GUANBO SU, GUANBO GIU

Kenneth Merrill and Guanbo Su

We had only heard basso Guanbo Su on one occasion--but he showed such vocal and dramatic skills performing two very different characters in the same production that we were most eager to hear him again. It was about six weeks ago that we enjoyed Janacek's The Adventures of Vixen Sharp-Ears at Manhattan School of Music; Mr. Su portrayed both the starchy Parson and the grumpy Badger whose den gets preempted by the heroine. We wondered who was the possessor of that incredibly mature sounding bass.

The basso fach is a late blooming one (and also a long-lasting one) so it is an astonishment to find one so young and so well developed. Another astonishment was to hear a program for bass that wasn't ponderous. On the contrary, Mr. Su's voice is dark and rich, but also with a lightness that makes it difficult to describe but very agreeable to listen to.  Think Italian roast espresso capped with milk foam!

There is one thing we noticed that may be a contributing factor--his embouchure probably adds some height and resonance in the head, but we are no voice teacher and that is just a speculation. We would love to ask his teacher Cynthia Hoffman.

With excellent German, Mr. Su performed Richard Strauss' "Morgen" with stunnng expressivity. We don't think we ever heard it sung by a bass but there's always a first time.  Robert Schumann's "Die beiden Grenadiere" showed off Mr. Su's gift for storytelling. The discreet use of dynamics injected variety into the lengthy lied.

Schubert songs seemed a natural for Mr. Su's storytelling.  He produced markedly different coloration for the frightened Maiden and the reassuring Death in "Der Tod und das Madchen". But it was "Erlkonig" that captured our admiration.  In this dramatic masterpiece, Mr. Su used facial expression and direction of glances along with vocal coloration to indicate the identities of the four characters. How we would have loved to share with our readers photos of his face  but, truth to tell, our attention was so rapt that we forgot to pick up the camera!  This was the first time that happened to us and says a great deal about the intensity of the performance. We may never forget the twisted snarl of the titular character.

Jacques Ibert's Chansons de Don Quichotte revealed a fine facility with French and impressive melismatic singing.  In "Chanson a Dulcinee", he floated the final note in a manner we've not observed in the basso fach.

From Gerald Finzi's 20th c. setting of Shakespearean text (Let Us Garlands Bring) we heard three selections sung in clear English. Setting English generally results in an unappealing vocal line but Shakespeare's iambic pentameter is a whole 'nother story.  The songs were quite lovely and we particularly enjoyed the jolly "It Was a Lover and His Lass".

Stefano Donaudy composed in the early 20th c. but his music harks back to the Baroque period. We have always loved his "O del mio amato ben" and Mr. Su was nicely flexible in the melismatic passages and ardent in his delivery.

The final work on the program was Giuseppi Giordani's  18th c. "Caro mio ben". This is every beginning singer's "first song" so we may have been taking it for granted.  No longer!  Mr. Su gave it a beautiful pianissimo in the ritornello with some interesting embellishments.

Renowned coach and collaborative pianist Kenneth Merrill utilized both his talents last night and added a great deal to this exemplary recital.  The vociferous audience demanded an encore and we heard a passionate delivery of a song in Mandarin which Mr Su said was a folk song, not an art song.  Well, we could not have discerned  the difference but wish we'd had a translation.

Mr. Su has some interesting plans for the summer including Glenn Morton's Classic Lyric Arts program in France. Having graduated from Manhattan School of Music, he will return for his Master of Music degree and we are looking forward to hearing more from him as his voice develops.

(c) meche kroop

WINTER RECITAL OF SONGS AND ROMANCES

Martin Neron, Chad Kranak, Jose Pietri-Coimbre, Abigail Wright, Elizabeth Smith, and Nicholas Hay

Last night at the National Opera Center we attended a Winter Recital of Songs and Romances with a friend new to art song.  However, he is an expert on languages and phonology. We withheld our opinion on the recital to hear his opinions and was surprised to learn that they matched the notes with which we filled our program. We will get to that further on in our review.

We enjoyed hearing a couple singers we have enjoyed and reviewed before and we enjoyed hearing some new ones. Familiar to us is mezzo-soprano Abigail Wright who adds luster to whatever she sings. Her full rich instrument is beautifully employed in both French and in German. We understood every word.

We never realized the irony in Brahms' "Wie Melodien zieht es mir" which describes the way a melody can lose its spirit when attached to lyrics. Significantly, Brahms' melody lost nothing! We have been hearing it in our head all night, including the lovely lyrics. Also in German we heard Schonberg's "Galathea", an unusual song which we have come to appreciate more and more.

In fine French, Ms. Wright performed Debussy's "Beau Soir" and "Romance" and the satisfying "Je te veux" with its sweet straightforward sentiment, in waltz time no less.  Delicieux!

Baritone Jose Pietri-Coimbre is also known to us from some fine operatic performances. This is the first time we have heard him sing art songs and have a rather strong opinion. My guest thought his
performance of Schubert's "Ganymed" was the finest performance of the evening; we asked what impressed him and it was the same feature that impressed us. The singer immersed himself in the song and took us on an uplifting journey through the delights of nature.

We also enjoyed him in Reynaldo Hahn's "Fetes galantes" in which he painted an aural portrait reminding us of a Fragonard painting.  So why did "Fumee" by the same Venezuelan composer leave us cold? Perhaps we just don't care for the song. (We just listened to a recording by the fabulous Anna Caterina Antonacci and didn't like it any more.)

However we got the same rather flat feeling when Mr. Pietri-Coimbri sang Gustav Mahler's "Urlicht", a song we adore. Perhaps the singer just wasn't feelin' it! That being said, his German was excellent and he exhibited a lovely pianissimo. As haunting as Mr. Neron's piano sounded, perhaps a full orchestra is necessary for the full emotional effect of this incredible song.

New to us was soprano Elizabeth Smith, of whom we are now a fan. Not only is the voice a lovely affecting one, but her stage presence is way beyond average. To our delight, she introduced each song by reading the text in English, and reading it with a depth of understanding that carried over into her singing. When a singer connects so deeply with the text and conveys it to the members of the audience, we are getting "the full Monty" of a song recital.

She was impressive in three gems by Gabriel Faure--"Clair de lune", the invitational "Mai" and the wistful "Apres un reve". Her French line was long and lovely and even without compromising the emotional content.

We enjoyed her even more in a pair of selections by the Sicilian composer Stefano Donaudy, who, like the Venezuelan Reynaldo Hahn, composed at the turn of the 20th c. She performed his most famous song "Vaghissima sembianza" and "Sento nel cor", filled with justifiable passion. We are pleased to relate that her Italian is luscious.

Also new to us was bass Nicholas Hay who closed the program with a delightful animated performance of Steven Mark Kohn's 2006 "Senator's Stump Speech", a text actually delivered by a former state representative from Tennessee, one Noah "Soggy" Sweat. It is a masterpiece of political double-speak in which the speaker's opinions can be slanted to please different groups. We cannot recall a thing about the melody or the singing, only that it was fun and a great way to end the program. Mr. Hay's adoption of a Southern accent made it even better.

It gave us a different look at Mr. Hay who was pretty inert in Oley Speaks' "Sylvia", another work from the turn of the 20th c. He is a singer who does best with humor.  Of the two Russian songs he performed, he was far better in Modest Moussorgsky's funny song about the flea than he was in a beautiful but serious Tchaikovsky song about nature.

Tenor Chad Kranak chose to sing Winter Words, Benjamin Britten's mid-20th c. setting of poetry by Thomas Hardy. We are great fans of Hardy's novels and we might even like the poetry if someone had read it to us. However, the poetry did not ask to be set and seemed to be tortured into place to fit the music. The vocal line was so boring that we found ourselves focusing on the evocative piano writing, which was so well played by the excellent collaborative pianist Martin Neron.

This is where we bring in the opinion of our philologist friend who spontaneously reported that the music was more or less doing rhythmic battle with the words. This confirms our frequently asserted opinion that English is extremely difficult to set and should be left to people like Stephen Sondheim or Arthur Sullivan or some of America's composers of operetta and Broadway musicals.  Our friend, who is fluent in English but not a native speaker, studies the rhythm and flow of language and was able to pick up the same issue that impairs our ability to enjoy English art song. We no longer feel the need to apologize for our prejudice. Only rarely have we heard a song that transcends the limitations of our native tongue!

As far as Mr. Kranak's performance, he did not strike us as a natural story-teller. Enunciation was rarely clear enough to get the full impact of the descriptive text. The most comprehensible songs were "The little old table" and "At the railway station, Upway" and even they lost a considerable number of words. Although Mr. Kranak is considered to be "an avid performer of Britten", we would like to hear him sing in a different language before commenting on his vocal skills.

(c) meche kroop

TWO IMPRESSIVE DEBUTS at WEILL RECITAL HALL

Melody Moore (photo by Chip Gillespie)

Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg

It isn't every day that we get to celebrate two debuts--that of the aptly named famous soprano Melody Moore, heretofore unknown to us, and that of musical wunderkind Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg, about whom we have been writing  for several years.  Mr. Wenzelberg sings, conducts, plays several instruments and composes. He is finishing his first opera.  But last night's impressive debut was a song he was commissioned to write for Ms. Moore.

It isn't every day that we hear the "f word" in Carnegie Hall and that is another first that we will get to further along in our review

Ms. Moore has been making quite a name for herself with her highly dramatic interpretations and warm stage presence.  The list of roles she has tackled and those upcoming give one the impression of astonishing versatility--Mozart, Wagner, Puccini, Verdi, Bizet, and Jerome Kern are all represented. With collaborative pianist Robert Mollicone, she held the Weill Recital Hall audience in rapt attention. 

Stefano Donaudy and Ottorino Respighi were contemporaries but their turn of the 20th c. songs could not be more different.  Donaudy looked backward to the 19th c. that we so love and Ms. Moore sang his "Amorosi miei giorni" with an attractive vibrato and well-shaped phrasing. The embellishments were superbly handled and we are hoping that Ms. Moore may get interested in the bel canto repertory.

Respighi's work looked more toward the future with less glorious melodic invention but more interesting harmonic structure.  Ms. Moore sang his "Notte" with gorgeous coloring. 

But nothing captivated us as much as  Puccini's early song "Sole e amore" to which, we believe, he wrote the text himself. We felt our eyes tearing up and realized that the melody and accompaniment were almost identical with those heard in his opera La Bohème!

Claude Debussy, a contemporary of Puccini, distinguished himself from his colleagues by setting prose and free verse that he wrote himself.  Thus what we are hearing seems to be an aural counterpart to paintings of the Impressionist school, although Debussy vociferously objected to his music being called impressionistic.  One's ears are surrounded by beauty that is mutable and unstable.

We were delighted to be introduced to his Proses lyriques, in which Ms. Moore and Mr. Mollicone painted pictures in sound.  In "De grève", the piano provided multiple images of the sea, both at rest and in its wildest moments. The final song "De soir" gave the singer an opportunity to paint auditory portraits of Debussy's varied images by means of gesture and vocal coloring.

The second half of the program began with Strauss songs, in which Ms. Moore's operatic voice seemed more at home. In the first half, the bronchitis which she had pushed aside (a less confident artist might have begged the audience's indulgence) lent a somewhat hard edge to her voice when she pushed for volume in the upper range. But in the Strauss, everything sounded just fine. 

We always love the bittersweet "Befreit" from his Op.39 in which the words speak of joy but the occasion is one of releasing a loved one to death. We heard a beautifully modulated performance in which Ms. Moore spun out the final note to great emotional effect.

The final work on the program sprang from an original idea. Ms. Moore asked five composers to set texts by a poet of whom she is very fond, Clementine von Radics. This young poet has been well-celebrated; we can understand why her texts about the female experience of love have resonated with her readers.

But when we read the texts they seemed to us like novelistic prose, requiring no music to make their impact. Obviously, the five composers felt otherwise and managed to make music for Ms. Moore and Mr. Mollicone to perform.

Having just reviewed an evening of Stephen Schwartz' music at Manhattan School of Music, we were most eager to hear what this versatile composer, equally at home with Broadway musicals and opera, would add to the text. We found he was the most successful of the group at emphasizing the vocal line, making it interesting and singable. His lyricism is wondrously accessible and he knows how to write for the voice so that every single word can be understood. We liked the way he used repetition, especially of the word "river" in "Someday I Will Stop Being Young and Wanting Stupid Tattoos".

It is interesting that Mr. Wenzelberg became friendly with Ms. Moore on the set of Mr. Schwartz' 2011 opera Séance on a Wet Afternoon, one of a very few contemporary operas that we would want to see a second time. We care not a whit if other reviewers find his work "too accessible"!

As far as the texts set by other composers, we admired the pianistic writing more than the vocal line. Since certain verses and lines were omitted from the program notes, there were many phrases that went by without comprehension, although it was no challenge to get the gist of what Ms. Moore was singing about.

Each composer was able to choose the text he wanted to set and Mr. Wenzelberg had felt a special affinity for "Some Things You Could Do to Heal Yourself".  We loved the dramatic intensity and the melismatic vocal line on the word "silly".

Scott Gendel's setting had some lovely writing for piano and Gregg Kallor wrote a suitably quiet setting for the text of "A Prayer".  David Hanlon wrote the cabaret-inflected music for "Poems and Other Sentimental Bullshit". 

It was in this song that the f-bomb was dropped. At the risk of sounding prudish, we do not find the "f word" suitable in an art song.  Clearly we were outvoted since the audience seemed to love this instance of  épater le bourgeois.  We would prefer "sentimental bullshit"!

As encore, Ms. Moore sang Mr. Rogers' song "It's You I Like", an original way to end the evening.

(c) meche kroop