A review of George Walker’s “Poem for Soprano and Chamber Orchestra”

 George Walker, who died in 2018 at the age of 96, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer – the first Black composer to have nabbed that prize – and pianist, who was also the first Black soloist to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Curtis Institute’s first Black graduate. And his Pulitzer-winning piece, “Lilacs,” setting a Lincoln eulogy by Walt Whitman, should be a mandated substitute for Aaron Copland’s odiously puerile “Lincoln Portrait.” Below, we travel back to 1987 and my review of a performance by Albany’s Capitol Chamber Artists, who championed Walker’s work.

THERE SHOULD BE A LAW banning frivolous settings of T. S. Eliot’s poems. And there should be a national celebration when a thoughtful setting comes along that does justice to Eliot’s work.

In which case composer George Walker would be hoisted upon shoulders for his brand-new setting of "The Hollow Men."

Capitol Chamber Artists premiered the work this weekend, locally at Page Hall in Albany last night. Walker’s “Poem for Soprano and Chamber Orchestra” is more than just a chamber piece, however. With its surprising theatrical touches and disquieting voice, it is a completely appropriate and thought-provoking interpretation of the text.

Scoring is for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, guitar, piano, harpsichord and percussion battery; in addition to the soprano two speakers (human, not electronic) are required.

Soprano Mary Anne Ross entered in whiteface, an old felt hat on her head, a blanket grasped round her waist. She carried a plastic bag bulging with street-life stuff.

Michael Murphy, one of the speakers, was ragged and unshaven and wore a woolen watch cap. He uttered the poem’s epigraph (from Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”) as the music began.

This isn’t a work that offers its own melodies. The music is lifted from the words in the poem, from the twists that Walker’s ear has discerned. It might not be the music you and I here, but one of the biggest challenges Eliot offers is diversity of interpretation.

The music was fragmented, constantly shifting in tempo. Little bursts tossed from instrument to instrument as Ross began the first stanza.

Each of the five sections shifted a little in character, as the poem suggests. Many violent, unpleasant words are cloaked in Eliot’s elegance, and Walker’s setting sought and realized that violence.

This is the dream-poem of a person too desperately unhappy to put thoughts into words, and that feeling of having ventured into a dream was supported by the eerie shifts in the music, the same sense you have when a high fever causes your thoughts to shimmer into dreams.

In the end, the thoughts are fragmented enough that Janet Rowe, the second speaker, murmured a poetic counterpoint behind the famous closing lines.

It’s no easy task to perform a score like this one: credit goes not only to conductor Angelo Frascarelli but also to each member of the ensemble. Percussionists Richard Albagli and Scott Stacey moved like wizards; Malcolm Kogut was dexterous in his keyboard work as he shifted from piano to harpsichord and back again.

Irvin Gilman and Charles Stancampiano played the wind instruments; strings were Mary Lou Saetta and Douglas Moore. Sam Farkas was the guitarist.

Walker’s “Poem,” commissioned by CCA in conjunction with a consortium of other chamber groups, is a devastating work, deserving of greater attention.

This premiere is one of the more prestigious occasions that Albany has overlooked lately.

The program of this concert took some shifts since it was announced last autumn. Beethoven’s Serenade in D Major, Op. 25, was moved to front of the program, and presented Gilman, Saetta and Rowe on flute, violin and viola in a five-movement work very much in the classical tradition.

It’s a fun piece of occasional music, already showing the whimsy that Beethoven would make the most of in later compositions. It was the right choice, too, to warm the audience up for the Walker work that began the second half.

From there on in it was all enjoyable fluff. Heitor Villa-Lobos seems to have written something for every possible combination of instruments: “Distribution of the Flowers” is for flute and guitar, and Gilman and Farkas had a ball with it.

Gilman, Saetta and Kogut joined forces for two short works: a minuet by Haydn and a rondo by Mozart, the latter a “Turkish dance” that featured Gilman’s sprightly piccolo.

And the conclusion was downright hilarious. Adolphe Adam, a Frenchman with romance in his heart, fiddled with Mozart’s variations on the tune we know as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” to provide a soprano showcase, the kind of deal you would have heard at a “society” dinner party as the special guest showed off her tonsils.

With Kogut at the piano, Gilman and Ross took turns (with flute and voice) dancing through these fanciful variations, complete with a voice-busting cadenza before the big finish.

All in all, this was program of contrast and delight.

Slides On Colden Mountain

The Adirondack Park is a venue of arresting beauty.  With a surfeit of lakes, ponds, streams and  waterfalls, to cliffs, peaks, ledges and boulders, the park's labyrinthine network of trails offer every hiker a wide range of difficulty, challenge and visions of beauty.  In the esoteric parlance of the down hill skier, the hiker can draw a parallel and compare them as green circles, blue squares and black diamonds.  There is another trail, not man-made, which could be delineated as the rare yellow diamond trail:  The slide. 

Slides not only offer a visual scar on a mountain which can make it easily recognizable from a distance, but they also offer an alternative ascent up a mountain for those brave enough to tackle one and determined enough to bushwhack their way to the tumbled resting place of a slide.  Almost cliff-like, many of these trails can be so steep that from a standing position you can reach out in front of you and touch the ground.  Slides offer that rare posture in the repertoire of hiking positions between climbing and scrambling on all fours.  Quite often you can experience a double fall line where gravity is pulling you in two directions at once.

The Trap Dike on Mount Colden is one of my favorite trails to hike.  Colden, a middling peak between Marcy and Algonquin is also host to several beautiful-awful landslides.  The newest occurred last year during Hurricane Irene right down my beloved Trap Dike Trail.  Included here on this page are a before and after picture. 

I wrote the following poem back in the nineties when my hiking pal Nancy and I would drive up to the Adirondacks each week to explore the many nooks and crannies of the park.  This poem is about the slide on the Marcy side of Colden ("Tahawus" is the Native American name of the mountain which WE renamed "Marcy" shortly after we took it from them.  The Native American name means "Cloud-Splitter."  More on the Cloud Splitter and the Tear-In-The-Cloud in another post).

Colden Slide

On descent from Tahawus mountain,
peers a streak of quiet healing
pallid cut from rocky fountain
hurling tree and boulder reeling

Seized with visions to inquire
this track of slide, so quick to tear
fears unfettered I now inspired
to know what had existed there

Through twining woods and logs enmeshed
I made my way to see reposed
the granite muscles and mountainous flesh
that Colden’s torrents of stone exposed

The path advanced close to the scar
plunged manifold headlong to base
trees crushed under enormous rocks
the primal forest’s coat defaced

This irresistible and awful force
broke through the woods with foaming path
dashed wildly down a rocky course
its very flesh with pealing wrath

A pebble mashed declivity
with massive logs peeled by decay
thickly scattered skeletons
of gray dead trees from slide affray

Piling at its base a mass
of debris from its crowning seat
filled the eye with awful chaos
rocks from lap now at its feet

This slide, a path that wanted walking
lures on up the failing trail
where once in time, its woodland stalking
left its warning, below, impaled

How humble on this force immortal
lurking in the earth beneath
that eased itself of shrub and soil
and showed to all its iron teeth

This median mount of fallen masses
bends its vassal-knee to none
the only witness to its ravage
were frowning Tahawus and the sun.

Fearful at the time of launching
terrific slides that gash and rush
Still, Colden Mountain on its haunches
waiting, lurking, to ambush

-Malcolm Kogut.

The Spider’s Web Across The Trail

The worst part about leading a horde of hikers up a woodland trail the first thing in the  morning is that the leader is the one who breaks through the midnight diligence of our eight legged friends.  So, I penned a poem:

The Spider’s Web Across The Trail

The dawn was sketching faint outlines
I observed the sunrise artist as I awoke, supine
The winds to the trees, they whisper “awake”
where the mountain’s children come to life
and a bird with an angelic gift flies by
and conducts a forest symphony as morning breaks

A rough trail leads upward and is lost in the wood
and it steers where I’m destined in all likelihood
As I start my trek upward I feel something cling
and I swiftly break through it
With no sympathy to it
this harp-like spread of spider web string

Further up the mountain slope, once again, tis no surprise
I crash through the gossamer web of a spider, but, I’m many times his size
He must know this path is well traveled by day
he must suffer displeasure for he worked through the night
only losing his trophy with nary a fight
But can brag to his friends of the catch - got away

I break through these webs with hardly a care
while this poor trembling spider just sits there and stares
for the indwelling spider will not run to this fly
I will steel dimly forth on the path that I hike
paying little attention to the threads that I strike
He’ll just wait till I’m gone and go on with his life

To string up web filaments end to end on these trails
is a feat that I know not of what it entails
I stop to observe and become more aware
of the leaves I have trodden or of life’s hurtful scars
and I pity you, spider, wherever you are
‘neath the surface of life, there’s much more lingering there

So, I’ll watch for your dancing o’er the corpse of a fly
and pause if I see you as I walk on by
for you, death’s important, a triumph, a win
in your secret funnel where eyes are excluded
I’ll know that you’re there in your tunnel, secluded
I’ll look at you, wondering from outside, what’s within

-Malcolm Kogut.