Customer Reviews

Songs by Stephen Foster

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is, in a word, a wonderful album. The performers have sterling credentials, there is attention to authenticity and historical accuracy--original editions and period instruments are used--and above all, the project of recording the music of Foster was obviously approached with care and love on the part of all involved. The result is that music that can seem quaint and even campy glows with all its original richness of emotion and humor. There are surprises among the familiar classics, as well--the moving "Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway," with its surprising harmonies (in the original), and the duet "Wilt Thou Be Gone, Love?" based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, are particular gems. This is an album I still return to after decades.

I have never heard such unadulterated extraworldy sound emanate from two human voices and what would otherwise be firewood (the period instruments played by Gilbert Kalish). It stirs profound patriotism and a deep sentimentality for our early days when a civilized people pined to find virtue by examining its own body-- the north and the south, the small town, the simple flag, and the beauty of gentile manly and womanly love expressed through equisite song. There is no other music I would rather hear 'when summoning up the remembrance of things past.' The ghost of the early American parlor will prick your skin through these simple hymns and you may escape for a moment our troubled and busy times.

The landmark Library of Congress album, now on enhanced CD. Years
ago, I went on a six-months field assignment to a remote area of
Africa, where I could take only what music I could carry in a vest
pocket. I chose a tape player and two albums: a recital by Perlman
and this album on tape, and was content. If you love American
music, sung poetry, beautiful singing and deeply moving musicality,
this is an album you will treasure for a lifetime.

This is truly wonderful. I listen to my LP of it all the time. Jan Degatani, Lelsie Guinn, and Gilbert Kalish with the help of some other musicians recorded this album in Concert at the Smithsonian Institution. It is just the thing for a rainy day. Spin the Black Vinyl, and pour yourself a hot drink and sit back and listen. If you threw the turntable out, don't worry. I suppose this album still sounds great on CD.

The voices and instruments, like the songs, are straight from the mid-19th century. If you want to be transported back in time 150 years to a wonderful parlor performance of Foster's songs, this is the album to do it. The voices are marvelous and trained, and one must imagine that the strict phrasing and style are what one would have expected at the time. The cheap upright piano is perfect.

But the one perfect moment for me is the ONLY good extant rendition of "Was My Brother in the Battle?". Accompanied on a harmonium or pump reed organ, if this song doesn't tempt a tear, you simply aren't a romantic.

Very highly recommended.

What can I say that hasn't already been said below? I only wanted to reiterate how wonderful this album is and assure the reader the sound is spectacular on CD. This is a live recording, and intentionally so, as the idea was to create a "parlor" experience as these were parlor songs to be sung by family and friends around the old upright piano. I especially liked the comment about the upright piano which, indeed, does croak and clank throughout the performance adding a note of "authenticity" without becoming obtrusive.

If only Ms. DeGaetani had graced my parlor...

I'm not sure popular music today tells you anything about American culture, except in the negation. But, popular music such as this describes a very beautiful world, of a gentility without cloying characteristics, a culture at ease with itself. That history had a lot in store for such a languid culture, does not undo the loveliness of that culture, precisely because history always has a lot in store for every culture. Healthy cultures take what is good in them, admit faults and move on. Woe to the culture that destroys itself for whatever reason, even for the putatively good reason of social justice. One cannot listen to immensely charming music on this album and not feel that the popular vein in the American ethos has not lost something tremendous. There is nothing great here, but how great the feeling it conjures. I originally bought the LPs when I was a child. My mother was one of the first winners of the Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair competition run by the Steven Foster Memorial in White Springs, Florida. That was in the fifties, but when we visited the Steven Foster Memorial in the seventies it still felt very much like the South. At any rate, that this set is as beautiful as it is remains a real anomaly as far as I'm concerned. Two of the musicians involved Gilbert Kalish and Jan DeGaetani have elsewhere produced some of the worst records in the serious music catalogue. Kalish's Ives Violin and Piano sonatas are a particulary heinous reminder that sheer ugliness and clangor was actually a musical fashion statement. I can only attribute the difference here to the presence of Joan Reinthaler whose influence, I'm guessing, worked some magic. I can only assume this to be the same person who has dutifully written blurb-review music criticism for The Washington Post. That her blurb-reviews have always been uncommonly intelligent and informed as to music history argues in favor of her having been the health-giving influence in this recording. Having written a few words of criticism for the same paper, I can only see a connection between Reinthaler's molding of these Foster ditties, from something potentially quite banal into something quite lovely, to her ability to overcome the mind-numbing state of musical criticism today.

Quality of this recording is fantastic! Performances are superb! However, they don't fit being an example of Foster's music and times. I was expecting banjos and a Mississippi Sound - therfore, very, very disappointed in this CD and consider and a waste of money. Be sure to LISTEN to a few examples to match what you are looking for and what the CD offers. I, unfortunately did not listen before I bought. I rate this low only because my expectations were shattered. This IS a fine CD if opera styles are ok for an example of this southern, 1800's composer's work.