Many of the works here derive from Chicago a cappella’s (two "p’s" and in italics) all-Shakespeare competition held in 2003. Zest was added inasmuch as all the pieces should all be Chicago premieres. This is an invaluable spur to propagating new music, though whether it makes for as stimulating an experience on disc is another matter.

I don’t want to sound tetchy but having listened to the disc twice I can’t remember much about it. It actually begins quite promisingly with Kevin Olson’s bossa nova and Californian sun kissed version of "Summer Sonnet", rather better known as Sonnet 18 [Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?]. There are plenty of virtuosic demands on the nine-person group and for the solo voice, with the final cadences sounding Stan Getz-like in their sinuous saxophonic lines. Matthew Harris’s It was a Lover and his Lass also impresses with its languid, openhearted and distinctly American feel and his And Will A’Not Come Again evokes a timely Renaissance spirit. John Rutter’s sole contribution has a jazz-lite feel – shades of Ella Fitzgerald haunt his version of It was a Lover and his Lass.

Gyorgy Orbán contributes a pop-flecked O Mistress mine and Juhani Komulainen contributes To be or not to be, the final Renaissance flourish of which is not sufficient to atone for the amorphousness that’s preceded it. One appreciates that setting such lines bears a huge weight of literary-historical significance so perhaps it’s better for Komulainen that he’s not English. He must have a bizarre view of Macbeth to set To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow/Creeps in this petty pace from day to day in such a fashion - more Dogma than Bergmann, this frivolous setting. Robert Applebaum’s gently laid-back swing enlivens the Act IV Witches scene from Macbeth [Double, double, toil and trouble] complete with cat miaows.

For the most part though, however adeptly sung (and they certainly are), these are examples of composers unable to make linguistic, expressive and intellectual connections with their material. The texts are printed in full, just to rub it in.

Jonathan Woolf

 

 

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