think both Bernstein's
accounts (on Sony and Deutsche Grammophon) authoritative.  Shaw on Telarc
is quite fine and has a neat coupling of Bernstein's Missa Brevis, adapted
by the composer from his "Latin choruses" for The Lark.  The problem comes
with the soloists.  Bernstein specified a boy soprano for the second
movement, a setting of Psalms 23 and 2.  Shaw uses Derek Lee Ragin, and I
don't complain.  Warland also resorts to a male soprano, and it satisfies
me less.  Ragin's unearthly beauty of sound makes me forget the maturity of
the voice.  Warland's soloist is quite good, but I keep wondering whether
he's a bit too old for the part.  Again, the choral work is the strongest
part of Warland's performance.  The canons during the "nations' rage" of
the second movement come out far more cleanly than in any other recorded
version I've heard, including the composer's.  However, I think Warland's
interpretation a bit too restrained, though nowhere near the bland
Cleobury's.  The Warland Singers' exciting way with consonants helps,
as does a razor-sharp percussion player.  Bernstein had an electric and
electrifying personality and it comes through like gangbusters in his
music.  You've got to commit to it and risk excess.  Warland may be simply
too tasteful, unfortunately.

The sound improves on earlier Warland CDS, ever since they switched
recording halls - more warmth at the University of St. Thomas (St. Paul,
Minnesota) chapel.  Despite my reservations on the Bernstein, this is one
beautiful disc, and I recommend it highly.

Steve Schwartz