There's an old saying among singers that a vocalist who sings sharp all of the time is "working too hard." In the case of He'll Bring it to Pass, a survey of solo vocal music by the great choral conductor and composer
Hall Johnson, you might think that the soprano is singing about a kidney stone. This is a wonderful idea for a vocal recital, but it is difficult to measure the relative qualities of
Johnson's contribution to solo song, as the voice is so stressed, loud, and above the music so much of the time. It appears that
Johnson's I'm gonna tell God all my troubles is a real peach in terms of a solo, art song-styled gospel number, but the star of the show can't seem to hew close enough to the melody line; she just waddles around in the middle of the texture like she's lost. What makes this doubly ironic is that singing a little flat is not necessarily a bad thing in this kind of music, at least for emphasis. What passes for emphasis here is just a continuously loud, over-sung approach to nearly every number with very little shade or sensitivity -- it's like being a rock on weary land -- with no trees. For "shade and sensitivity" in this kind of material, interested listeners might want to check out
Roland Hayes' The Life of Christ, which is a triumph both as a composition and as an extremely moving performance in recasting African-American gospel melody into a style approaching Western art song.
This package is not wholly without merit -- it is a joint venture between Albany and Videmus Records, and the cover is unlike anything Albany has done before in that the performer is front and center, with no recycled design elements, logos, or other prefabricated imagery present to distract from the person. The recording is a little distant and the piano is clearly not loud enough, but one can hardly blame the pianist or engineer for not being able to strike a sensible balance between singer and accompaniment.