Music of Edward Collins, Vol. 6

Album review

American composer Edward Joseph Collins is having his entire work list recorded in 10 volumes by Albany Records, of which this is the sixth volume. It contains an ambitious and very assured choral orchestral work, Hymn to the Earth (1929), which owes a debt to Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, his Eighth Symphony, and at least betrays a familiarity with Frederick Delius' A Mass of Life. Composed for New York's Society of the Friends of Music but apparently not used, this work remained unheard until William Ferris revived the score in Chicago in 1989. The Ferris performance was issued in a limited edition at that time; this is a recording made in City Halls in Glasgow by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Marin Alsop in 2002. Alsop shapes Collins' familiar-sounding, but unfamiliar music very well and never loses sight of the work's fluid forward trajectory. Alsop also helms the two shorter works, Variations on an Irish Folksong (1932) and Collins' rowdy, very short Cowboy's Breakdown (1944) with confidence and a sense of style. The Variations are based on an earlier piano piece and seems a bit dense and crowded; Cowboy's Breakdown, sketched out in the mid-'30s, looks forward to the "vernacular" style of Copland and Roy Harris.
The soloists in Hymn to the Earth do a splendid job, particularly mezzo-soprano Jane Irwin in the alto solo in "Comes Autumn." Dyed in the wool Mahlerians might scoff and say there is no way on Earth an American composer could erect even a little temple worthy of placement alongside the great cathedrals built by Mahler in his Eighth and Das Lied. If so, they would be missing out on admiring how close Collins came; other than the soprano solo "Hour of Youth," which smacks a little of the flavor of operetta, Hymn to the Earth is a very serious and substantive effort. Likewise, it is heartening to know that at the time Havergal Brian was putting a wrap on his overabundant and scary "Gothic" Symphony, essentially proclaiming "the end of the world as we (knew) it," across the pond, Collins was composing this positive reaffirmation of the world as a living, timeless entity. With any luck, more choral societies and orchestras will adopt Collins' dynamic and highly enjoyable Hymn to the Earth for performance, as it has very strong and well-defined characteristics and deserves to be heard, and this recording is a fine vehicle to test it out, even if it could have used a little more bottom end.

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