It can be stated categorically that if you've ever wanted to hear the Shaker song "Simple Gifts" (not attributed its actual composer, Joseph Brackett) sung with a full-fledged German accent, this is your best chance, and you get to hear it not once but twice, once with the men of the Rundfunkchor Berlin, and once with the women. Americans are going to smile at this, but regard this Simple Gifts disc as an experiment rather than as an idiomatic performance, and it comes off a good deal better. It is not a recording of American choral favorites but a reflection on the relationship between American and English music, and on the effects of American vernacular music on the two classical traditions. The music is mostly for chorus and piano, with soloists featured in some works. After a collection of
Britten pieces come
Michael Tippett's Five Negro Spirituals -- curious pieces too for listeners with the originals in their blood, but fascinating to hear in this context.
Tippett said he treated the spirituals as
Bach might have treated a chorale, but the Renaissance cantus firmus might have been a better comparison -- the mode of expression is not consistent with the original material as in
Bach. Rather, the melodies of the spirituals form a strand in a new contrapuntal fabric; their message is made part of a counterpoint of voices rather than amplified. Three of
Copland's Old American songs make a very instructive counterpart for the
Tippett, and one that nobody has thought of until now. Things relax with the lush Agnus Dei, Op. 11, of
Samuel Barber (the choral version of the Adagio for Strings) and Randall Thompson's Alleluia (did you know that that college glee club staple had made it to Germany?). A
Barber setting for chorus, piano, and percussion of an English poem, Stephen Spender's "A Stopwatch and an Ordnance Map" takes on overtones here that don't emerge in performances of the work in isolation. The Rundfunkchor Berlin (Berlin Radio Chorus) is a virtuoso group with a flawlessly rich sound, and conductor
Simon Halsey draws its members into a relaxed mood where the African-American rhythms that percolate through pieces like
Copland's "The Boatmen's Dance," as it is called here in regularized English, do not sound forced. The average Anglophone choral music lover may be slightly mystified by parts of this disc, but anyone interested in the fascinating issue of the diffusion of American ideas through the musical world will find it bracing and satisfying.