Ferris’ visionary leaning is especially evident in the title item of the program—the 1994 setting of Stephen Spender’s great hymn to spiritual heroes of our civilization, Corridors of Light.

In addition to John Shirley-Quirk’s magnificent baritone solo, the chorus is accompanied by an ensemble of piano, percussion and strings, with the exquisite solo oboe adding to Spender’s text in a number of broad entr’actes.

This performance with widely acclaimed Shirley-Quirk and the late lamented Sara Watkins (1945–1997), oboist and former resident conductor of the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, serves as a tribute to the glorious artistry of Watkins (also known as Mrs Shirley-Quirk).

Well worth investigating.

Hometown boy made good—Chicago-born William Ferris conducts his own works

In Chicago, William Ferris (1937–2000) was known as a musical hometown boy made good, a one-time treble singer and promising keyboardist who became a composer with more than 500 pieces in his catalogue by the time of his death. Outside Chicago (thanks largely to the efforts of the Chicago-based label Cedille), Ferris is now remembered mostly as a conductor with immaculate taste in the music of his time and the co-founder of the chorus that still bears his name. This collection should help correct the imbalance.

Whether it was Ferris the choral conductor who influenced Ferris the composer or the other way around, the relationship between the two is not in question. Even the sole non-vocal piece in this collection, Bristol Hills (1969) for string orchestra, is full of an unbridled, Barber-like lyricism that favours emotional directness over orchestrational pyrotechnics. When words are involved, whatever the language—compare Salvatore Quasimoto’s Ed è subito sera (1965) or Stephen Spender’s “The Truly Great”, the basis for Ferris’s Corridors of Light (1993)—music emanates organically from the text, the relationship between the two becoming truly transparent, the music’s winding structure enveloping the words in a comforting harmonic language.

The downside of this, however, becomes apparent right from the opening Gloria (1992). Obviously aware of the text’s musical precedents (Poulenc and Rutter being but two of the more recent), Ferris’s creative urges seem decidedly tempered. Torn between offering something new and not jolting conservative listeners, the music works hard to be loved but never quite delivers the exultation promised in the text.

This lovely disc is devoted to a composer—William Ferris (1937–2002)—who never received the recognition he deserved outside of the specialized circles of church and organ music. A native of Chicago and a student of, among others, Alexander Tcherepnin and Leo Sowerby, Ferris was a brilliant organist and choral conductor who, through his leadership of the William Ferris Chorale, created a body of glorious vocal works, of which three of the most significant receive their premiere recordings on this CD sponsored by the Cedille Foundation, which is dedicated to promoting composers from the Chicago school.

Although Ferris produced a quantity of secular works, including a tempestuous organ concerto (Acclamations), premiered by himself with the Chicago Symphony, as well as a ravishing symphonic movement October-November, his reputation is highest in the field of liturgical music. And this relatively late example of the Gloria (1992) is a superb embodiment of the continuation of the lyrico-dramatic manner exemplified by his most influential mentor, Leo Sowerby. Its idiom is characterized by long expansive vocal lines supported by a richly modulating harmonic foundation combined with an exceptionally fluid and plangent tone.

The much earlier solo cantata—Et È subito Sera (And Suddenly It Is Evening)—based on the enigmatic poetry of Nobel Prize-winner Salvatore Quasimodo—shows Ferris gradually working his way toward a subtle and expressive setting of some rather difficult texts. Of the four works recorded here, however, it leaves a somewhat more nebulous and tentative impression.

Then follows Bristol Hills (1969), the only purely instrumental work here, a short but telling evocation of a specific locale in New York State’s Finger Lakes region with an almost visionary intensity.

This visionary intensity is especially evident in the capstone of the program—the 1994 setting of Stephen Spender’s great hymn to the spiritual heroes of our civilization, Corridors of Light. The most striking element in this score is the presence, in addition to the baritone soloist and chorus accompanied by a very effectively deployed ensemble of piano, percussion and strings, of a solo oboe commenting on the text in a series of lengthy instrumental interludes. This live performance featuring legendary baritone John Shirley-Quirk and the noted oboist Sara Watkins, all under the direction of the composer, attains and sustains a level of exalted eloquence and celebration that underlies and encapsulates all the outstanding qualities of Ferris’s music.

Ferris spent his later years as an organist in Rochester, and in a way this was especially fitting because his style combines the traits of Sowerby with the Eastman school of Hanson and Bernard Rogers, with a bit of Randall Thompson. These readings must be considered definitive as Ferris was personally involved in two of them as conductor (Gloria and Corridors), while his lifelong friend and partner John Vorassi is s
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