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Carole Farley sings William Bolcom Songs

Primal Screams and Military Orgies

THE soprano Carole Farley bravely begins her new Naxos recording of songs by William Bolcom with a primal scream. That the scream is accompanied by peppery, skittish piano chords played by Mr. Bolcom does not lessen its impact. You know immediately that this is not going to be a typical song recital.

The scream is Ms. Farley's visceral way of introducing her character in "You Cannot Have Me Now, or the Military Orgy," a song from "Greatshot,"

In his songs, Bolcom almost always balances the contemporary classical and popular elements deftly, as this splendid recording of 34 songs spanning 40 years amply demonstrates. In his booklet notes, Mr. Bolcom writes that "Night, Make My Day," from the cabaret opera "Casino Paradise," another work with lyrics by Mr. Weinstein, was intended as a sendup of a "Liza Minnelli-ish over-the-top extravaganza." But this torch song is filtered through a rigorous contemporary sensibility, with fractured rhythms and gritty piano chords. Ms. Farley takes it seriously, which makes it both funnier and scarier. Though Ms. Farley handles the popular-tinged songs stylishly, she is especially fine in two major song cycles.

Anthony Tommasini Arts & Leisure / The New York Times





William Bolcom: Songs. Carole Farley, soprano, William Bolcom, piano (Naxos 8.559249)

She opens in stunning style...

Here we have a blend of art song and cabaret show-stopper, with a mixture of styles from high classical to low Broadway, with most stops between. They're good fun and have enough musical interest to keep your mind engaged. The interest in this disc is of course Carole Farley, ( with Bolcom himself playing the piano), and Carole Farley should need no introduction as soprano soloist. She opens in stunning style with "You Cannot Have Me Now" - a military lady's defence of her honour which begins with an ear-piercing scream.

Robert Beale / Manchester Evening News





Farley embraces the varied tone of the songs in this cycle with her own astonishing variety... Carole Farley is a 'big' performer, bringing extensive operatic experience to bear on her approach to art songs, whether it be those of Ernesto Lecuona, Ned Rorem or William Bolcom (she has devoted beautiful entire discs to all three of them). Farley's postures and a certain hysterical edge to the voice (in these songs) perfectly complement Bolcom's eclecticism and baroque sensuality.

The songs, some recorded for the first time, that make up this recital were chosen by Farley herself from four decades of Bolcom's writing. Those taken from Broadway musical and cabaret parodies (like the fabulous opening track, "You Cannot Have Me Now" or, then, "My Father the Gangster") exhibit exuberant sprechstimme and rueful irony; others are hugely powerful in their dramatic intensity, like "The Last Days of Mankind", or simply moving, such as the tortured folk-like setting of William Blake's "Mary".

Then there's the Webern-like brevity of the pieces in "Songs to Dance", a cycle written for dancer Dan Wagoner, Bolcom and his singer wife Joan Morris to perform as a trio; offsetting this is the substantial "I Will Breathe a Mountain" cycle, written at the request of Marilyn Horne. Farley embraces the varied tone of the songs in this cycle with her own astonishing variety, running the gamut from the deliberately silly melismas of Alice Fulton's "How To Swing Those Obbligatos Around" to the emotional complexity of Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish" with, well, not ease, but a kind of bumpy eloquence. Ditto for the rest of the programme.

Bolcom himself proves that composers sometimes are their own best interpreters; although I've not heard anybody else accompany these songs, I can't imagine Bolcom's responsiveness both to the texts and to Farley's every twist and turn being as easily accomplished by anyone else. The rapport is magical.

This is a winning recital of music where craftsmanship and mastery of an enormous range of styles tend to conceal a personality that could perhaps be located in a taste for particular texts and often literal, sometimes ecstatic word-painting against which is counterpointed a far less obvious piano part. Farley's performances feed off the resulting tension. The effect is more than convincing. The booklet notes include comments by the composer on every work, complete texts, and biographies.

William Yeoman / www.classicalsource.com



In 2000 the American soprano, Carole Farley, teamed up with her fellow countryman, Ned Rorem, to produce a splendid Naxos CD containing a selection of Rorem's songs.

Now she's done it again, this time combining with another noted American composer, William Bolcom.

Like Rorem, William Bolcom has produced a significant corpus of songs during his career. However, whereas Rorem has, so far as I know, confined himself to the metier of art song, Bolcom has composed prolifically and successfully in two different genres, namely art songs and cabaret or theatrical songs. This CD contains examples of both of these aspects of his work. In a note accompanying the disc Bolcom writes approvingly of Miss Farley's ability to "shift stylistic gears", an ability that this programme tests to the full.

She plunges straight in with "You Cannot Have Me Now", which begins arrestingly with an ear-piercing scream! Miss Farley gives an unbuttoned performance of this number, complete with Germanic accent. I may as well admit that the song is not really to my taste but she puts it across with splendid panache. She displays a similar relish as a sexy chanteuse taking the role of Cis in two numbers from "Casino Paradise". I'm a little puzzled as to why these two items weren't tracked consecutively. I was particularly taken with "My Father the Gangster" where the rippling piano accompaniment and the popular idiom belie the underlying pathos of the text. Miss Farley is most involving.

Recently I reviewed Bolcom's "Songs of Innocence and of Experience". This substantial work, a key one in Bolcom's output, was devoted entirely to settings of poetry by William Blake. Blake crops up here as well in a single song, "Mary". This is a strange poem. It starts off in deceptive innocence but before long there are darker undertones. Bolcom catches all this very well indeed. His setting commences as a quite engaging piece in waltz time. The waltz rhythm pervades the song but the music becomes much less simple as the poem unfolds. He and Miss Farley give a very fine account of this intriguing song.

The main offering here is the cycle of eleven songs, "I Will Breathe a Mountain". These were written for the distinguished mezzo-soprano, Marilyn Horne and the commission was, I believe, part of the celebrations for the centenary of Carnegie Hall. Miss Horne made a memorable recording of the cycle for BMG in 1993 (09026 68771 2). The poems set by Bolcom are all authored by American women, most of whom were twentieth-century writers. The writer, Alice Fulton, one of whose own poems is included, assisted him in most of his selection. I say "most of" because Marilyn Horne herself specified one poem. This was "The Bustle in the House" by Emily Dickinson, which became the eighth song in the cycle. This poem had particular connotations for Miss Horne because she had read it at her brother's funeral and I don't think it's any accident that this is one of the most deeply felt performances in her recording.

It's been fascinating to compare both recordings, each of which is excellent in its own right. I have neither perfect pitch nor access to a score of these songs but, so far as I can tell, Miss Farley sings all of them in higher keys than Miss Horne - not a surprise given their different vocal ranges. What is very noticeable is the disparity between the duration of the performances. This newcomer lasts 19'39" but Miss Horne takes 24'21". That's quite a discrepancy in a work of this length. As you'll gather, in most songs Miss Horne is more expansive than Miss Farley although in three their timings are pretty well identical. I think that the generally faster speeds and, perhaps, the use of higher keys, brings a degree of urgency, even abrasiveness, to Miss Farley's performance that we don't find in Miss Horne's. Let me say at once that I don't use the word "abrasiveness" in a pejorative sense. Indeed, this characteristic is quite appropriate to some of the settings. On balance I think I prefer Miss Horne's greater degree of warmth, her richer, rounder tone but Miss Farley's performance is a fine and committed one and I can imagine that many people will prefer the greater urgency and, perhaps, sense of risk that she brings to the music. Several of the poems are far from easy to understand but Miss Farley communicates them all vividly. The vocal writing ranges from Sprechstimme to warm lyricism and often the singer is required to execute prodigious leaps from low register to high or vice versa. None of these technical demands seems to present the slightest difficulty to Miss Farley. I'll not pretend that this cycle is an easy listen at times but it seems to me to be a major contribution to the genre and in Carole Farley it has an impassioned and highly accomplished advocate. One can only assume that her performance of these songs, and indeed all of the items here recorded, has the approval of the composer, whose presence at the piano lends these performances particular authenticity and authority.

This is a most interesting and wide-ranging anthology of songs by William Bolcom. Since he is a prolific songwriter I suspect that one CD can't do more than give a flavour of his output. However, this will provide a good introduction. All the texts are provided, in English only, but there's a German translation of the composer's notes.

Naxos are to be congratulated on yet another enterprising issue. A few years ago such a CD would probably not have been issued, even at full price, but now here we have an excellent opportunity to sample Bolcom's songs in first rate performances and at a most affordable price. Anyone with an interest in the song repertoire who is possessed of an enquiring ear should certainly investigate this disc.

John Quinn / Classical Music Web