THE WISHING TREE
The Wishing Tree – The Choral Music of Robert Maggio
released by Albany Records, Spring 2004; with the Chamber Singers of Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges and the Bucks County Choral Society.
click here to hear track sample or purchase CD on allmusic.com
Robert Carl in Fanfare magazine (November-December 2004):
The largest work on the program is Rachel and Her Children--Small Hands, Relinquish All (2002), a seven movement cycle for mezzo, children's and adult choruses, and an ensemble of 15 winds and brass (using texts of Edna St. Vincent Millay and adaptations of Biblical passages by David Rosenberg and Thomas Lloyd).
Here the composer makes his most comprehensive statement, not only in subject matter (the contrasting views of life and death by children and adults), but also in breadth of musical expression….the most affecting movement is the penultimate, for children's chorus with horns, an appeal for compassion and justice to a distant God. It has the sort of beautifully haunting simplicity I associate with the Bernstein Chichester Psalms.