Nature, Love, and Death
Song Cycles by Eric Choate, Joseph Stillwell, and David Conte

Thorsett elevates the performances with a clear, bright tenor equal to the rich emotional terrain the cycles encompass… <a href="https://www.textura.org/archives/c/choatestillwellconte_naturelovedeath.htm?fbclid=IwAR0ZReNkDOWJvzqWVWygL_vRG9ro6i1-TFcuwXhPLw_WvZRZRdV7-S6eH3c" target="_blank">Read the full review from textura here.</a><br><br>

This album of song cycles by three San Francisco Conservatory of music faculty members demonstrates that the composition of American songs is in good hands. Each of the cycles is written in an immediately accessible tonal style. Text are set in ways that illuminate them with imagination and skill.

The program begins with Eric Choate’s and fall (2016), which conjures the composer’s memories of autumn in settings a poems by Todd Davis, David Baker, Choate himself, Carl Sandburg, and Adelaide Crapsey. In Choate’s words, “All Of the poems are held together by a common element of the swiftness of time and passage from summer to winter, and from life to death.” The five-song cycle is dedicated to Brian Thorsett.

Joseph Stillwell sets four poems of WB Yeats in Songs of Love and Solace, Op. 10 (2013): About flipping a coin to decide about giving love a try and then carrying on “To find out all that is in it" (‘Brown Penny’); Two poems based on Yeats’s unfulfilled lifelong love of Maud Gonne (‘He Wished for the Cloths of heaven’ and ‘When You are Old’) And the poets longing to build a simple life of finding peace through communion with nature (‘The Lake Isle of Innesfree’). As a Yeats enthusiast and having recently visited his grave, I was especially happy with these exquisite settings of four of his finest and most familiar poems.

David Conte's American Death Ballads was composed for Brian Thorsett using four anonymous texts on death, dying, and murder. ‘Wicked Polly’ is a morality tale about the consequences of living a dissolute life and hoping that others like her will turn their lives around before it is too late period the score effectively depicts her “groaning in hell”. ‘The Unquiet Grave’ Presents a man mourning over his dead wife's grave. He will not let her rest in peace, so she tells him to get on with his life while he can. An effective closing diminuendo to just hanging up on him. ‘The Dying Californian’ Narrates a letter to his family from a dying man on board a ship. The song ends with hope as the score rises energetically and he expresses confidence that he will reach “a port called Heaven”. ‘Captain Kidd’ recounts his wicked life as he awaits his rightful death. The rollicking setting implies that he'd live his life just the same way again, despite his warning to learn from his example.

Conte reports that this cycle was partly inspired by Aaron Copeland's Old American Songs and Conrad Susa’s Murder Ballads. The spirit of Copeland lives on in all three cycles with vocal lines you can sing along with. All three cycles look at life nostalgically or wistfully. What distinguishes each most clearly is its orchestrated accompaniments.

Tenor Brian Thorsett with his lovely light lyric voice gives excellent readings that are often almost ethereal. He delivers the glowing melodic lines sensitively. His pellucid delivery of words and wise use of dynamics are effective. The fine playing of the two dozen or so strings, winds, and percussion members of the San Francisco Conservatory Chamber Orchestra under the clear hand of Jeffrey Thomas is commendable.

My only disappointment is that the engineering favors the instrumental accompaniment, sometimes burying Thorsett’s gentle singing. I played it on four different sound systems and found the balance most agreeable— and my appreciation most enhanced—while listening on headphones.

The enclosed leaflet gives personal comments from the composers about these songs. Biographical information about them can be found on the Arsis website with song texts, which are almost unneeded given Thorsett's impeccable diction. —R. Moore, American Record Guide Magazine, May 2023