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Editorial Reviews

Richard Blackford avoids making a direct political indictment in "Voices of Exile" (2001), his five-part cantata for tape, vocalists, choir, and orchestra, yet he aims to show that displacement, torture, and imprisonment are universal conditions, and that the experiences of refugees can best be understood through the words of poets who have suffered with them and written of their plight. For all its ethnic diversity and multiplicity of styles -- from recorded voices in many languages, to lavishly orchestrated choruses and quasi-operatic scenes -- Blackford's work is earnest, theatrical, and a bit ponderous under the weight of its accumulated materials. As an attempt to embrace a large human theme through an eclectic, multicultural approach, Blackford's piece seems burdened with an excess of musical rhetoric, and weakened by jumping from one style to another. This kind of polystylism has been heard before, in works ranging from Leonard Bernstein's "Mass" to William Bolcom's "Songs of Innocence and Experience," and seems to be symptomatic of grandiose postmodern compositions with big things to say. One wonders if Blackford might have made his points more efficiently -- and the cantata shorter -- without the taped voices, because his conventional forces work well enough without them, and the clumsy presentational aspect of the piece would be eliminated. As it is, though, "Voices of Exile" is stalled in these passages, and the frustration of stopping for these clips is only mitigated by the lyrical songs and energetic choruses, which flow naturally in Blackford's neo-Romantic style. The vocal solos by mezzo-soprano Catherine Wyn-Rogers, tenor Gregory Kunde, and baritone Gerald Finley are expressive and moving, and the performances by the Bach Choir, the New London Children's Choir, and the Philharmonia Orchestra, under the direction of David Hill, are professionally polished and committed. Quartz's reproduction is clean and clear, and only occasionally unfocused. Blair Sanderson, All Music Guide

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