Stephen Powell: American Composers At Play
Acis

Stephen Powell: Why Do the Nations
Acis

After building a reputation as a first-rank baritone in opera companies and orchestras around the world, Stephen Powell released his debut recital album in late 2020 and recently an equally laudable follow-up. Both are deeply personal collections, the Grammy-nominated debut presenting him alongside four American composers whose material he performs and the second a globe-spanning set of songs from eleven nations that features Powell accompanying himself on piano. While neither is a political recording in the direct sense, an underlying political dimension is implicit in each case, the first for reminding us of the greatness that American artists are capable of achieving, even during the most challenging of times, and the second for emphasizing the bonds shared by the different peoples of the earth.

Many things make American Composers At Play special. First, there's the fact that the piano accompanists are the composers, with Lori Laitman (b. 1955), Ricky Ian Gordon (b. 1956), John Musto (b. 1954), and William Bolcom (b. 1938) each, naturally, appearing on their own pieces. That not only lends the performances additional resonance, it also allowed Powell to consult with each in his attempt to produce definitive interpretations of their compositions. Second, in some arrangements, piano is either replaced or augmented by guitar (Jason Vieaux), clarinet (Charles Neidich), and strings (Attacca Quartet), the result an even more enticing presentation. There's the vocal artistry of Powell himself, of course, which is on abundant display when the emotional range of the material is so encompassing. Through his ever-responsive voice, joy, tragedy, longing, and more are given dramatic and at times theatrical expression.

As critical to the recording are the songs themselves (some world premieres), and it's this that perhaps most recommends the release. The pieces, some standalone songs and others multi-part works, uphold Powell's description of their creators as “giants in the world of contemporary music”; as astute is his statement, “Their creative vision, their otherworldly capacity to translate thoughts in their heads to sounds in the air, is nothing short of astonishing, as is their affinity for the human voice.” Lyrical settings by Laitman and Gordon elevate the recording, and she also adds levity to the collection in the playful Men with Small Heads and “Money.” Offsetting that are sober and elegiac settings that deal with issues of mortality, among them Musto's “Nothing Gold Can Stay” (Robert Frost's poem also a significant part of S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders) and Gordon's “The Good Death”; working from text by A.D. Winans, Bolcom confronts mortality too in “Lady Death,” though irreverently (“She wears a top hat, she carries a cane, her eyes a dagger aimed at your heart”). The range of writers drawn upon is broad, with the biting wit of Dorothy Parker joined by Herman Melville, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and others. Try not to smile when you hear Parker consider suicide options in “Résumé”: “Guns aren't lawful; / Nooses give; / Gas smells awful; / You might as well live.”

Even if some songs might seem less technically difficult than others, they still call on Powell's vocal gifts to vividly capture the emotion. Other pieces are less easy to tackle, with the singer noting that much of Laitman's music, for example, is “quite challenging and requires considerable emotional and vocal energy.” That's clearly evident in the fours songs of Men with Small Heads (“A Small Tin Parrot Pin” most of all), which shape-shift rapidly in concert with the mercurial tonal shifts in their texts. Space doesn't permit discussion of every piece, but there is room to mention highlights, beginning with her “The Wind Sighs,” an aria from her 2012 opera Ludlow (with librettist David Mason) and a prototypical example of her lyrical style; affecting too is Powell's heartfelt rendering of her enduring “If I…” with its touching verse by Emily Dickinson. Gordon's wistful “Souvenir,” an early song from 1982, is as lovely, its poignancy amplified by the inclusion of Andre Yee's cello. Memorable too are Gordon's impassioned “Bus Stop,” a setting of text by Donald Justice that prompted recollections of Antonionio's L'Eclisse for the composer, and “Father's Song” and “A Horse with Wings,” lyrics in both cases by Gordon himself.

Already distinguished, the six songs composing Musto's The Brief Light are further enhanced when presented in an arrangement for baritone and classical guitar. Based on text from Melville's Billy Budd, Bolcom's “Billy in the Darbies” similarly impresses for its baritone-and-string quartet combination and the sparseness of the arrangement. Musto's three-part Enough Rope is understandably enlivened by Parker's prose, as is Bolcom's “Song of Black Max” by Arnold Weinstein's. It would be hard to imagine more perfect matches between music and words than Bolcom's peaceful “Waitin” and weary “Can't Sleep”; based on text by poet Thomas Lux, Laitman's “Refrigerator, 1957,” on the other hand, manages to work references to French songs and (parodically) Italian opera into its four-minute frame. How inexhaustibly fertile the American art song genre is when composers as eloquent as these are continually vitalizing it with their creations.

Complementary to American Composers At Play is Why Do the Nations. Both feature Powell and piano, and both are generous in duration and song content. There are numerous differences, however, starting with the fact that he accompanies himself, a choice influenced to some degree by pandemic-related caution. Accompanying one's singing isn't unusual in non-classical contexts, but it is rare in the classical genre of art song. Yet as gratifying as it was for him to meet the challenge, the experience also reminded him of how much more satisfying it is to work with others and how much music is a shared experience between performers, with audiences, and across nations and generations.

Whereas all of the songs on the debut are in English, Powell sings in ten languages on the follow-up's twenty-seven. While he has sung in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and, of course, English during his career, he had never before tackled Portuguese, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. It's gratfying to report that he delivers credible performances in all instances, with Powell noting that he was assisted in performing the latter four by colleagues for whom those languages are native tongues. One can't help but be impressed by the obvious care he took to articulate accurately sound and syntax in each language.

A mere scan of the setlist indicates a remarkable breadth of material. Songs from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by Puccini, Ravel, Copland, Britten, Tchaikovsky, Ives, Fauré, Schubert, Barber, Verdi, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, and Richard Strauss appear, as do pieces by Zhao Yuanren, Rentaro Taki, Dong Jin Kim, Fernando Obradors, Cláudio Santoro, Émile Paladilhe, Xavier Montsalvatge, and others. Yet while the material comes from eleven nations, in compelling liner notes Powell emphasizes the things that unite the composers rather than what sets them apart. Whereas songs by Yuanren, Kim, and Santoro give voice to intense longing, those by Paladilhe and Montsalvatge ponder parental love, with the former's "Petits Enfants" (1873) capturing the way “a newborn child rearranges parents' molecules, forever altering their view of the world and of themselves.” Though written long ago, one line in particular in Taki's “Kojo no Tsuki” (Moon Over the Ruined Castle) (1901) resonates in an obviously contemporary manner when its words translate from the Japanese as “Where have the glorious old days gone?” Lines in Verdi's “Il Poveretto” (The Poor Man) (1847), “Even the land I defended, / My country has forgotten me” call to mind the reception Viet Nam veterans received upon their return. However geographically separated the composers are, their universal humanity binds them together.

Powell's voice lends itself as excellently to the heartfelt expressiveness of Puccini's “Morire?” (To Die?) (1917), Verdi's “La Seduzione” (The Seduction) (1839), and Hugo Wolf's tender “Auch Kleine Dinge” (Even Small Things) (1892) as to the boisterousness of Ravel's “Chanson à Boire” (Drinking Song) (1932) and high-spiritedness of Britten's “The Brisk Young Widow” (1954). Lighter fare such as Fauré's “Mandoline” (Mandolin) (1891) and Schubert's “Die Forelle” (The Trout) (1817) offsets heavier material. While Powell's delivery is delicate for Montsalvatge's “Canción De Cuna Para Dormir Un Negrito” (Lullaby for a Little Black Boy) (1945), the power of which he's capable is shown in his rendering of Rachmaninoff's “Vesenniye Vody” (Spring Waters) (1896), the performance also attesting to his proficiency at the keyboard.

December 2021