This is an enjoyable disc, one that taps into well-known folksongs
via the compositional mediations of graduates and professors
of Manhattan School of Music, and of Aaron Copland, three of
whose settings are performed.
Rachel Payne is the soprano and her colleague Reiko Füting,
not only pianist but the arranger of six settings. The tone,
as it were, is set by the mellifluous and gentle setting of
Scarborough Fair but the same arranger, Evan Antonellis,
ensures contrast in his two settings by writing an energetic
surging piano accompaniment for My Bonny, Bonny Boy that
adeptly recedes into limpidity. Füting has taken Berio’s
folksongs as his own model and there’s a terse piano commentary
in Molly Bann and an appropriately spare I Wonder
As I Wander.
The Nils Vigeland settings are of the Shaker songs; Lay Me
Low pushes the voice quite high, Precept and Line
is a busy setting for solo piano, and Love And Blessing
is quite punchy. Of the Copland settings Long Time Ago
is rather beautifully done; the other two famous settings are
pliantly realised. The Foggy Dew is (arr. Vincent Raikhel
and he allows harp-like sonorities via using the piano’s
strings. The percussive interjections are strong, even militaristic
here in places, whilst the voice goes serenely on. Boulavogue
is accompanied by more ‘pots and pans’ percussion,
rather less successfully, unfortunately. Tis the Last Rose
of Summer, (arr. Christopher Cerrone, has some Ivesian undercurrents
one feels, and the same arranger’s Drink To Me Only
With Thine Eyes is attractively portrayed.
The arrangers here pursue in general an Ives to Copland to Berio
approach. Those who allow percussive colour generally do so
with tact and discrimination though sometimes things run away
with themselves; the dichotomy between the canonic nature of
these folksongs and the means available subtly to subvert or
inter-textualise them can be hard to resist. Payne and Füting
are fine ambassadors for this ‘new’ music and have
clearly established a first class ensemble; fortunately they’ve
been well recorded into the bargain.
Jonathan Woolf
Rachel Payne (soprano) 
