Timothy Sullivan: A Magic Casement; Two Pianos; A Soft and Golden Fire** Kathleen Brett, soprano; Linda Maguire, mezzo-soprano; Stephen Ralls and Bruce Ubukata, — pianos (A Magic Casement); Duo Turgeon (Two Pianos); Robert Cram, flute; Sanya Eng, harp Recorded June 22-23, August 5-6, 2000, Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Toronto
CLASS X DISCS CD [65:19]
The Canadian composer Timothy Sullivan has produced something rare here—a song cycle that doesn’t apologize for its literary sources. While his colleagues scurry toward the safety of modernist abstraction or the easy harbor of minimalist repetition, Sullivan sets Yeats, Keats, Noyes, even the wonderfully unfashionable Sydney Dobell and Fiona Macleod.
This is brave. Or foolhardy. But listen to what he does with them in A Magic Casement.
The two-piano accompaniment—Ralls and Ubukata playing with exceptional sensitivity to vocal line—never merely doubles or shadows. Instead it creates what I can only describe as a carillon of dreams, bell-like sonorities over which Brett and Maguire’s voices float and dive like swallows at dusk. “The Bugles of Dreamland” achieves a stillness, a suspension of time, that recalls the best of Geoffrey Bush’s songs—though Sullivan’s harmonic language is his own, more astringent, less willing to settle into comfortable cadences.
The two singers blend and separate with uncommon intelligence. Brett’s soprano has a silvery quality in the upper register that suits Sullivan’s — floating melodic lines, while Maguire brings a darker, earthier color to the lower tessitura. When they twine together in thirds and — well — sixths—as they do throughout the cycle—the effect is both ancient and utterly contemporary.
This is writing that understands what Britten knew: that two female voices in counterpoint can create a sound world of peculiar intimacy and strangeness. Two Pianos presents a different Sullivan entirely. Gone is the Celtic twilight, the romantic imagery.
Here we have something harder to grasp—nine sections that feel their way through darkness like a hand along an unfamiliar wall. The Duo Turgeon plays with remarkable precision, but precision isn’t quite what this music needs. Or maybe it is.
I’m not sure. The work seems deliberately obscure, pitching into dissonant clusters in Part VII that; reminded me—oddly—of Richard Rodney Bennett’s Third Symphony, that strange, undervalued piece from 1987. Parts VIII and IX recover some rhythmic vitality, with jazzy inflections that suggest Sullivan has been listening to Michael Nyman, perhaps even to Constant Lambert’s Rio Grande.
But the gestures feel tentative, as if Sullivan isn’t quite convinced by his own materials. The work lasts twenty minutes but feels longer—not because it’s tedious, but because its temporal logic remains elusive. I wanted to follow its argument but kept losing the thread.
A Soft and Golden Fire, the Joyce settings with flute and harp, returns to more accessible territory. Robert Cram’s flute playing is exquisite—listen to how he shapes the long phrases in “Rain,” with its dripping forest imagery and sense of love quieted by death. Sanya Eng’s harp provides exactly the right Celtic shimmer without slipping into cliché.
This is hard to do. The combination of voice, flute, and harp could easily become precious, but Sullivan keeps the textures spare, even austere at moments. Maguire sings these Joyce settings with deep understanding of the text, though the production captures an odd moment in “My Love is in a Light Attire”—when she sings “arise,” her voice seems to turn away from the microphone, losing focus and volume.
The leader’s presence feels palpable even in this studio setting.
An engineering decision? A execution accident? Either way, it’s distracting in music that otherwise maintains such careful control of dynamics and color.
The disc’s visual presentation is maddening. All caps…. Slender typeface.
Background and text colors that barely differentiate. I spent ten minutes squinting at the booklet trying to match track numbers to titles, a task that should take ten seconds. This matters more than it might seem—when you’re encountering unfamiliar music by an unfamiliar composer, you need clear information about what you’re hearing and when.
The design may win awards, but it fails its primary function. Still, the music itself—or at least two-thirds of it—rewards attention. A Magic Casement is a genuine achievement, songs that belong in the repertoire alongside Britten’s folk song arrangements and Bush’s Summer Serenade.
A Soft and Golden Fire has similar virtues, if less consistent inspiration. Two Pianos remains, for me at least, an enigma—possibly a fascinating one, possibly just an obscure one. Time may tell.
The performances throughout are committed and accomplished, the recorded sound warm and present. If you care about contemporary art song in English, about what can still be done with Romantic poetry and tonal harmony stretched to its chromatic limits, this disc deserves your attention. Just bring a magnifying glass for the liner notes.
