Busy week here, recording some incredibly thick and chewy 20th-C choral works with the Trinity Wall Street choir and Stefan Parkman.  The concert was Monday night, and the subsequent recording sessions (in the church — on the not-so-quiet intersection of Wall Street and Broadway) run into early next week.  On the platter: Schönberg’s luscious (!) Friede auf Erden, Jaakko Mäntyjärvi’s Stuttgarter Psalmen (2009) and Canticum calamitatis maritimae (In memoriam, MS Estonia, 1994), Veljo Tormis’ Raua needmine, and Poulenc’s Figure humaine.

Paul Éluard’s poetry (set by Poulenc during WWII) is baffling, grotesque & beautiful, so shiny and vivid I could almost sink my teeth into it [in what would be true surrealist fashion]. Though “faites face à leurs yeux liquides / C’est la toilette des éphémères” is a particularly elusive line for me. The last movement of Figure humaine, LIBERTÉ (Poulenc’s capitalization?), is a setting of the famously patriotic 1942 poem which is a triumphant litany of everyday places/objects where “j’écris ton nom” (Liberté). While I’m not usually swept up by political works, Poulenc’s framing of that mantric phrase in the last movement is pretty overwhelming.

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