ROREM Songs • Ned Rorem (pn); Charles Bressler (ten); Phyllis Curtin (sop); Gianna d’Angelo (sop); Donald Gramm (bs); Regina Sarfaty (mez) • OTHER MINDS 1009, analog (57:03)

This disc duplicates a Columbia LP, recorded in November, December, and January, 1962–63. The recordings, texts, and annotations are faithfully reproduced, with further notes reflecting Ned Rorem’s subsequent successes. The composer chose five of his favorite singers for this first disc devoted to his songs. The earliest song, a setting of Gerald Manley Hopkins’s Spring and Fall, is from 1946, when the composer was 23; the latest, a setting of Theodore Roethke’s My Papa’s Waltz, is from 1959.

The 32 songs are presented in seven unequal groupings. The first offers five songs to poems by Renaissance or early modern English poets—John Dryden, Robert Herrick (two), Ben Jonson, and Orlando Gibbons; next are Psalms 134, 148, and 150, all sung by Phyllis Curtin; the third group consists of songs setting poems by Paul Goodman (four, mostly cheerful) and Theodore Roethke (three, mostly disturbing); the fourth group consists of settings of modern poems by Robert Hillyer, Gertrude Stein, Howard Moss, and Elizabeth Bishop; the fifth consists of “Three Medieval Poems” by the prolific Anon., A Christmas Carol, The Nightingale, and The Call; the sixth set begins with songs setting two poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins, followed by three by Walt Whitman; and the final set is a wide-ranging group of five that includes songs to poems of Robert Browning (two), Padriac Pears, Edmund Spenser, and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Each of the five singers makes it clear why Rorem enjoyed performing with them. I had never heard Regina Sarfaty before, though she was active for decades in grand opera and concerts, so I was especially struck by her singing in the Pulitzer Prize-winning song, The Lordly Hudson (1947, poem by Paul Goodman) and in the chillingly comic depiction of insanity in text, voice, and piano in Visits to St. Elizabeths (1957, poem by Elizabeth Bishop).

All the songs demonstrate Rorem’s talent for direct communication and creating music that supports texts and intensifies their meanings. The earliest songs are fine, the later ones perhaps more likely to surprise with unusual turns of the vocal line and dramatic effects in the piano. Over 40 years later, this disc is a model for how effective recorded song recitals can be. We have here an ideal combination: the excellence of the texts, the talent of the singers, the clarity and sheer rightness of the settings, the composer’s skill at the keyboard, and the fine recording achieved by Columbia’s engineers.

Comparisons with three other collections are instructive. “Hearing” (Premier 1035, 1982–83) offers 13 of the songs presented on the Columbia LP, performed by Rosalind Rees and Rorem. “Rorem, Selected Songs” (Naxos 8.559084, 2000) contains 14, performed by Carole Farley and Rorem. But “Songs of Ned Rorem” (Erato 80222, 1999) has only six, and has pianist Malcolm Martineau collaborating with mezzo Susan Graham. Curiously, all four collections have 32 songs. Does this have any significance? Perhaps the composer did not wish any of the later collections to gain or lose a competitive edge with more or fewer songs. That may be why the second one has as its complete title, “Hearing: 32 Songs of Ned Rorem,” even though the last five songs are actually scenes in the “small opera,” Hearing, where soprano Reese is joined by three other soloists and an instrumental ensemble conducted by her husband, Gregg Smith. Because Rorem has written hundreds of songs, one might regret so much duplication from one disc to the next. After some comparing of performances, I was glad for the duplications, because one could hear fascinating differences from one singer to another, along with corresponding modifications in Rorem’s, or Martineau’s part.

FANFARE: Robert McColley