{"id":5740,"date":"2023-03-28T16:33:10","date_gmt":"2023-03-28T21:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alzand.com\/?p=5740"},"modified":"2023-03-28T16:33:10","modified_gmt":"2023-03-28T21:33:10","slug":"the-leader-cd-reviewed-in-opera-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/?p=5740","title":{"rendered":"The Leader CD reviewed in Opera News"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The recent CD release The Leader and other works<\/a><\/i><\/strong> (Navona Records NV6469) was reviewed by Joshua Rosenblum in the February 2023 issue of Opera News<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand demonstrates how relevant a one-act French political satire from 1953 can be. His short chamber opera The Leader is based on Eug\u00e8ne Ionesco\u2019s Ma\u00eetre, in which, according to the notes, \u201cThe characters worship a buffoonish \u2018great man.\u2019\u201d The play, we\u2019re also told, is a \u201ctrenchant commentary on the casual rise of tyranny.\u201d Ionesco\u2019s pointed absurdities are surprisingly pertinent but also not nearly caustic enough to parody today\u2019s America. But it\u2019s clear why Al-Zand felt inspired to musicalize it. <\/p>\n

Not much happens in the ten scenes of this thirty-five-minute work, which is partly the point. Most of the satire comes from the mindless repetition of certain phrases. \u201cThere he is! There he is! There he is! At the end of the street! There\u2019s the Leader! He\u2019s coming nearer, nearer, nearer,\u201d sings the Announcer (Mark Diamond) at the beginning of the first track, \u201cIt\u2019s Better If He Doesn\u2019t See Us,\u201d and then, at the end, \u201cHooray! The leader! Long live the leader! Too bad! He\u2019s going away.\u201d He\u2019s joined in his sycophantic commentary by two Admirers amid a cheerfully pulsing musical texture, featuring a swirling figure for the solo woodwinds and a pungent, Poulenc-like harmonic language that proves a good match for Ionesco\u2019s mocking aesthetic. Diamond is artfully unctuous in his grand, vacuous pronouncements; Megan Berti and Aidan Smerud echo him with pleasant (and alarming) brainlessness, particularly in the fourth track, in which their rapid-fire parroting of the Announcer\u2019s phrases turns briefly into a laughing song. <\/p>\n

Ionesco also provides a love story, in his characteristic absurdist fashion: the couple falls instantly in love after affirming that they don\u2019t know each other and therefore have something in common. Al-Zand captures the deadpan drollery and gives it life with a fresh, piquant musical language and earnest, melismatic, self-mocking declamations. The short scene soars briefly into a lyrical love duet, allowing soprano Lindsay Russell Bowden and tenor Zach Averyt to flex their operatic chops while highlighting the silliness of love at first sight.<\/p>\n

In later scenes, mini episodes are given over to the ridiculous: \u201cThey\u2019ve given the leader\u2019s trousers back! He puts them on!\u201d and \u201cThe leader\u2019s sucking his thumb!\u201d This kind of thing could wear thin in less skilled hands, but Al-Zand provides continuous musical invention, including a fast, off-kilter jig in seven (2+2+3), breakneck orchestral skittering, a chorale with crunchy harmonies and a militaristic march that implies incipient creeping Fascism. The Leader had a full staging in February 2020, but it\u2019s easy to imagine successful concert performances as well. The eleven-piece ensemble, led with precision by Eiki Isomura, gives a crackerjack rendering of the virtuoso score.<\/p>\n

Also included here is Songs From the Post TruthEra,a setting of three poems combined into a single continuous piece,which promises more skewering of ripe targets, though it doesn\u2019t draw quite as much blood as one might hope. The first poem, Charles Lamb\u2019s \u201cIncorrect Speaking\u201d (1809), is an admonition to a young girl and contains lines such as \u201cStudy well the sense of each \/ Sentence, lest in any manner \/ It misrepresent the truth.\u201d The second two poems are mashups of words and phrases from Lamb, a technique Al-Zand calls \u201cvocabularyclept.\u201d These fractured texts (intentionally) make less and less sense as they proceed, and Al-Zand accordingly puts soprano Alexandra Smither through vocal calisthenics of ever-increasing difficulty\u2014all of which she aces\u2014amid her character\u2019s mounting hysteria. Bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward, the sole accompanist in this unusually scored piece, is an equal partner and matches Smither\u2019s remarkable expressive prowess.<\/p>\n

Three instrumental sets round out this impressive collection from a composer who deserves wider recognition\u2014Six Bagatelles for piano trio, with color-oriented titles such as \u201cMezzotint in Indigo\u201d and \u201cGauloises Bleues\u201d; two of Al-Zand\u2019s Capriccios for solo violin; and Stomping Grounds, a four-movement work for clarinet, violin and piano, whose jazzy and harmonically original last movement sounds like ragtime put through a blender. The two solo capriccios are challenging but idiomatic showpieces, with blistering performances by violinists Sonja Harasim and Matthew J. Detrick respectively, both delivered with considerable expertise and outstanding intonation. \u2014Joshua Rosenblum<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The recent CD release The Leader and other works (Navona Records NV6469) was reviewed by Joshua Rosenblum in the February 2023 issue of Opera News. Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand demonstrates how relevant a one-act French political satire from 1953 can be. His short chamber opera The Leader is based on Eug\u00e8ne Ionesco\u2019s Ma\u00eetre, in which, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5740"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5751,"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5740\/revisions\/5751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alzand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}