A Surprise Recording from Thomas Meglioranza

Long-time readers of this blog may recall my great admiration for the young American baritone, Thomas Meglioranza.  I've mentioned his self-produced Schubert lieder recital disc several times, and have enthused about his concerts.  His voice records well and I wish there were more recordings, but there have so far been just a few.  So I was quite excited, while browsing at J&R Music World in lower Manhattan the other day, to discover a new one -- not an entire disc of Meglioranza, but one work performed by him as part of a series devoted to a particular composer, Charles Wuorinen.

Wuorinen is not by a long shot my favorite contemporary composer.  Indeed, as a teenager I heard some recordings of his music, took an instant dislike to it, and then conscientiously avoided it for the longest time.  Meglioranza actually brought me back into the fold.  Some time ago he listed on his blog a concert appearance in my neighborhood (Upper West Side of Manhattan) on a program of Wuorinen's music.  I couldn't pass up the opportunity -- rare in NYC -- to hear Tom Meglioranza perform, so I went, determined to stoically endure for the opportunity to hear him sing.  The program consisted of relatively short pieces for various small ensembles.  Meglioranza sang a setting of Psalm 39, in the Cranmer translation, for baritone and guitar.  And I found it quite enjoyable.  In fact, to my great surprise I found just about everything on the program to be enjoyable.

Since I specialize in collecting musical settings of the Psalms, I tried to find a recording of Wuorinen's Psalm 39, but without success until this week.  The new Albany records release in their "Charles Wuorinen Series" is titled "Duos" as each of the seven pieces on the recording involves two performers, and there in the midst of it are Meglioranza and William Anderson (guitar) performing Psalm 39.  I've listened to it several times, migrated it to my iPod, and have a growing fondness for it.  For one thing, any opportunity to hear the magical Meglioranza baritone is not to be missed, but for another I find that the music itself in combination with this text is very effective.  I can't say the same for everything else on the disc.  The other song, "Never Again the Same" with bass Wilbur Pauley and tuba player Christopher Hall (some combination!) doesn't quite do it for me, at least on first hearing, and the purely instrumental music tends towards an abstraction that I don't find all that involving, but maybe further acquaintance will stir up enthusiasm for the rest of the program.  But the disc is worth getting -- especially for Meglioranza fans -- just for Psalm 39, which runs 11-1/2 minutes.  And, having heard him do this piece, I just know that Meglioranza could make something splendid out of Stravinsky's "Abraham and Isaac," which came to mind as I was listening to this -- even though Stravinsky sets the Biblical Hebrew rather than an English translation... One can hope....