(Gala) ***

Even though she is still alive, the Maureen Forrester that was Canada's gift to the art song is long gone. This mixed reissue centres around Robert Schumann's Liederkreis cycle, nicely rendered, but it is her singing of Mahler's "Der Abschied" with Bruno Walter and the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in 1960 that impresses most. The cough-prone audience is noisy, but who cares?

John Terauds
Toronto Star, Feb 12, 2008

Maureen Forrester  *****

Song Cycles   Gala / SRI
« À l’instant où tous les grands disparaissent  -Luciano Pavarotti, Robert Savoie -, il est important de souligner le travail de ceux et celles qui furent les ambassadeurs de l’opéra au Québec ainsi qu’au Canada. La contralto Maureen Forrester, 77 ans, est minée par une sournoise maladie. Elle fut un professeur incontournable et, surtout, une grande artiste. Grâce à la maison de disques Gala, qui produit des trésors d’archives avec un don inégalé, nous redécouvrons ce savoir-faire émouvant. Si Schumann est chanté avec force et conviction, il est vite éclipsé par The Confession Stone, du compositeur Robert Fleming, tiré des poèmes du dramaturge Owen Dodson. De l’émotion à fleur de peau, un sens du tragique classique et une voix qui s’imprime dans votre mémoire. En conclusion, Mahler sous la direction de Bruno Walter et le New York Philharmonic. »
Christophe Rodriguez

Journal de Montréal, le 6 octobre 2007

Je reçois à l'instant le tout nouveau disque où vous avez si sagement fait renaître "The Confession Stone" interprété par Maureen Forrester et John Newmark.

Quelle oeuvre superbe! Je vous félicite aussi de la qualité des textes dans le livret qui accompagne le CD.

Une réussite. Je suis très heureux d'avoir pu me procurer ce disque et très ému aussi. Enfin, je termine en réitérant mes sincères félicitations pour ce beau disque de Maureen Forrester."

Denis Alarie

Comments on The Confession Stone

In the program notes for a 1992 performance of “The Confession Stone” by Jessye Norman, Canadian composer David Gordon Duke argued that “in the later years of ... [Robert Fleming’s] life his conservative modern idiom was out of favour with the self-appointed tastemakers of Canadian music; consequently his reputation was eclipsed by composers of little talent and less technique.”  As a son of Robert Fleming, I react to this statement with ambivalence, of course. I certainly like the suggestion that my father’s work should be better known and more often performed, and I applaud the high praise implied by the perhaps unseemly derogation of the work of certain others. However, I do not believe that my father’s work has really disappeared from the public consciousness, as Duke implies. Still, I will grant that, but for the CBC, much of it is in danger of being forgotten. To me, it is a scandal that the Canadian Music Centre has yet to release a Fleming retrospective, and that there are no extant commercial recordings  of his work.

On the other hand, The Confession Stone (The Songs of Mary) is one Fleming piece that continues to have currency, and is highly regarded by performer and listener alike. It has been called Fleming’s “masterpiece” by both Alan Gillmor and Elaine Keillor.  This work, written for Maureen Forrester at John Newmark’s suggestion, has been performed hundreds of times, by such notables as Ms Forrester, the redoubtable Jessye Norman, Judith Forst, Catherine Robbins, Diane Loeb, Doris Parker, Anne Stick-Bedard, Patricia Lee, Sandra Graham, and Patricia Pascoe.  After her performance of the piece in Vancouver in 1992, Jessye Norman told my mother that, as a student, she had been in the audience when its American premiere occurred in Carnegie Hall in 1970. (Interestingly, The New York Times review of the piece at the time was not kind.) I know that Elvira Gonnella at Dalhousie and Jean Coulthard at UBC both regularly introduced The Confession Stone to students in their repertoire classes, and I understand that the work has been widely used as a teaching piece throughout the United States as well as Canada. I have heard recently from the publishers that have allowed it to go out of print that they are considering reissuing it because of the continuing demand.

Maureen Forrester herself repeatedly gave away copies of The Confession Stone after recitals and used it in her master classes, as did her original vocal coach, Bernard Diamant. I had the pleasure of attending such a master class conducted by Diamant in Halifax in the 1980s. Diamant, by the way, is the person who originally gave John Newmark the poetry, by the African American poet, novelist, and playwright, Owen Dodson.

I have one related story about Newmark, of whom I was a great admirer. He is reputed once to have suggested that no one else could really do justice to the piano part of The Confession Stone. Whenever I have mentioned this to accompanists familiar with the work, their facial reaction has betrayed the view that they thought that Newmark might have been overestimating the uniqueness of his talents, but certainly the playing is tricky and a particularly delicate touch would seem to be needed to achieve the appropriate level of evocation.

To understand the emotional intensity of The Confession Stone and its effects on the listener, one needs to witness the cycle being performed. It represents my father’s vocal writing at its highest. No one could render it better than Forrester. She typically performed the piece last, even when more recently written works were also on the program, because it took a great deal out of her and the audience. The artistry and emotional impact of her performances of The Confession Stone are impossible to exaggerate. I, resolutely irreligious and generally unsentimental, find it difficult to hear, and especially witness, any performance of this piece without being deeply moved.  I saw Forrester perform it many times, the first being at Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University) in Montréal in 1966, the last at a retrospective concert given at the National Arts Centre two weeks after Robert Fleming’s death in 1976.

The Confession Stone has been subjected to considerable detailed musical analysis, by everyone from Bernard Diamant, Maureen Forrester, Jean Coulthard, Elvira Gonnella and others in master and repertoire classes to the writers of graduate theses and dissertations, such as Hubert Teersteeg and Christine DeWit Keitges.

I am very pleased to have learned that Gala Records has released one of the early CBC recordings of Forrester performing The Confession Stone.

Berkeley Fleming
Sackville, N.B.
September 9, 2007