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Navona Records4.5
My Voice: Harp Concerti
Teresa Suen-Campbell, harp; Sinfonia Toronto; Nurhan Arman, conductor
Navona Records, 2025
The harp is often regarded as a mere frill within an orchestra, but there’s a whole repertoire for solo harp spanning centuries and continents. This, in part, is what Teresa Suen-Campbell sets out to demonstrate in her newest recording on Navona Records.
The Chinese-born Canadian starts off with Handel’s Concerto in B-flat major. She brings out the acoustic qualities of the harp with a fluidity that matches the pastoral feel of the work. The watery effect owes much to the quality of the recording. Particularly evident is the sound expansion of strings and harp, creating an enveloping sense of space.
The Concerto in D, “Atonement” by James W. Campbell, involves a larger orchestra with a brass section. Although written in 2014, it adopts many baroque flourishes, including the arpeggios of the string accompaniment so that the listener is partly in the world of Handel. One can detect several changes in harmonic colour, but the musical language nonetheless lacks variety, and the andante is positively Disney-esque.
The third and last concerto on the album, composed by Chan Ka Nin, takes us to a highly refreshing world of sound exploration. It’s theatrical music, sparking pictures in one’s mind, and exploiting the interplay between the instruments of the orchestra, including percussion. As well as creating textures rarely heard from the harp, the composer pushes originality as far as asking the soloist to sing—hence the title of the album: My Voice.
Translation: Cecilia Grayson
