HOLIDAY CONCERT AT THE GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM

 Artists of The Metropolitan Opera Chorus

New Yorkers are an intrepid bunch. Neither snow nor ice nor frigid temperatures will keep them from their appointed cultural rounds. Last night's cultural event was not to be missed. The rotunda of The Guggenheim Museum was lined with music lovers standing on the ascending ramp at every level with a significant portion sitting in chairs at ground level, all of us eager to hear Christmas music, some familiar, some less well known.

Regulars at The Metropolitan Opera are probably aware of the enormous contribution of The Metropolitan Opera Chorus comprising 75 full time singers; but not many know that The Metropolitan Opera is the only opera company in The United States that has a full time chorus. A couple dozen of them have formed a subsidiary entity called The Metropolitan Opera Chorus Artists and artists they are indeed.

We recognized several up and coming young singers that we have written about like mezzo-soprano Morena Galan and bass Eric Lindsey. In any other city they would be starring in an opera and in fact, many of them have done so, like big fish in a small pond. Maestro Jeremy Little conducted them and Lee Steiner accompanied them on the piano.

A special treat was the presence of soloist Jasmine Rice LaBeija, a Juilliard trained singer who has forged quite a career for her gorgeous flamboyant self performing in drag shows around the country and abroad. Please, Dear Reader, take a look at a photo we took of her and posted on our Facebook pages and on Instagram. We have a particular admiration for people with an unusual combination of talents who depart from the traditional path. 

She is the essence of fabulosity, beside having a sensational voice which she shared in Stephen Schwartz' "Through Heaven's Eyes" and the most affecting "O Holy Night", an English translation by John Sullivan Dwight of Adolphe Adam's "Cantique de Noël". The arrangement was attributed to Dan Goeller. It was lovely but we still prefer the French version. Do you?

"Carol of the Bells" struck a familiar chord, so to speak.  Rachmaninoff's "Vespers Bogoroditse" was particularly lovely. The audience responded with enthusiasm to Irving Berlin's familiar "White Christmas".

We loved the gospel inflected final number, Moses Hogan's arrangement of "Glory, Glory, Glory to the Newborn King" which had us moving to the beat. We could tell from the smiling faces of the audience as they filed out into the cold that they had been warmed by the concert. And this is exactly what "culture" should do for us.

© meche kroop

CLASSIC LYRIC ARTS GALA

 

CLASSIC LYRIC ARTS SINGERS

Although we enjoy Classic Lyric Arts students in small private concerts, it is at the yearly gala that one can see and hear a larger group of vocal and collaborative piano students of their three summer programs and also more advanced students of Classic Lyric Art Vocal Academy (CLAVA), a year round venture. It seems odd calling them students when their performances rival those with well-established careers. Many of them have been cast in operas and fortunate are the companies that hire them. The word "students" is somewhat misleading, but if you are familiar with the world of opera, you know that singers are always studying, even the most famous ones.

It is always such a treat to spend an evening seeing the results of their training. The students don't just sing, they present operatic scenes, staged and directed by faculty member Daniel Isengart. Attendees are treated to a sumptuous buffet before and after the performance and have an opportunity to mingle with the artists and to get to know them.  But the important thing is the singing so let us move on.

We will not be able to mention everyone who sang but we would like to share some of the highlights. One of our very favorite duets for tenor and baritone is the famous "Dio che nell'alma infondere" from Verdi's Don Carlo. Tenor David Freides, whom we recently heard as Rodolfo in Puccini's La Bohême, showed a heavier part of his voice as Don Carlo  and baritone Enes Pektas, recently starring as Michele in Puccini's Il Tabarro did the same for his role as  the Marquis de Posa. It is so gratifying to see young singers stretching their voices. They gave us intense dramatics as well as fine singing. Excellent accompaniment was by Marianna Vartikian.

Ms. Vartikian somehow managed to create a fine simulation of a Strauss orchestra as Laura Soto-Bayomi, Estelina Syla, and Sophia Durante enacted the heart-breaking scene from Der Rosenkavalier in which The Marschallin (LSB) steps back and watches her lover Octavian (SD) falling in love with Sophie (ES).

Soprano Sofia Gotch, a recent prizewinner of the Gloria Gari Competition (as was Mr. Pektas) performed Juliette's "Poison Aria" ("Amour, ranime mon courage") accompanied by Giancarlo Llerena. The voice soared to the ceiling of the concert room of The Kosciuszko Foundation and the overtones bounced all over the room. Furthermore, the acting was most convincing.

Particularly well directed was the scene from Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore in which the naïve Nemorino enlists in the army to get money to buy more love potion. Danny Farah accompanied tenor Wonjin Choi as the gullible Nemorino and baritone Brendon Rapushaj took the role of Sergeant Belcore. 

Accompanied by Mr. Llerena, Kimberly Alexandra Adam and Daisy Dalit Sigal each performed a poem by Tonino Guerra, set by Giovanni Fusco. The works were surprisingly composed in the 20th century, surprising because they were singable. It would seem that anything written in Italian is singable! Both singers shone.

Creating staging for scenes involving a large cast is challenging but Mr. Isengart rose to the challenge and made perfect sense of scenes from Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, Donizetti's Lucia de Lammermoor, and Rossini's Guglielmo Tell. Proof of "making sense" is when one can tell what's going on even without speaking the language.

There were two people in attendance who made perfect sense to us. One is Artistic Director Glenn Morton who introduced the evening by emphasizing the importance of language as taught in countries where the language is spoken with native teachers, and Executive Director John Viscardi who just so happens to be a superfine singer himself, one we reviewed a decade ago! Along with CLA France, CLA Italy, and CLA Vocal Academy, CLA is expanding again, moving CLA Mozart to an exceptional new location in Italy. Bravissimo!

©meche kroop

ÜBERWÄLTIGEND!

 Ammiel Bushakevitz and Konstantin Krimmel

(Photo by Joseph Sinnott)

We have just spent a week with two extraordinary artists, leaving us almost lost in a world of German Romanticism,--not everyone's cup of tea but very much the beverage of choice of the lieder lovers who packed Butenweiser Hall at The 92nd Street Y. Mastering the three song cycles of Franz Schubert (and yes, they were mastered) and performing them all in one week must have made enormous demands on the artists; giving undivided attention makes a demand on the usually restless New York audience as well. One only heard the quiet rustling of the pages of the translation booklet.

For our part, we neither followed along the translation nor did we take notes. This exception to our usual concert reviewing led to our complete immersion in the experience, as contrasted with the very first time we heard these Schubert song cycles in the same venue sung by a very famous baritone. At that time we were new to lieder and had to read the translation. It was a fine starter for us,  and can be considered responsible for initiating a lifetime of interest in art song and a wish to learn German. We have come a long way!

Although primarily focused on the subtleties of interpretation, the refinements of technique in both baritone Konstantin Krimmel and collaborative pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz were not lost on us. Herr Krimmel can tell a story with such variety of vocal coloration, subtlety of phrasing, and depth of feeling that one can focus on the storytelling with the means of achievement only affecting us on a subtle level. With even a minimal knowledge of German one knew exactly the nature of the story he was telling. Bushakevitz evinced such total command of his instrument  that the accompaniment revealed the setting as well as the unconscious feelings of the poet narrator.

Our favorite of the three evenings was the darkest-- Winterreise. We call this "50 Shades of Black". It is the chronicle of a man's descent into madness after a romantic rejection. Perhaps the poet Wilhelm Müller meant the work to be taken a bit ironically but Schubert put his pen to paper with emotional intensity and psychological validity. In perfect Schubertian partnership, piano and vocal line augment each other. In the same fashion, Krimmel and Bushakevitz complemented each other in limning both the natural elements of a countryside winter and the mental decompensation of the hero.

So, we view the cycle as a matchless work of art involving poet, composer, singer and pianist. We members of the audience can in no way feel detached but we take this journey together. If we do not feel shaken to the core as "Die Leiermann" fades to a close, then the artists have not succeeded. This perfect partnership had the hero depersonalizing and derealizing in succession, hallucinating the two suns, shivering in the cold, fantasizing that crows and signposts were to be taken personally. There are only a few bars of momentary and false hopes, one when the piano gives us the hoofbeats of the horse drawing the postal coach which just might contain a letter from the lost beloved--but doesn't. And once again when the hero awakens from a sweet dream; but depression rapidly overtakes him as Schubert switches readily from major to minor, as he so often does. One cannot believe how artistry can create so many versions of despair. Fifty shades of black indeed!!

Our second favorite was Die schöne Müllerin which tells a somewhat different story but one no less tragic. The arc of the story follows our young hero who sets out to make his place in the world, finds a job with a miller, falls in love with the miller's daughter, mistakes her interest, despairs over her fickleness, and intends to drown himself in the same brook that powers the millwheel. The story offers the singer a wider latitude of emotional expression from gaiety to misery and offers the pianist an opportunity to limn rushing water and turning mill wheels. Schubert was a master at creating imagery by means of melody and rhythm and our pair of artists picked up on every subtlety with consummate technique and intense emotionality.

The final evening was Schwanengesang which was not published until after Schubert's tragic early death. This work is filled with variety but doesn't tell a story. Several songs stood out, probably because we have heard them so often in concert. Ludwig Rellstab's "Liebesbotschaft" and "Abschied" begin the collection on a rather cheerful note and his famous "Ständchen" touches our heart with its tender importuning.. After some rather sad songs, Johann Gabriel Seidl's "Die Taubenpost" lifts our spirits with its cheerful message and lilting rhythm. Heinrich Heine contributed two seaside texts of contrasting mood, the cheerful "Das Fischermädchen" and the painful "Am Meer". The final two songs are also settings of Heine and they are songs of torment with "Der Doppelgänger" expressing the torment of lost love and "Der Atlas" expressing the torment of the futility of existence.

Rather than letting the audience leave in a state of depression, our generous artists offered the soothing balm of a Ralph Vaughn Williams song that was lovely but seemed trivial after the depths attained in the cycle. We cannot leave you Dear Reader without reiterating our deeply held belief that one of the major failures of  contemporary art song is the use of boring contemporary text that neither rhymes nor scans. Hearing three evenings of crispy enunciated German that does rhyme and scan left us feeling fulfilled. We would prefer to feel sadly fulfilled by music that still haunts us days later than to hear something contemporary that we will forget within an hour. Schubert's melodies are repeating over and over in our mind's ear and we are even cherishing the sorrow we felt for the unhappy protagonists. We live in the Age of Cool and how refreshing and meaningful it is to recognize that sorrow is part of a deeply felt life.

We will not close without mentioning something that puzzled us in  Die Schöne Müllerin, mainly because we had never before heard embellishments of the vocal line, and we have heard this cycle more times than we can count, sung by both famous artists and by students. We were obliged to consult with a couple pianist friends of ours who informed us that it is not incorrect. We don't care whether it is "correct". It was just something unexpected that we will have to hear again before we decide whether we like it or not.

In any case, we feel so grateful to have spent a week with two artists engaged in legitimate artistic exploration without grandstanding. This is a week we will not soon forget!

© meche kroop

CROSSOVER!

 Baptiste Trotignon and Kate Lindsey

Can it really have been a dozen years since we first wrote about mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey? We recall it well. It was at one of Steve Blier's notable New York Festival of Song recitals at which we found great artistry in Ms. Lindsey; so it was no great surprise that the intrepid Mr. Blier was in attendance at The Weill Recital Hall to witness Ms. Lindsey's performance. In the past dozen years the artist has achieved fame and acquired a large number of fans who came and welcomed her with much applause , listened attentively, and gave her a standing ovation at the end, demanding two encores.

This all makes us feel like a grinch since we were not enthralled. Perhaps it is the case that we do not appreciate cabaret as much as art song. Perhaps it was the extremely loose-limbed body language or the facial expressions bordering on grimacing. Perhaps it was our discomfort at the frequent sartorial adjustments to the otherwise becoming black sequined gown. Perhaps it was the realization that the chosen composers, who fled Nazi Germany, lost the sharp edge that made their works so arresting. There was something about their musical styles, once they settled in the United States, that felt flabby to us.

To our ears, Kurt Weill's songs for Lost in the Stars can't hold the proverbial candle to the several works composed with Bertold Brecht like "Denn wie man sich bettet, so liegt man" from Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny or the intense "Pirate Jenny" from The Threepenny Opera.

The part of the program we did enjoy was a pair of songs by Alma Mahler -- "Die still Stadt" and "Hymne", songs we would love to hear again. Of course Gustav's wife composed at the turn of the 20th century, a period we admire. We wish the  composer had defied her controlling husband and written more songs. Perhaps the inclusion on the program of songs by Alexander Zemlinsky ("Selige Stunde" and the peaceful "Und hat der Tag all seine Qual") made its way onto the program because he and Mrs. Mahler were "involved". We wish his songs and hers had been programmed sequentially.

The pianist for the event was Baptiste Trotignon, an excellent jazz pianist and quite a treat for those member of the audience who love jazz and improvisations. We, unfortunately, do not. There were many instances when what we heard coming from the piano was at war with the text. Furthermore, the pair of artists gave an interpretation of Kurt Weill's "Je ne t'aime pas" that didn't reflect our psychological understanding of the jilted woman who is trying to hide her sorrow. The accompaniment was dense and forte whilst the singing lacked subtlety and irony. Ms. Lindsey just sounded angry--even furious.

We did enjoy the pianist's solo improvisation on Kurt Weill's tunes and thought of him as a better soloist than accompanist.  To end on a more favorable note, halfway through the program we heard a very nice interpretation of Weill's "Berlin Im Licht".

We cannot fault artists for wanting to do something different by stretching their styles or for creating an original theme for a program. Obviously there are fans who love everything an artist does. Just not us.

© meche kroop