In a space of about three years, American composer Leo Smit (born in Philadelphia in 1921) wrote songs to seventy-five of Emily Dickinson's poems, and by 1999 had set eighty-three of them. He has titled the whole lot The Ecstatic Pilgrimage, and divided it into separate song cycles.
This disc presents thirty-three of them, comprising the following: Cycle 1, Childe Emilie, fourteen songs about memories and fantasies of childhood (1989); Cycle 2, The Celestial Thrush, twelve songs about music and birds (1988); and Cycle 6, The White Diadem, seven songs about poets and poetry (1989).
The performances are about as authoritative as can be imagined. Smit himself accompanies at the piano. His singer is soprano
Rosalind Rees, described as a "composer's singer" with over a hundred premieres and dedications to here credit." She and Smit have been working together since 1971. She premiered all the songs on this disc.
The writer must balance admiration for her artistry, understanding, musicianship, and ability to project the meaning of the song, with some reservations about some aspects of her sound, considered on its own. In a hushed or medium-range dynamic, and in the middle and low part of the voice the sound is entrancing, with a plainness that clearly comes from artistic mastery, much like Dickinson's poetry itself. It is when the voice rises into a higher register and is pushed into a louder dynamic that it sometimes takes on a hardened, unlovely quality. Mercifully, there is no disfiguring beat or wobble in the voice even at great pressure. The writer still gives this disc a pretty strong recommendation, but it could have been more enjoyable.
Bridge's honchos Becky and
David Starobin produced the record, and engineer
David Merrill gave it a clear, full and attractive sound, ideally balanced between voice and piano.