This disc recreates, under studio conditions, a memorable 1997 concert that took place at New York’s 92nd Street Y. It’s devoted entirely to William Bolcom song cycles performed by their so-called “creators”. In Let Evening Come, Bolcom checks at the proverbial door his facility for instantly switching styles, setting texts by Maya Angelou, Emily Dickinson, and Jane Kenyon by way of stark yet varied textures and delicate interplay between a soprano voice and viola over the piano’s secure padding.
Bolcom’s eclectic, tonal bent roams gently through nine Jane Kenyon settings that make up the cycle Briefly it Enters. Sometimes soprano Benita Valente’s vibrato pushes certain pitches a hair under their mark, but her silvery timbre and excellent diction are major assets for this kind of music.
Compared to Bolcom’s first two volumes of Cabaret Songs, Volumes 3 and 4 are darker, more harmonically foreboding, and less overtly “pop” oriented. There are exceptions, such as “Love in the Thirties”, with its snarling Gershwinisms, and the hints of salsa that propel “Radical Sally”. Any self-respecting singer taking up these songs invariably will crib their interpretations from Joan Morris’ half musical-theater, half “legit” mezzo-soprano, and hopefully learn something. Bolcom’s pointed, vivacious piano accompaniments don’t hurt either, and Arnold Weinstein’s snazzy texts are worth reading apart from their musical context. Lovers of American art songs won’t want to pass this up.
