Victoria Clark / Maury Yeston: December Songs for Voice and Orchestra
PS Classics

As if Maury Yeston's dynamic tapestry December Songs isn't striking enough on its own terms, its parallels to Franz Schubert's 1827 song-cycle Winterreise (Winter Journey) imbue it with additional resonance. Consider: the latter's protagonist wanders through the countryside, taking in the ice-covered landscape and plunging ever deeper into despair; in Yeston's creation, a female figure undertakes a similar odyssey, though her journey is set in an urban, Manhattan-like setting, the snow-covered Central Park bridge on the album cover intimating as much. Further similarities arise, one example the parallel between the hurdy-gurdy-wielding beggarman in Schubert's closing “Der Leiermann” and the titular “Bookseller in the Rain” who arrives midway through Yeston's.

But as there are similarities, there are differences, one obvious one having to do with length: at about thirty-five minutes, December Songs is half the size of Winterreise, and its tidy ten songs are similarly dwarfed by Schubert's twenty-four. And while the journeys undertaken by the respective protagonists are equally episodic, the tone of Winterreise is darker than that of December Songs. Whereas Schubert's traveler seems on the brink of irrevocable despair, the ills Yeston's wounded wanderer wrestles with are serious but less ruinous.

Originally commissioned in 1991 by Carnegie Hall to celebrate its centennial, December Songs premiered in a vocals-and-piano arrangement but is presented on the PS Classics release in a grander orchestral form. Performed by renowned vocalist Victoria Clark and a thirty-seven-piece ensemble conducted by Ted Sperling, Yeston's work has never sounded more sumptuous thanks to Larry Hochman, who orchestrated the work at the composer's request. Clark doesn't merely sing Yeston's songs, she inhabits them completely. Thoughtfully pinpointing the emotional essence of each song, she consistently tailors her delivery to amplify the strengths of Yeston's writing.

The talent involved is impressive. Yeston won a Tony Award for Broadway's Titanic and another Tony plus two Drama Desk Awards for Nine. He's received multiple Oscar and Golden Globe nominations, composed material for the classical and ballet stages, and seen his music appear on a vast number of recordings. A Yale University graduate, author, and musicologist, Yeston was Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Music at Yale for eight years and has been the recipient of countless honours. Boasting appearances in plays, musicals, film, television, and on the concert stage, Clark's a seasoned Tony-winning vet who's starred onstage in Kimberly Akimbo, Titanic, Gigi, and The Light on the Piazza. Like him, she's a Yale University graduate and has served on the faculty at Yale University and as Artist-in-Residence at Pace University. Sperling and Hochman are also Tony Award winners.

Consistent with Yeston's panoramic command of musical styles and the broad emotional range of its material, December Songs straddles multiple worlds. Despair, longing, hope, regret, and resilience emerge over the course of the album, and elements of classical art song and cabaret converge in an exquisite rendering abundant in moments that are alternately intimate and epic. Clark recorded live with the orchestra in the studio, making for performances that feel fresh and alive.

Yeston structured the work beautifully in framing it with opening music that's reprised at the end. The mood at the outset of “December Snow” is downcast, with Yeston purposefully establishing a feeling of trauma at the work's start and the words sung by Clark clearly reflecting her downtrodden state (“Snow is falling all around / Falling everywhere / I walk through it all alone / You're no longer there”). As it does throughout the song cycle, Hochman's orchestration impresses for the grace of its expression and for how effectively it reinforces the shifting emotional terrain. Yeston, for example, was delighted by Hochman's choice of celeste and harp for the atmospheric opening part rather than the woodwinds and celeste the composer had suggested. Consider also how effectively the symphonic sweep of Hochman's arrangement for “By the River” reinforces the wide-screen scope of the song content. That sombre opening, by the way, gives way to an exuberant, theatrical second number, “Where Are You Now,” that in its own way sets a pattern for the mercurial emotional ride the protagonist will experience.

Things progress quickly, from the hesitation she feels when encountering her ex by chance (“Please Let's Not Even Say Hello”) to the rapture she recalls of their first meeting (“When Your Love Is New”) and the fondness with which she remembers better times (“I Had a Dream About You”). Solemnity sets in as she encounters the bookseller and after lifting her spirits with reveries about different characters and places returns to reality to declare herself a “closed book,” someone guarded and bruised. The work's greatest moment arrives seven songs in with “I Am Longing,” an almost unbearably poignant expression elevated by a magnificent melodic line. Supplicating in tone, the hymn-like setting conveys her desire with dramatic force, the gesture bolstered all the more by Clark's sensitive vocal delivery. Not long after, “What a Relief” brings the work to a well-earned close, the protagonist now wiser and looking to the future with hope (“Amazing to still be here / And what a relief”), even if the song ends with references to solemn moments from before (“So please let's not even say hello,” “Snow is falling all around / Falling everywhere”). The move's a reminder that, yes, new beginnings are always possible, but the past stays with us too.

February 2023