Roger Sessions was an amazing composer: difficult to play, difficult to listen to, but incapable of writing a bad note. From whatever period, his music is marvelous and worthy of however long it takes a listener to enter its often forbidding world. Although stunning when played with the necessary virtuosity and sensitivity to matters of color and balance, it sounds like a screechy mess from hell when it receives anything less than first-class treatment. This performance of the Divertimento may not quite degenerate into a screechy mess from hell, but there are moments in the opening Prelude and central Toccata where it comes close. The recording is high-level, the instruments are in your face and poorly equalized in terms of dynamics, and they’re invariably too loud, and it seems that the channels are reversed, with violins on the right and a solo xylophone the most prominent sound on the left. Still, the lovely second movement Aria and mysterious Epilogue come off well, and there’s more than enough interest under conductor Peter Leonard’s direction to make you want to hear the work really finely done (fat chance of that anytime soon).
The Idyll of Theocritus for soprano and orchestra is an amazing setting of the eponymous poem in R. C. Trevelyan’s English translation. At nearly 40 minutes, with the soloist singing virtually throughout, it’s a sopranicidal monsterpiece that Audrey Nossaman takes on with positively sadistic glee, emerging victorious. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had to retire immediately afterward! The most amazing thing about this passionate love poem is that despite the atonal setting and typically busy accompaniment, it’s an amazingly lyrical, beautiful piece that sounds quite gratefully written for the voice–long and challenging, yes, but full of broad, singing lines and clearly emotional, immediate expression. It’s one of Sessions’ most remarkable achievements, and until a fine modern recording comes along this one will do very nicely. Voice mavens should hear Nossaman whether they like the music or not: she’s amazing.
Oddly enough, this 1956 mono recording under Robert Whitney is much more pleasant to listen to than the 1981 stereo recording of the Divertimento, save that the work begins about one second before track 6, so you have to back up the end of the former work to catch the beginning of the latter. Obviously, production values weren’t quite up to snuff here. The notes are excellent, but the full text of the Idyll is only available on the First Edition website. It would be easy to say that Sessions deserves better, and so he does, but it’s also churlish not to be grateful that we have even this much. The Idyll, in particular, is a very special work and this performance is much better than expected. That’s good enough for me, at least for now.
