Eric McElroy
Tongues of Fire
The Fetch: Five Poems of Gregory Leadbetter
A Short Story of Falling: A Poem of Alice Oswald
After the Voices: Five Poems of W.S. Merwin
Tongues of Fire: Three Poems of Grevel Lindop
A Dead Man’s Embers: Six Poems of Robert Graves
James Gilchrist (tenor)
Eric McElroy (piano)
rec. 2022, The Menuhin Hall, Stoke d’Abernon, UK
Reviewed as an MP3 download. Texts included.
Somm Recordings SOMMCD0665 [75]

This programme of première recordings represents Eric McElroy’s debut CD. McElroy has performed widely as a pianist, and amongst his prolific output as a composer his song settings of texts by contemporary poets can be singled out for special mention and, indeed, this strikingly impressive recording.

In his booklet note, McElroy writes that “I am interested in the unknown, the enigmatical, the numinous, the half-ness of things. These cycles are the result of my fascination with these and other subjects, each one addressing a specific theme with which I was absorbed when I wrote it. For me, a song-cycle is both an essay and exorcism in music.”

We are plunged straight into the uncanny with The Fetch, and Gregory Leadbetter’s disturbing and eloquent imagery evokes those margins between life and death, humanity and nature in ways that remind me of Thomas Hardy at his best. McElroy’s settings are both full of impact and atmosphere, by no means always in ways that you might expect, but conveying a personal response to the text that holds its own fascination.

A Short Story of Falling: A Poem of Alice Oswald is a substantial setting of a relatively compact text, the piano tracing the course of falling rain and the endless cycle of water with an illustrative character, in what you might call hard-edged impressionism. After the Voices takes five late poems by American poet W.S. Merwin, who summed up his own attitude in the statement “poetry is about what cannot be said.” Openness to interpretation in these words and their often introverted character might have led to a more intimate approach and there are indeed passages that have this expressive quality, but McElroy is a pianist composer who by no means shies away from a full dynamic range and a certain amount of climactic bravura, shaping music and text with a highly effective mix of sparing and scintillating textures.

For McElroy, Grevel Lindop is “a poet whose work exemplifies the Erotic Sublime”, and indeed, the three poems set in Tongues of Fire clearly deal with intimacy and potent sexual desire. There is however no need to look away, as the beautiful imagery in the texts abstract any prurience into layered visions that suit the romantic aspects of McElroy’s idiom perfectly.

Most of us will know Robert Graves from his novel I, Claudius, but of his much-admired poetry A Dead Man’s Embers represents his early war poems in “material for a composition about death, exploring as they do our schizophrenic feelings of terror and awe toward the subject.” Mystery and violence rub shoulders as the living rub shoulders with the dead, and neither poet nor composer pull any punches.

James Gilchrist brings colour and expressive depth to these songs, and there is clearly a fine synergy between singer and composer in performances that have an irresistible spark of lively authenticity and detailed care in preparation. All of these are world première recordings, and I can imagine this repertoire being adopted with enthusiasm by singers looking for new sing cycles that extend the tradition of Benjamin Britten and others with an added edge of unflinching American-ness.

Dominy Clements

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Contents
The Fetch: Five Poems of Gregory Leadbetter
I. Misterioso
II. Stalking
III. Statuary I
IV. Statuary II
V. This
A Short Story of Falling:
A Poem of Alice Oswald
After the Voices: Five Poems of W.S. Merwin
I. On a Distant Shore
II. The Laughing Thrush
III. The Morning
IV. The Nomad Flute
V. After the Voices
Tongues of Fire: Three Poems of Grevel Lindop
I. Watching
II. Mirror and Candle
III. Myth
A Dead Man’s Embers: Six Poems of Robert Graves
I. Two Fusiliers
II. Here They Lie
III. A Dead Boche
IV. Haunted
V. I’d Love to Be a Fairy’s Child
VI. Strong Beer