Editorial Reviews

It's no surprise that Songs Without Words: Classical Music From the War is the most ruminative of the CDs that accompany Ken Burns's seven-hour epic The War. In the documentary, these works tend to be heard at the most heart-wrenching or reflective moments: Yo-Yo Ma has such moments himself in his anguished soloing in Dvorak's "Cello Concerto in B Minor," the fevered pulse of his bowing mirroring the soul-deadening onscreen horror. Suitably, that most American of composers, Aaron Copland, is here twice: his first appearance is with Benny Goodman and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra on a solemn original composition, "Concerto for Clarinet, Strings, Harp and Piano," a 16-minute-plus work that opens up into a stirring, soaring celebration of hope after its dour theme-setting stanza, then returns to a more ominous mood. It's a roller-coaster ride of emotions, from abject fear to unbridled optimism and back, and a more appropriate musical evocation of the war years could hardly be summoned. His other composition here, "Grovers Corners" from Our Town, with the New Philharmonic Orchestra comes in at a slight 3:12 and sounds like the first tentative breaking of a new day, full of hope in a strings-and-woodwinds passage of exquisite, fragile beauty. Works by Ligeti, Fauré, Liszt, and Messiaen ("Quartet For the End of Time") sound a doom-laden note, but the Mendelssohn composition that gives this disc its title, "Songs Without Words," is a marvelous, nuanced duet performed by Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Emanuel Ax that balances light and dark emotions. Those who see Burns's film will never hear these works in quite the same way again -- in the same way that those who see The War may come away with a whole new perspective on the human toll these conflicts take. Even in the "good war," it's an awful price to pay. David McGee, Barnes & Noble

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