Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Monday, January 10, 2005

Dreams Within a Dream, Cary Boyce

Bloomington Chamber Singers, Gerald Sousa, conductor
Susan Swaney, soprano
The Lark Ascending, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Corey Cerovsek, violin
Aguavá New Music Studio

Few communities the size of Bloomington, Indiana are capable of pulling off a musical miracle as difficult as a first-rate premiere of a major new work for chorus and orchestra by a gifted young American composer but then few communities have a music school like Indiana University’s to draw from for voices and musicians. Cary Boyce’s Dreams Within A Dream, a magical new oratorio for soprano solo, chorus and orchestra, began life as a commission from an “amateur” singing group called the Bloomington Chamber Singers and was premiered and recorded in downtown Bloomington, with soprano Susan Swaney, conducted by Gerald Sousa, in the summer of 2003.

Boyce’s oratorio is a musical dreamscape, beginning with preparations for sleep that lead through a series of journeys deep into the veiled regions of the night until, ultimately, dawn emerges. The composer selected texts by poets Edgar Allan Poe, John Keats, Linda McKay Feldmann, W.B. Yeats, William Frances Bourdillon, Louise Bogan, St. John of the Cross and Pedro Calderon de la Barca, weaving a "dream" narrative that draws from many places and times. The result is a spellbinding portrait of the human mind at rest and the glimpses of love, loss, terror, death, and revelation that this suspended state offers into the human soul. As a bonus, the CD also contains a magnificent account of The Lark Ascending, one of Ralph Vaughan Williams' best-loved works from the first half of the 20th century, by violinist Corey Cerovsek.

Concerto for Violin, Op. 53, Antonin Dvorak
Piano Trio, Op. 65
Isabelle Faust, (violin), Jiri Belohlavek/Prague Philharmonia.
Harmonia Mundi

Does the world really need another recording of Dvorak’s friendly and familiar violin concerto? When the violinist is as good and insightful as Isabelle Faust, the answer is a definite yes. Faust’s energetic and polished playing, acompanied by Jiri Belohlavek and the Prague Philharmonia breathe new life into one of Dvorak’s sunnier compositions.
Faust, joined by cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and pianist Alexander Melnikov, strikes a much darker mood in Dvorák’s less familiar opus 65 piano trio. The pairing provides a unique opportunity to meet a great composer in two wildly opposite frames of mind. Faust is not simply one of those “trained freaks,” as Jacqueline du Pre used to refer herself, but a musician of consummate skill and insight.

posted by Jerry Bowles 1:28 AM