VA - Wings: Chamber Music by Rami Levin (2024) [Hi-Res]

“Barbara Drapcho is a fine, expressive clarinettist possessed of a fine tone, Mathias Tacke and Kuang-Hao Huang are excellent colleagues Huang is joined by soprano Alisa Jordheim in the Three Songs…The revelation is the soprano herself, Alisa Jordheim, who has a simply glorious voice, so firm of pitch, so pure of tone with not a touch of unnecessary vibrato. There is wit here, too, including some Clementi-like exercise-like sparring between singer and piano…It is important to acknowledge that for all their lightness, these songs are carefully considered compositions…

The Quintet Attacca…This is some of the finest wind ensemble playing I have heard: the sound is blended yet not for a second anonymous, and the players seem completely inside Levin’s score.

There is actually more focus to the pizzicato opening in this new recording by Anthony Devroye and I find Huang more bluesy, with the result that the two strata are more clearly articulated (and therefore the friction between them keener). This is underlined by Acis’ focused recording…There are some lovely moments of planned disjunction here; Levin conveys exactly her aim perfectly.

Levin takes four English nursery rhymes and sets them with lightness but also, as with the second, “Apple Pie,” with some profundity. And if Alisa Jordheim’s faultless way with phrasing (I haven’t heard a legato as smooth as that since Jessye Norman) does not pull you in, I don’t know what will.

Although born in Brooklyn (in 1954), Levin has lived in Brazil, and indeed was resident there for the composition of five of these pieces. This is a most appealing disc, notable for the discovery of Alisa Jordheim as much as for Levin’s music.” *****

Colin Clarke, Fanfare