Primarily the orchestra serves as punctuation rather than narrative or true accompaniment. The harmonic idiom is eminently tonal and certainly listenable, but despite a varied palette of colors, it cries out for a memorable melody or two.

Gordon Getty has composed a set of four new Christmas carols (and who wouldn’t agree that we could use some new ones?) for women’s chorus and chamber orchestra, using texts of his own... Getty’s pieces are neo-Elizabethan and melodically rich, traditional and reverent yet possessed of a subtle original stamp and occasional unexpected harmonic twists. “Candles on the Tree” is the best one: poignant and joyful, rattling off a list of yummy holiday foods, it’s an instant nostalgic classic. Getty has obviously poured his heart into these songs. The women of the Volti Chorus have a very attractive sound, but they’re slightly undermiked, and it’s not always easy to hear the words, despite Getty’s sensitive orchestrations....

Musicians of the New Century Chamber Orchestra, under the energetic leadership of Dawn Harms, make a vibrant contribution to this serendipitous holiday offering.

Director David Pountney did a frankly extraordinary job of presenting the operas back to back without the Getty coming off too much the worse by comparison to the Debussy – that is, theatrically speaking at least...

In keeping with the traditions of Poe on film, the basis for Pountney’s success was his cinematic vision, ironically making the most of the very thing for which Debussy and now Getty have stood accused with their respective Usher scores; namely, producing music more suited to film than to opera....

Getty’s adaptation...opts for a pedestrian and unvaried 19th century narrative treatment with, it must be said, scant literary or musical imagination....

Getty’s wordy adaptation...seems not just mundane but wilfully naive in its refusal to plumb any kind of psychological depth.

Further points are raised when one considers Poe’s ‘total’ theory of the short story, of which ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ is an outstanding example. In Poe’s view, the brevity of the form allows the writer to unify all elements of the work, including close details of technique and style, towards a single effect; the aim being to transform mere narrative into a perfectly integrated work of art. This idea has more than a hint of – dare I suggest – Gesamtkunstwerk. In any case, viewed through this lens, Getty’s score falls painfully short of the writer’s innovative vision, with hammy pastiche (complete with Addams Family harpsichord at one point) and cardboard characterisation. Having Poe himself appear as narrator hardly adds to the subtlety. 

Here is an interesting and refreshing CD for the holiday season. The disc is a cornucopia of new music by active and well-known composers. The sound, to start with, is pure Pentatone multichannel splendor, and Gordon Getty, one of their house composers, is to be congratulated for compiling this set of lovely music. This is not blow-you-away Christmas music; it’s not even all Christmas, but “seasonal”. Mostly it is reflective and rather sentimental....

Getty’s own contribution, for women’s chorus and chamber orchestra, dominates, quality-wise, everything on this disc.... a balm is quickly applied with Getty’s fine arrangement of Silent Night that closes out the disc. All in all, this is easily assimilated new music of a very high quality, perfect for this time of the year.