GETTY: “THE WHITE ELECTION.” Kaaren Erickson, soprano;...

GETTY: “THE WHITE ELECTION.” Kaaren Erickson, soprano; Armen Guzelimian, piano. Delos D/CD 3057 (compact disc). This long song cycle--32 songs in four sections, running 72 minutes here--is a work that Gordon Getty says represents his best efforts. It is indeed a highly polished collection, creating an interior life of Emily Dickinson through her poetry. Getty’s music encompasses a variety of idioms, and is surprisingly tightly organized, in an intuitive rather than mechanical way. Though the soprano’s vibrato could be less pronounced in some of the cooler songs, Erickson and Guzelimian do very well by Getty and Dickinson, providing supple sound, and textual and musical point.