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American Orchestral Song
Virgil Thomson: The Feast of Love (1964)
Roy Harris: Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun (1959)
Horatio Parker: Cahal Mor of the Wine-Red Hand, Op. 40 (1893)
John Alden Carpenter: Watercolors (1915)
Charles Tomlinson Griffes: Five Songs From the Chinese, Op. 10 (1915)
Patrick Mason, baritone
Odense Symphony Orchestra, Paul Mann, conductor
BRIDGE 9254
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This is a wonderful collection, full of discoveries and surprises. Pride of place must go to the first recording of Roy Harris's Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun on a text by Walt Whitman. Harris's brilliant monodrama travels from rural America to the streets of Manhattan, all the while observing and commenting on the ravages of the Civil War. It is, in the words of one critic, “a great, lost 20th century American masterpiece, and among Harris's very finest scores.” The disc includes songs set to Chinese poems by both Griffes and Carpenter, and Virgil Thomson's passionate The Feast of Love. Also featured is another rarity- Horatio Parker's 1893 monodrama, Cahal Mor of the Wine-Red Hand.in its premiere recording. All five works are sung by Grammy-nominated baritone, Patrick Mason accompanied by Denmark's Odense Symphony Orchestra, 2007 Grammy nominee for “Best Classical CD”.
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