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News Reviews Recordings CD Review: Frank Lewin’s opera, Burning Bright:
News Reviews Recordings CD Review: Frank Lewin’s opera, Burning Bright: 
| CD Review: Frank Lewin’s opera, Burning Bright: |
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| Written by Donald Rosenberg | |
| Friday, 31 August 2007 | |
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CGNJ was the sponsor of this recording of Frank Lewin’s opera, Burning Bright: Gramophone June 2002 Frank Lewin Burning Bright Sherry Overholt, soprano; Mordeen Rinde Eckert, tenor; Victor Lee Velta, baritone, Joe Saul Scott Altman, bass-baritone; Friend Ed; Westminster Cathedral Choir; New Symphony Orchestra of Sofia/Rossen Milanov Albany Records John Steinbeck wrote Burning Bright in 1950 as a play-novelette, a form he also employed for one of his most famous works, Of Mice and Men, which later became a successful opera by Carlisle Floyd. Among the theatergoers who saw Burning Bright in New Haven during its pre-Broadway tryout was Frank Lewin, at the time a composition student at the Yale School of Music, who was so taken with Steinbeck’s experimental play that he decided to turn it into an opera. The play – produced by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, who later made a musical, Pipe Dream, out of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row –closed after two weeks on Broadway in October 1950. The opera’s gestation was long, finally receiveing its premiere in 1993 at Yale University, where Lewin was tehn a composition faculty member. The original play has faded into relative obscurity, a fate that Lewin’s opera doesn’t deserve. This recording reveals his Burning Bright to be an affecting work of rich imagination. an affecting work of rich imagination The four-character opera closely follows Steinbeck’s structure, although Lewin’s libretto pares the language to its essentials to clarify characters and situations. In probing the theme of a man seeking to extend his heritage by becoming a parent, Steinbeck devised a story that changed locales per act to reflect the universal message. Lewin’s largely tonal score takes advantage of these settings –a Midwest circus; a farm in Pennsylvania; a ship moored in New York harbour – through music that embraces American and other folk idioms. The pacing is sometimes slow, but Lewin, with ample experience as a concert, film and television composer, has such a wide and sure command of vocal and instrumental colours that the piece hold the attention. The first act’s layering of offstage circus music with the unfolding onstage drama is especially impressive. Elsewhere, Lewin provides rapturous and evocative writing that enables the characters to come across as flesh-and-blood figures. The recording was supervised by the composer, which would seem to guarantee interpretive truth. While the performance has ample intensity and detail as conducted by Rossen Milanow (with the offstage circus music led by Otto-Werner Mueller), much of the singing is dry and variable of pitch. The finest contribution is made by tenor Rinde Eckert as Victor, the young man who supplies the seed for Mordeen, the impotent Joe Saul’s wife, to become pregnant, unbeknownst to her much-older husband. Eckert inflects every line vividly. Baritone Lee Velta (Joe Saul) and soprano Sherry Overholt (Mordeen) are compelling artist who sometimes sound taxed. As Friend Ed, bass-baritone Scott Altman does dignified work. The playing of the New Symphony Orchestra of Sofia is responsive, though too often placed in the distance. Despite these short-comings, Lewin’s opera makes a powerful, poignant impact. |
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| Last Updated ( Sunday, 06 January 2008 ) |
