Rorem: Selected Songs.

[] Farley; Rorem, piano. Texts. Naxos 8.559084

Ned Rorem, born 1923 in Indiana, is known to many (including OPERA NEWS readers) as an author of articles and books. His approach to songwriting differs little from his prose style. Both are witty, discriminating, conceived with skill and a conscious sense of manner, set within a wide cultural frame of reference. There's a chatty but reserved familiarity that seems confidential but also rather cool. In music as in prose, he's fond of the polished epigram. His songs, like his articles and books, are engaging and show that their author works with as much care as ease. It's a care not only for the niceties of artistic technique but for the human condition, with no aspect minor enough to slip past his attention.

Rorem's generous song output has given him a lead in a crowded but unrewarding profession. Most composers love to write songs; most singers are in no hurry to sing them. Through hard work and professionalism, as much as through natural aptitude for this tempting, elusive art form, Rorem has made himself an exception, cultivating the capacities of sympathetic interpreters such as Carole Farley, his partner on this CD from Naxos's American Classics series. He chooses his texts with a keener literary eye than most other composers, and his ear is equally fine-tuned. Some of the pieces in this CD cross section are from familiar writers -- most American, some from the British Isles -- but not necessarily from their best-known work. Other choices are those of a person much more widely read than average.

Farley, like Rorem, brings a direct Midwestern background to bear on a cosmopolitan foreground. Thoughtful in interpreting both text and music, ...