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New York Festival of Song
http://www.nyfos.org/
Michelle Areyzaga and Susan Narucki, sopranos
Steven Tharp, tenor
Ian Greenlaw, baritone
Michael Barrett, piano
With Leslie Tomkins, viola
At Merkin Concert Hall
http://www.kaufman-center.org/merkin.htm
Frank Daykin
October 19, 2005
Program:
“Since the Seventies”
Works by: Ricky Ian Gordon, Lee Hoiby, Aaron Jay Kernis, William Bolcom, György Kurtág, Odaline de la Martínez, Osvaldo Golijov, Ned Rorem, Richard Pearson Thomas, James Primosch, Robert Beaser, John Musto, William Harvey, Jeffrey Stock, Stephen Sondheim, Adam Guettel, John Corigliano
In an ideal world, there would be a concert presented by the New York Festival of Song every single night of the week, all year, perhaps with time out for the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent. As it is, we must be grateful for the half dozen or so that they give us each concert season. Wednesday’s concert marked the opening of the festival’s 18th season, under the tirelessly imaginative leadership of its co-artistic directors, pianists Michael Barrett and Steven Blier.
The overarching theme was contemporary American song composed in the past 25 years. Only this group could have managed to present such an eclectic, uncompromising program to a packed house, and to have made its length seem like an instant. As the chatty Mr. Blier stated, apparently the lyrical impulse is alive and well, at least in New York songwriting circles. There was a refreshing lack of academicism, and the preferences of the artistic directors for music theater and popular genres were mixed among the more classical offerings—none of the “dreary ice” of serious music, as Ned Rorem once called it. Rorem, along with five other of the seventeen composers represented, was present. This man, who has created so many treasures in the field of American song, was there not only to hear his own excerpts, but as a member of the Festival’s Advisory Board, obviously a committed supporter of the art form.
The singers were uniformly sparkly, all singing with exemplary pitch, rhythm, and flair for “selling” sometimes obscure material. If there is one minor quibble, it is that from time to time, all of them subscribe to the “beautiful but overly rounded vowel” method of vocal production, which causes words to be unintelligible, swallowed up in voluptuous tone. At times too, the piano accompaniments were too loud for the space and the voice that was being supported. I attribute part of that to the tendency of most of the composers to overwrite their accompaniments. It’s as if many of them want to cram an orchestra’s worth of effects into the two hands (sometimes even four-hands on this occasion) of a collaborative pianist.
No one could deny the absolute idiomatic ease with which Blier and Barrett handled these difficult parts, however. Interestingly, the best calculated, most modest handling of the role of the accompaniment was in a short poignant song by the youngest composer on the program, William Harvey (b. 1982), to words by the young Keats. Its origin as a Juilliard theory assignment, completed in 90 minutes, if the composer is to be believed, makes it even more remarkable.
One particular highlight, in an evening of them, was the powerful “Let Evening Come” (1993) by William Bolcom, to words by Jane Kenyon, for voice, viola and piano. The origin was a commission for a song cycle for singers Benita Valente (soprano) and Tatiana Troyanos (mezzo-soprano). Before the music had even been written, Troyanos died, after a long struggle with cancer. Valente was insistent that the commission still happen, with the unique result that the presence of Troyanos was not replaced by, so much as transposed into, music for the viola player. The haunting processional based on a “Bolcomized” hymn, which Blier calls a “peg-legged” sarabande, worked indefinable magic.
Even Broadway’s newest crowned head, Adam Guettel, the third generation of a very inspired musical family (grandfather: Richard Rogers; mother: Mary Rogers) made a musical appearance with two of his “Myths and Hymns.” The second one “Migratory V” (words by Guettel) was announced by Blier as music he wanted to have played at his funeral. There was grateful laughter when he assured the audience that that would not be for many decades to come. Some of its lines provide a fitting motto for the performers: “We sound the everlasting sound, And sing our salvation.”
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