VAI brings us a significant release of live, unissued performances of songs by Aaron Copland and Ned Rorem, sung by their friend and champion Phyllis Curtin with the composers at the piano (in their own songs, of course). I wish Rorem were writing this review in my place, because his annotations pinpoint Curtin's outstanding qualities: her intelligence, her unusual "admixture of a nectarine sound with a sharp-as-ice diction." So it's left for yours truly to praise the clarity, directness, and easy rapport Curtin and Rorem bring to their collaboration in 10 songs plus a cycle of four Psalm settings. Some of the selections figure in Susan Graham's highly acclaimed Rorem recital for Erato, and I couldn't help but comparison shop. Graham has the warmer voice, but you sometimes hear the interpretations before you hear the songs. In The Tulip Tree, for example, there's a slightly manufactured quality to the tapered phrase endings, little ritards, and words chosen for emphasis. By contrast, Curtin and Rorem give you the music straight. They restore the fleeting whimsy that characterizes I Am Rose, Rorem's self-proclaimed "nine measure masterpiece", and bring out the flowing, conversational quality of both Rorem's music and Frank O'Hara's text in For Poulenc.

In truth, though, I find Curtin's big voice better suited to Copland's more austere, declamatory style, and in particular to the 12 Emily Dickinson settings. She simply dives into those wide and risky interval leaps with all the confidence in the world and never garbles the words. At the piano, Copland's horseshoe-nail sonority and emphatic rhythm provide solid support. The CD includes a bonus track: Roger Sessions' On The Beach at Fontana. Both Curtin and Robert Helps (my favorite living pianist) give a caring, beautifully detailed reading full of ample lyricism. Good, resonant broadcast-quality sound in the Copland and Sessions songs (recorded in Cambridge in August, 1971); grainier sonics for the December, 1969 Rorem items. Full texts included. [7/29/2001]

--Jed Distler