Boyd Meets Girl: Songs of Love & Despair
Sono Luminus

There's something for everyone on Boyd Meets Girl's sophomore album, but that less reflects a cynical ploy to maximize sales than genuine affection on the part of Australian guitarist Rupert Boyd and American cellist Laura Metcalf for a broad range of music. In fact, the eclecticism of Songs of Love & Despair was already apparent in 2016 when the NYC-based married couple's self-titled debut featured Michael Jackson's “Human Nature” alongside Bach, Piazzolla, Pärt, and Fauré. If anything, the new set pushes this to the next level in coupling pieces by Radiohead, The Beatles, and Beyoncé with ones by Debussy, Messiaen, Boccherini, Schubert, and Florence Price. The duo also works Robert Beaser's Mountain Songs into the programme as well as world premiere recordings of Marián Budoš's A New York Minute and Paul Brantley's Filles de l'Élysée.

Having been conceived, rehearsed, and recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, the release naturally reflects the extremes of emotion the duo experienced, even if they, unlike many of their musical counterparts, could still play together during periods of lockdown and isolation; they did, however, see their usual performing lives derailed by the pandemic's onset. Spanning three centuries, the selections deal with love and joy but also loss and heartbreak, with some material arranged by others and some the duo, including the pieces by Radiohead, Price, Beyoncé, and Debussy.

The latter's Arabesque No. 1 was chosen after Metcalf heard pianist Hélène Grimaud's version and was inspired to create a Boyd Meets Girl arrangement. It's easy to understand why: the music uplifts with its rippling guitar embroidery and soaring cello melodies. As is the case here, Metcalf's is generally the lead voice on the album—a smart move given the vocal-like character of her expression. The entire spectrum of emotional experience is communicated through her playing, and Songs of Love & Despair is all the better for it. If Boyd assumes something of a supporting role, his playing is no less impressive, and his flawless voicings provide an unerring ground for his partner. Witness, for example, the sparkling backdrop Boyd establishes for her in their excellent rendering of Schubert's Gretchen am Spinnrade, the lyrical material written, amazingly, when the composer was but seventeen years old and the guitar part designed to suggest Gretchen's incessantly spinning wheel.

Though he's Slovakian-born and Australian-based, Budoš conveys NYC at its best in his sunny A New York Minute, a life-affirming celebration of the city's vitality; the album's other world premiere recording, Brantley's exuberant Filles de l'Élysée, likewise exudes joie de vivre. Inhabiting the more solemn end of the spectrum is Price's The Deserted Garden, an intimate expression she wrote for violin and piano in 1933. From Beyoncé's Lemonade comes the duo's dignified treatment of “Pray You Catch Me,” which lends itself seamlessly to a chamber music arrangement and is rendered all the more alluring through the inclusion of vocal textures by the duo.

A poignant Appalachian folk dimension infuses the album via Mountain Songs by New York composer Beaser. Originally scored for flute and guitar and newly adapted by the group, the songs—four from the original eight—are some of the album's most affecting, with the tender opener “Barbara Allen” heartbreaking in conveying the unrequited love a dying young man has for a woman; moving too are sensitive readings of “He's Gone Away” and “Hush You Bye.” The duo's classical bona fides are well-accounted for in graceful presentations of Boccherini's Sonata in A major, which segues from a stirring “Adagio” to stately “Allegro moderato,” and the “Praise to the Eternity of Jesus” movement from the Quartet for the End of Time. Originally arranged for cello and piano, Messiaen's meditative material is no less mesmerizing when treated to a singing, vibrato-rich performance by Boyd Meets Girl.

April 2022