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Bates: Children of Adam / Williams: Dona Nobis Pacem
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About Bates: Children Of Adam / Williams: Dona Nobis Pacem
Product Description Groundbreaking new music from Mason Bates and the Richmond Symphony! Reference Recordings is proud to present a World Première recording of MASON BATES: Children of Adam, songs of creation Commissioned by the Richmond Symphony; coupled with RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Dona nobis pacem. These pieces both draw inspiration from Walt Whitman s poetry and this release celebrates his bicentennial (born 1819). Children of Adam is a collection of exuberant celebrations of creation, from American poets to sacred and Native American texts. The title comes from a Whitman poem that appears throughout the work in the form of brief "fanfare intermezzos." Between these choral fanfares, each movement of the work offers a different perspective on creation. Recently named the most-performed composer of his generation and the 2018 Composer of the Year by Musical America, Mason Bates serves as the first composer-in-residence of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Championed by renowned conductors such as Riccardo Muti, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Leonard Slatkin, his symphonic work has received widespread acceptance for its unique integration of electronic sounds, and his opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, won a GRAMMY® Award for Best Opera Recording. Review The tenuous connection between Vaughan Williams' cantata Dona Nobis Pacem (1936) and Mason Bates' Children of Adam (2018) lies in the composers' use of the words of Walt Whitman, although neither work is drawn wholly from Whitman's poetry. Vaughan Williams, writing with the memory of World War I still fresh and the ominous rumblings of another war becoming louder, combined texts from the Mass with three Whitman poems, a political speech, and bits of the Bible. In so doing he produced a highly moving plea for peace, in which the recurrent Agnus Dei theme of the opening part is used to unify a work whose middle is drawn from three Whitman poems, the first describing war's disruption of civilian life, the second underlining the common humanity of those who are enemies in wartime, and the third offering a dirge for a father and son who have both died in war. After this, Vaughan Williams quotes from a speech by British politician John Bright (1811-1889) in futile opposition to the Crimean War, followed by quotes from the Book of Jeremiah - against which Dona nobis pacem is juxtaposed. And then the cantata concludes somewhat more optimistically, using, among other things, a setting in English of the Gloria from the Mass and, at the very end, yet another Dona nobis pacem plea. The elegant orchestration and skillful use of voices make this a very moving work when it is well performed, as it is on a new Reference Recordings disc featuring the Richmond Symphony Chorus and Richmond Symphony conducted by Steven Smith. Soloists Michelle Areyzaga and Kevin Deas handle their parts with both musical and emotional involvement, and Smith sets them off very well against the choral and orchestral forces. Yet despite their mutual use of Whitman's poetry, Vaughan Williams and Bates do not fit together especially well, even for bicentennial purposes (Whitman was born in 1819). Bates uses Whitman's line about ''children of Adam'' as connective tissue in a work that is far more celebratory than Dona nobis pacem and that bends over rather far to be inclusive, adding to Whitman elements from Carl Sandburg, two Psalms, Genesis, and - the longest section - a text from the Mataponi Indians of Virginia. Bates, like Vaughan Williams, orchestrates his work extensively and uses the instrumentation skillfully. He handles percussion especially well, notably in the Sandburg section of the piece. But while Vaughan Williams' entire structure is tight, using the repeated words Dona nobis pacem to beg for peace for us, all of us, Bates' work is more sprawling and more surface-level in its appeal. It is more self-consciously outgoing, more of a proclamation than an exploration - certainly quite effective in its own way, and performed just as well by the Richmond musicians as is Vaughan Williams' cantata, but lacking the earlier composer's emotional heft and his way of penetrating to the core of what unites all of humanity despite the many instances in which people turn against each other. The very fine interpretations on this very well recorded disc do much to put across the composers' distinct and distinctive use of the words to the best possible effect. Indeed, perhaps the most interesting element of this release is the way it shows Whitman's poetry being turned to such different purposes by two very different composers. Clearly there is much in Whitman that was musically inspirational in the 1930s and remains so today. ----Mark Estren / INFODAD.COM
