The publicity for this setting of passages from
Shakespeare
's long and rather raunchy youthful poem Venus and Adonis quotes the BBC to the effect that the writing of composer
Rodrigo Ruiz
is "unabashedly tonal." That is true enough, and one also learns that this is the first Mexican song cycle and the first setting of
Venus and Adonis
as a song cycle. None of these facts, however, quite get to the peculiar quality of this music.
Ruiz
's music is not tonal in the contemporary British crossover sense but rather lands somewhere between the songs of
Haydn
and
Schubert
. He is not just unabashedly tonal but unabashedly diatonic. After hearing decades of
settings that seek to capture the text in fine shades of extended tonality, it is wholly unexpected to hear it this way, but there is more. From the foregoing, one might think
was some kind of throwback or ultraconservative composer, yet curiously, the music does not come off that way. It turns out that tonality is the only really retro feature of these settings. His phrase structures have a good deal of freedom; they may be squarish, and then, to serve the text, they may not be. His rhythms freely break across the barlines when needed. This is a case where sampling is a great help in finding out what the music sounds like; it is really one of a kind. Soprano
Grace Davidson
, coming herself from the British crossover sphere, is actually ideal in this music; her deadpan, largely vibrato-free singing matches what is really a kind of minimalist language. The
Signum
label sound from the Britten Studio at England's Snape Maltings complex strikes the right intimate note on an unusual release indeed. ~ James Manheim