by Steve Koenig

Ms. Van De Vate’s music often gets overlooked because either she isn’t “avant” enough, her language not more out there than Pendecki’s, nor is she pop or reactionary, steadfastly Banging on no one’s Can but her own. Additionally, at least as represented on disc, she usually works with large ensembles and forms, which makes it necessary to use small European orchestras to do her work. Here, Toshiyuki Shimada does a fine job with the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra.

All Quiet On The Western Front, based on the classic novel by Erich Maria Remarque, makes an easy mate to Benjamin Britten’s opera Billy Budd in its orchestral language, its moody interlude, the clear voice of each character, and the questions of morality which are left lingering long after the curtain goes down. They’d make an excellently complementary double bill. It opens with the young soldier, numb and in earnest, thinking, “It might not be such a bad war if there were more sleep... My name is Paul Baümer. I am with my classmates from school,” and, like violinist Billy Bang’s experience as told in his CD Vietnam:The Aftermath (Justin-Time Records JUST 162-2), merely nineteen years old.

All Quiet beats Budd in one area; Van de Vate’s vocal lines are much more fluid, natural to the English-speaking voice, yet not simple and certainly not slick. Michael Polscer, as Paul, has a strikingly young and beautiful voice. There is no need to stretch the imagination to hear him as a real teenager. There are effective Ivesian moments with military marching bands, almost in a haze, overlapping the story or jump-cutting the action. The voices are up front in this recording, which helps its accessibility, but orchestral detail is clear and present nonetheless.