Eric Starr
Between the Sandhills and the Sea: A Tribute to Vera Brittain & Winifred Holtby
(Bronx Bound Records)
Cold Spring composer Eric Starr’s tribute to two heroic and impactful women of the early 20th century is a provocative and heart-wrenching celebration of perseverance. One of the women, Vera Brittain, a nurse who cared for British and German soldiers at the front lines, lost her brother, her fiance, and her grief-stricken father in World War I. Winifred Holtby’s prose of life and loss and work in South Africa is equally intense and compelling. Their seductively vulnerable thoughts and shattered hearts are interspersed throughout the movements of this eloquent and melancholy chamber music. The compositions, narrated by accomplished actor Sonya Cassidy and performed by violinist/cellist Hannah Holman and pianist Michelle Alvarado are intensely resolute and reflective, alternatingly pensive and probing; a meditation on the completely unreasonable and somewhat unhinged will to do good and carry on in the face of unthinkable suffering.
This article appears in June 2023.
