David DeBoor Canfield: Chamber Music, Vol. 5

Calvin Quartet, Marcia Cattaruzzi, et al.

Newcomers to Canfield should know that he composes in multiple styles. On this disc alone he could pass for four or five different composers, some frolicsome (Five Mangled Expressions), some experimentally anachronistic (Quintette nach Schumann). He also composes for a wide variety of purposes, instruments, and instrumental combinations (e.g., piano and saxophone quartet). Finally, he’s a Christian, so neither his Sonata for Cello & Piano’s subtitle (“Ordo salutis”) nor his motivic use of “Fairest Lord Jesus” in the moving requiem “A Life Remembered” is coincidental or ironic.

Eli Tamar: Laudato Si: In the Spirit of St. Francis of Assissi

Charlene Canty, Andrey Nemzer, Nicholas Will

This recording’s first half comprises settings of the 13th-century Latin poem “Stabat Mater Dolorosa” by eight different composers (Vivaldi, Haydn, Rossini, Dvořák, and Poulenc among them). The second half comprises three contemporary compositions by the Israeli-American Eli Tamar based on texts traditionally ascribed to St. Francis of Assisi (e.g., “Seigneur, faites de moi un instrument de votre paix”). Charlene Canty (soprano) and Andrey Nemzer (countertenor) elevate rather than overwhelm the sentiments (their “unabashedly operatic approach” notwithstanding). And Nicholas Will’s organ elevates the singers.

Anton Bruckner Symphony No. 5

London Symphony Orchestra, Lance Friedel

One reason that this recording of one of Bruckner’s most popular symphonies sounds wonderful is the multichannel, “super audio” properties of the CD itself. Another is that, as his liner notes make clear, the conductor Lance Friedel understands not only the symphony’s demanding intricacies but also their aesthetic purposes. “It is living, passionate music,” he writes, “that encompasses a huge range of emotions.” This understanding he has obviously communicated to the orchestra, which responds with such lapidary precision that even the dynamics take on a monumental dimensionality.

Vaughan Williams: A London Symphony; Symphony No. 8

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Manze

If this album’s recording of A London Symphony accurately evokes either the London or the Londoners of just over a century ago (Vaughan Williams completed it shortly before World War I), what a magnificent, lively, and confident city or people they must have been. And while it may be fanciful to claim to hear Cold War echoes in Symphony No. 8 simply because Williams completed it in 1955, paranoia is arguably one of the states of mind evoked by the symphony’s minor key and fitfully sublimated turbulence.

Encore

The most expeditious way to appreciate Vincent Persichetti: Legacy of Songs (MSR Classics) is, first, to read the poems on which the 41 songs are based, a task made easy by the inclusion of the texts in the album’s liner notes. Second, read along to the poems as the operatic baritone Lee Velta or the lyric soprano Sherry Overholt sing them. If you’ve paid attention while carrying out these two steps, you’ll be able to understand the words later despite Velta’s and Overholt’s art-song diction.

You’ll also be able to concentrate on Joshua Pierce’s pianism without losing the musically thematic ties that bind his playing to the words. Having reached this stage, appreciation will yield to enjoyment, and enjoyment will yield to a fuller appreciation of the puckish wisdom of Persichetti’s sources (Dickinson, Cummings, Teasdale, Frost, Joyce, Sandburg, and various Chinese and Japanese poets). Then there’s Hilaire Belloc’s Christocentic “Thou Child So Wise,” which transcends appreciation and enjoyment altogether. —A.O.