CD Review | Fire-Flowers (Leaf Music, 2024)

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Fire-Flowers
Luminous Voices, chorus; Timothy Schantz, conductor; Cheryl Emery-Karapita and Leanne Regehr, pianos; Laura Brandt, soprano; Jonathon Adams, baritone.
Leaf Music, Jan. 12, 2024

Luminous Voices is already on its fourth album in four years. The Calgary-based choral society has made contemporary music its specialty. With Fire-Flowers, released by Leaf Music, it returns to the work of Zachary Wadsworth, a composer to whom it had already dedicated an album in 2016 (The Far West) and who has since joined the choir as tenor. On the program are Battle-Flags, based on a poem by Walt Whitman, and Fire-Flowers, named after a poem by E. Pauline Johnson. One evokes death on the battlefield; the other, a glimmer of hope in the face of desolation. Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem is the pièce de résistance. The challenging—and sometimes long—process of mourning serves as the album’s through line.

Wadsworth’s style is characterized by ethereal harmonies, opening like flowers blooming into their beauty. Despite this undeniable appeal, the music doesn’t quite seem to fit Whitman’s text, which emphasizes the trauma of war. The piano accompaniment, whose writing is less euphonious overall, ends on a low F—this prepares the ear for the opening chord of Brahms’s Requiem, and the text of St. Matthew’s Gospel: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” The soloists give a good performance, although baritone Jonathon Adams sometimes lacks substance in the higher parts of his vocal range. The absence of orchestral accompaniment is unfortunate, as it would have provided a more dramatic rendition of the score, and offered better balance with the powerful choir.

Wadsworth’s Fire-Flowers features the two soloists in dialogue with the choir. The piano part is virtuosic and, as it were, “fiery”—perhaps in reference to the title of the piece. The originality and freshness of this gentle conclusion are most welcome.