Gordon Getty is known for many different vocal, choral, and orchestral works. Of the four works on this recording, two are recording premieres. I have mixed feelings about the program. In some cases Getty chooses a subject and verses that are emphasized and enhanced by the music. Elsewhere the subject and verses seem at odds with the music. Fortunately, the program improves in the last two works. 

A Prayer for My Daughter is a choral piece based on the poem by William Butler Yeats. Getty sets the rhythm for the choral verses in one meter and the orchestra in a different meter. The music does not add to the poem's effectiveness and sometimes works against the text. Getty eliminates two of the poem's stanzas, losing the continuity of the poem which, as set by Getty, is difficult enough to follow. I found listening to the 13-minute piece a trial. This is its first recording. 

The three songs in Poor Peter have similar meter problems, but the music is better fitted to the text. The three unrelated songs are in different musical styles....

The Little Match Girl is a choral work based on the three-page short story by Hans Christian Anderson. Getty has set the entire text to music (23 minutes) and the choral writing and music are well suited. There are snow effects using harp and celeste and a short intermezzo with ascending and descending chords when the dying Little Match Girl's soul ascends to her grandmother in heaven. It is quite effective and beautifully performed. This is its premiere recording. 

Joan and the Bells is a cantata relating three scenes from the trial and execution of Joan of Arc.... Dramatically and musically the combination of soloists, chorus, and orchestra are used to great effect....

If you like Getty's music you won't have any qualms about the varying musical and rhythmic themes. The Little Match Girl and Joan and the Bells will appeal to everyone.

John Farrer [presided] over the Los Angeles premiere of Gordon Getty's Three Waltzes.... The Getty pieces, originally written for piano, turned out to be a very pretty, courtly, melodic, unabashedly diatonic set of miniatures with an occasional bent for the unexpected--like the violent chromatic gusts from the violins in the first waltz. Getty does have his own voice, a reticent, solitary one that keeps the noises from the 20th century at bay but not entirely out of earshot.

Soprano Kristin Clayton performed a selection from Gordon Getty's The White Election, a song cycle based on Dickinson's poetry. Getty is a rather conservative composer but these settings display lovely vocal lines and a deft sense for the poetry. Some of them tend toward the operatic - especially as interpreted by Clayton - but others are elegiac or wispy and reminiscent of folk songs.

"The Fall of the House of Usher", a short story published in 1839, tells the tale of the demise of the noble family of Usher. The last descendants, the abnormally close twins Roderick and Madeline (who is dying) live alone in the sinister, mysterious family home. When Madeline dies, darkly terrifying events unfold. It's atmospheric and chilling, and has been set by Claude Debussy and Gordon Getty, with both works staged as part of Welsh National Opera's current British Firsts season.

Getty...chose to tell Poe's story in a straightforward fashion, turning the unnamed narrator into Poe himself and filling in plot holes. The price of this decision to pride narrative over atmosphere was a text-heavy opera, mostly sung in a relentless arioso style. There was little to distinguish individual characters... And while the orchestral writing was craftsmanlike, clear, and colourfully played by the WNO orchestra, the whole effect was rather short on drama or mystery.....