One may expect choral music from an album with the
King's College Cambridge
logo on it, but not so: the label has begun issuing work by the alumni of the College choir. This is all to the good, for it emphasizes how classical music comes from the cultures of specific places rather than embodying some kind of abstract ideal. Two of these alumni are bass-baritone
Christopher Purves
and accompanist
Simon Lepper
, and here they have crafted a compelling and distinctive choral recital. They bill the program as a set of "Songs of War and Refuge," and it works quite well as such; some of the songs circle nicely around the idea of people for whom death is a more everyday presence than it is for the rest of us. The 16-year-old
Schubert
's
Totengraeberlied
is marvelously done here, as is
Hans Pfitzner
Hussens Kerker
("
Hus's Dungeon
," about the imprisonment of Protestant reformer
Jan Hus
). The album takes its name from the
Conrad Ferdinand Meyer
text of this song, but even more interesting than the general theme is the diversity of the program. Songs by
Strauss
and the
Pfitzner
song set the listener up to expect a dour hour of post-Romantic gloom, but then
Purves
takes a left turn into totally different kinds of material. The program includes three songs from the wonderful and quite rarely heard
Hollywood Songbook
of
Hanns Eisler
(in French and German despite the title), which mix texts by poets as diverse as
Hoelderlin
and
Bertolt Brecht
. Hear
An den kleinen Radioapparat
To the Little Radio
") with a text by the latter, in which he muses that he should give up listening to the radio before bed and upon awakening because of all the bad news. It has an element of humor, but it encapsulates the thread of unease that ties the whole album together. A superb recital with completely fresh ideas, although the inappropriate church sound is a bit of a disincentive. ~ James Manheim