A POLISHED PERFORMANCE

Julia Bullock (photo by Christian Steiner)

What a pleasure to see a lovely young woman step onstage and hold the audience fast for two hours.  Soprano Julia Bullock was a budding star the first time we heard her and now she has blossomed into an artist of great stage presence and in full command of her prodigious assets.  With communication this involving, we do not even notice the flawless technique, just the connection with the material and with the audience.  Young Concert Artists could not have chosen better.  Collaborative pianist Renate Rohlfing was also a fine choice, switching styles as readily as Ms. Bullock.

Let us begin at the end when Ms. Bullock brought the audience to their collective feet with her well chosen encore, "Somewhere" from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (lyrics by Stephen Sondheim).  The moving but non-histrionic delivery confirmed our impression that the work is truly an opera.  There was not a hint of distasteful cross-over compromises.

The entire second half of the program put Ms. Bullock's interpretive gifts to use.  Her hommage to Josephine Baker was charming, sassy and life-affirming.  The two women both originated in St. Louis; one couldn't help thinking how times have changed in our lifetime.  Ms. Baker had fled American prejudice to find fame and adulation in Paris whereas Ms. Bullock can enjoy fame and adulation right here in New York.

The songs were arranged by Jeremy Siskind.  We especially enjoyed the sensual "Madiana" by Mairiotte Almaby, Vincent Scotto's gorgeous melodic line in "J'ai deux amours" and the funny/sad lyrics of Léo Lelièvre's "Si j'étais blanche".  Mr. Siskind also arranged three further songs.  Oscar Brown, Jr.'s "Brown Baby", Billy Taylor's "I Wish I Knew How It Feels to be Free" and Harry T. Burleigh's "Little David".  All were delivered with deep feeling and appropriate simplicity.

Three selections from Xavier Montsalvatge's Cinco canciones negras served to make us want to hear the other two!  The menace present in "Chévere" was well limned as was the underlying pain in the tender lullaby "Canción de cuna para dormir a un negrito", with the rumbling bass of Renate Rohlfing's piano conveying the troubled emotions of the mother.

We wish we had had the same pleasure from the first half of the program.  Ms. Bullock was courageous in choosing some very difficult and grim material which she sang with deep conviction; it was just not our taste.  To begin the evening, three songs by Luciano Berio were sung, interleaved with two very brief songs by Rossini from his post-opera writing period.  There must have been a point to this alternation which we did not grasp; we only knew we preferred the Rossini by a long shot.

Young Concert Artists Composer-in-Residence David Hertzberg, inspired by Ms. Bullock, wrote a piece which was premiered last night entitled Ablutions of Oblivion.  Ms. Bullock negotiated the wide leaps of register with ease and showed admirable word coloring in the plentiful descriptions of wind and leaves and bare places in Wallace Stevens' poetry.  The text was supposed to "express dichotomous states of sensory oblivion".  What???  Were it not for Ms. Bullock's fine delivery we would have longed for some sensory oblivion for ourselves.

We could not find anything to like about selections from Olivier Messiaen's works and would be happy never to hear them again.  That being said, there was nothing disappointing about Ms. Bullock's impassioned performance and fine French.  She clearly connected with every song on the program and we were only sorry that we lacked appreciation.  She could sing the phone book and hold our attention.  We kept thinking "Loved the singer, hated the song".

© meche kroop

SIMPLY STELLAR

One expects excellence from The Juilliard School but we are never surprised when an event exceeds our high expectations.  Such was the case last night at the Vocal Arts Honors Recital in which two supremely talented sopranos, chosen by competitive audition, presented programs selected by themselves and their collaborative pianists.  Let's take a look at what they chose.

The glamorous Hungarian-American Lilla Heinrich-Szasz, partnered by the competition-winning pianist Lachlan Glen (well known by Voce di Meche readers as the founder and co-artistic director of Schubert & Co.) began their half of the program with four of our favorite Grieg songs.  The performance highlighted the gentle sincerity and delicacy of these gems.  Ms. Heinrich-Szasz delighted the audience with her unfussy and winning delivery; her connection with the material and with the audience was remarkable, especially in the humorous "Lauf der Welt".

Four songs by Debussy revealed the fine vibrato of her upper register; our ears thrilled to the pingy resonance.  Still, our heart was taken most by the Spanish songs of her final set.  We had never before heard José Serrano's "Marinela" from La Canción del Olvido but we hope to hear it many more times in the future.  On the other hand we have heard Fernando Obradors "Del cabello más sutil" more times than we can recall but never with a more haunting feeling of yearning.

Mr. Glen's piano was totally supportive of the delicacy of the songs.  One had a sense of filigree that tickled the ear.  Ms. Heinrich-Szasz performed an encore in Hungarian which was everything an encore should be, showing her skill with yet a fourth language and her willingness to let her hair down and dance; the delighted audience joined her in rhythmic clapping to the spirited "Heia in dem bergen" from Die Csárdásfürstin.

The second half of the program starred the equally glamorous award-winning Julia Bullock and her superb piano partner Daniel Fung.  When we saw the program, we were skeptical about the Messiaen songs from Chants de terre et de ciel but need not have been concerned.  Ms. Bullock and Mr. Fung made music together in spite of the inaccessibility of the music and poetry.

Much more to our taste were Mussorgsky's songs from The Nursery in which Ms. Bullock gave free rein to her considerable dramatic skills; our personal favorite was "With Nanny", heard many times before but never with such charm.  Richard Strauss' Drei Ophelia Lieder followed, songs which sound very different from Strauss' other songs.  It is so interesting that English had been translated into German and the German translated back into English by Ms. Bullock herself for the program.  Indeed, Ms. Bullock also translated the French and the Russian songs!  Without a break, Ms. Bullock seguéd right into Harry T. Burleigh's "Deep River", driving the audience into a frenzy of adulation with her gorgeous lustrous voice and compelling stage presence.  Mr. Fung was with her every step of the way.  These are four compelling artists to watch!

(c) meche kroop