At once sensual and existential, this collection of songs-composed across 125 years-meditates on nature and nostalgia, sex and love, the ephemerality of the human spirit, and the eternal, transformative power of art. These song cycles of Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy, George Crumb, and Robert Spano coalesce into a testament to the limitless potency and fragility of love-both it's resplendent joys and it's tender sorrows. Despite love's transience and riskiness, the album compels us to ruminate on Rilke's witticism that "for one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks...' Each of the cycles presents us with existential questions of life and death, love and loss, but the album is structured in couplets. Debussy and Spano draw upon Ancient Greece, Grieg and Crumb draw upon enchantments of nature, the temporality of love, life, and memory. Claude Debussy's ethereal Chansons de Bilitis (1899) evokes a lusty, Grecian fever dream where the tumescence of love and desire comes to the fore. Robert Spano's Sonnets to Orpheus (2020) lends voice to Rilke's enigmatic eponymous poetry. Spano's setting of the songs-the intimate conversation between piano and soprano-"draws one voice out of two separate strings." Meanwhile, George Crumb's Three Early Songs (1947) emerge as whispered secrets, darkly-hued odes to impermanent nature-night, a flower, and wind. The songs lead us to ponder the difference between the actual and the seeming. Chansons de Bilitis is a sensual, sultry tease in more ways than one. The poetry penned by Pierre Lou�s is a literary forgery. Lou�s, in an introduction to his original poems, claimed that the verses were found in the tomb of a sixth-century (fictional) poetess named Bilitis. She was made out to be a contemporary of Sappho and the poems were written as pastiches in the style of Sapphic erotism. This deception only fueled the work's popularity. And although Debussy only sets three poems, Lou�s wrote 143 poems separated into three volumes that span scenes of pastoral youth (Book I: Bucoliques en Pamphylie), to burgeoning Lesbian-referring both to same-sex attraction and to acts associated with the isle of Lesbos-sexuality (Book II: elegies � Mytilene), and to life as a courtesan at the employ of Aphrodite (Book III: Epigrammes dans l'�le de Chypre). In this way, maturation narratives-bildungsroman-form a motif throughout this album. Lou�s was inspired by sex tourism, to be blunt. At the insistence of friend and fellow writer, Andre Gide, Lou�s traveled to Algeria to indulge in sensual exoticism (and orientalism). A young Arab woman, Meriem, had come highly recommended by Gide who wrote of her and her music as something that "stupefied me like an opiate" as it "drowsily and voluptuously benumbed my thoughts." Meriem would become the muse for Chansons, which Lou�s began to draft in Algeria; the dedication of the collection reads "in memory of Meriem ben Atala." The turn of the twentieth century was rife with literary and musical games-anagrams, witticisms, forgeries, and puns. Lou�s even includes a fake scholar in the introduction to his work named G. Heim, meaning "mysterious" in German. And the title seems to me to be a play on words suggesting the feebleness, the feeblemindedness, debilite (de Bilitis) of love, sex, and the trickery of artistry. Exoticism too was par for the fin de siecle course-just think of the Orientalism of Delibes's Lakme (1883), Ravel's Sheherazade (1898/1902), and Debussy's own "Pagodas" from his piano suite, Estampes (1903). Each piece relies on coded musical identifiers that suggest otherness-nonconventional percussion instruments, incessant and layered rhythms, and sonic chinoiserie. For those sonic elements, Lou�s called upon his dear friend, Debussy, to orchestrate music to underscore his poetry. Debussy complained that the turnaround time was too short. Nevertheless, he was hard up and needed the money.

From the colorful theatricality of Crumb to the feedback noise of Cage's Feed, this CD displays the wide palette that was new music during the latter 20th century.

The composer said Music can be defined as a series of proportions in the service of a divine impulse. A philosophy which is shared by composers from Bach to Camilleri, Machaut to Tavener, and which is certainly the ethos of Divine Art Records! While acknowledging the radical experiments of the 1960s and 1970s, Crumb's music became famous for it's instantly recognizable style, integrity and sense of mysticism, and an ability not to alienate audiences.

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This sequel to the Gramophone Award-nominated Americascapes album (ODE 1396-2) by the Basque National Orchestra and Robert Trevino is a thrilling and a deeply personal journey into the music of three American composers. All three composers had very unique aesthetic worlds and with two of the composers conductor Robert Trevino also had direct artistic collaboration. Where my first 'Americascapes' album looked at lesser-known major American works that had influenced European composers (rather than the other way around), for this follow-up, I went back to a more basic thought - "What is America?". Since America is many things to millions of people, I realise that my question had to mean, "What is America to me? (...) Selecting the composers for this American Opus took well over a year. Yet I eventually refined the list to these three composers, with all of whom I feel a close kinship and all of whom are deeply meaningful to me. Two of them I even had a direct artistic relationship with. As a group, they also embody some of the diversity and the radically different aesthetics that thrive in the Americas." (Robert Trevino)

REVIEW:

The hunt for buried treasure is quite an industry these days, but coming up with gold is far from guaranteed. No problem, it appears, for Robert Treviño and the Basque National Orchestra. American Opus is the sequel to 2021’s excellent Americascapes (Ondine ODE 1396-2) and once again the Mexican-American conductor demonstrates a gift for sorting the wheat from the chaff. With the Revueltas set beside the Crumb and the Walker, Americascapes Volume 2 is a complex, thoroughly satisfying national portrait.

— Limelight

Bridge Records, Inc. Of New Rochelle, NY, is pleased to announce the release on DVD of the film, GEORGE CRUMB, BAD DOG!. The 66 minute documentary/performance film features performances by the George Crumb Ensemble, including the composer himself performing on percussion. Crumb is seen in interview, and the film presents historic photographs, and complete performances of Apparition (1979) on texts by Walt Whitman; Three Early Songs (1947); and Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik (2001) on Thelonious Monk's 'Round Midnight. The film's soundtrack also presents excerpts from many of Crumb's masterpieces including Star-Child, Music for a Summer Evening, Mundus Canis, Pastoral Drone, Quest, and Sit Down Sister. With Tony Arnold, soprano; George Crumb, percussion, Robert Shannon, piano; David Starobin, guitar. The DVD soundtrack includes versions in stereo and in 5.1 surround sound in both Dolby and DTS formats. (2009, Directed by David Starobin, 66 minutes).

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