Elena Ruehr (1963-)
Five Men
Lied
Travel Songs
Wonderful Bears

Stephen Salters, baryton
Donald Berman, piano
David Zobel, piano

La voix est souple, le timbre somptueux et les demi-teintes dans l’aigu admirables. On comprend que la compositrice Elena Ruehr ait déclaré dès la première note entendue du baryton Stephen Salters « qu’il était le chanteur pour qui j’avais toujours voulu écrire ». Les deux artistes confirment ici près de trente ans d’admiration réciproque. Américain dans l’âme, l’album regroupe des poèmes et des textes en prose contemporains. En l’absence de traduction, la connaissance de l’anglais est indispensable pour apprécier la fusion musique et texte et la parfaite diction de Salters. « Five Men » d’Elizabeth Alexander (née en 1962) évoque les destins de héros de l’Amérique afro-américaine (Cinque, Nat Turner, George Washington Carver et B. Obama). Les « Travel Songs » sont des déclarations d’amour à la richesse patrimoniale de l’Europe sur des textes en prose de Richard Blanco né en 1968. Les berceuses pour enfants d’Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) et Langston Hughes (1901-1967) apportent leur touche d’innocence. En hommage à son père allemand, Ruehr glisse au milieu de cet univers américain un Lied de Rainer Maria Rilke. Plus difficiles d’accès que ses quatuors à cordes, ces « Songs for Stephen » attestent du savoir-faire d’une grande compositrice moderne. (Gérard Martin)

Songs for Stephen represents a nearly three-decade collaboration between esteemed composer Elena Ruehr and celebrated baritone Stephen Salters. Elena describes the time “a handsome and charismatic young man approached me after a premiere of one of my compositions at Boston University. He asked me to write him a song cycle for his debut recital with the Bank of Boston’s Celebrity Series. I told him to send me a recording of his singing and I’d think about it. The first note I heard Stephen sing sent a bolt of energy down my spine: this was the singer I had always wanted to write for!”. Stephen reciprocates, “What a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration has landed in my life both professionally and personally with Elena. From my first personal musical envelopment of her first song ever written for me, I truly fell in love with her creations for me, and thus we began this truly special and unique journey.”Elena evocatively sets some of America’s most notable poets, including Cuban-American and National Humanities Medal recipient Richard Blanco who read his own work at the second inauguration of President Barack Obama, himself a subject of Five Men in Guggenheim Fellow Elizabeth Alexander’s encapsulation of two centuries’ worth of multiple African-Americans experiences. Leading light of the Harlem Renaissance Langston Hughes and feminist-activist Adrienne Rich lend their lyrics to poetry for children, both dark and light. The addition of the four-minute bonbon Lied, set to texts by Rainer Maria Rilke, is a reference to Elena’s Germanic ancestry as well as the first song, by Schubert, that Elena heard Stephen sing. As with all of their collaborations over the years, Songs for Stephen brings Elena’s evocative music to effervescent life by the baritone’s sumptuous voice.