United Kingdom SongStudio 2024: Renée Fleming (Inventive Director and host), Graham Johnson (piano), Nicolas Phan (tenor), Angel Blue (soprano). Carnegie Corridor, New York, 22 to 27.1.2024. (RP)
Contributors:
Khayakazi Madlala (soprano) / Natalie Sherer (piano)
Gabrielle Barkidjija (mezzo-soprano) / Anni Laukkanen (piano)
Ruby Dibble (mezzo-soprano) / Tzu Kuang Tan (piano)
Chuanyuan Liu (countertenor) / Ye In Kwak (piano)
Edmond Rodriguez (tenor) / Daniel Peter Silcock (piano)
Felix Gygli (baritone) / Aleksandra Myslek (piano)
Gabriel Rollinson (baritone) / Yuriko Watanabe (piano)
Florian Störtz (bass-baritone) / Jeong-Eun Lee (piano)
‘That is unbelievable!! Taylor tells the most effective tales by way of her music’. So feedback a fan on the YouTube submit of Taylor Swift’s 2023 hit music ‘I Can See You’. Each younger singer and collaborative pianist who participates in Carnegie Corridor’s SongStudio aspires to listen to the identical phrases stated about them. Getting there’s what SongStudio is about.
The annual week-long collection of grasp lessons is run by world-renowned soprano Renée Fleming, along with different main artists, and it mentors a brand new technology within the artwork of performing classical music. In some ways, the method is way the identical for these artists as it’s for Taylor Swift. The main focus is on conveying emotion by way of phrases and music – probably the most primary and common of musical types.
The variations lie mainly within the musical types, though these boundaries have gotten ever extra fluid. In the end, somebody will program a Taylor Swift music in a recital. And, after all, Swift tends to put in writing her personal materials, whereas classical music interpreters discover a repertoire that spans centuries, encompassing quite a lot of types and nearly as many languages.
It’s a style that will appear fusty and quaint, nevertheless it nonetheless has world attraction. As is to be anticipated, contributors in SongStudio 2024 got here from Europe and the Americas, but in addition from Malaysia and South Africa. I overheard a younger man standing in line to enter a grasp class say that he had recognized nothing about classical music, however then he heard one by Schubert. After that, he was hooked and determined to develop into a singer.
A brand new wind blew by way of SongStudio this yr, nevertheless it was not likely noticeable within the public masterclasses with their concentrate on the nuts and bolts of performing a music. As regular, Fleming assembled a stellar cohort of colleagues – pianist Graham Johnson, tenor Nicholas Phan and soprano Angel Blue.
Graham Johnson, acclaimed as ‘that peerless music accompanist’, selected to concentrate on Schubert songs. Johnson not solely coached singers and pianists alike within the nuances of performing Schubert however discoursed on the composer’s life and his relationship to the poets whose phrases he set to music. One can hope for a BBC collection with this very good raconteur revealing the secrets and techniques of classical music, akin to Sister Wendy’s exploration of the nice masterpieces of European artwork.
Fleming launched tenor Nicholas Phan as one in every of that uncommon breed who, with out being an opera star, enjoys a profession in music and live performance work. He, as did Fleming in her grasp class, took a holistic strategy to the songs being carried out, focusing as a lot on the pianist because the singer. Soprano Angel Blue tended to work largely with the singers, however the recommendation she gave utilized as readily to the pianists. A longtime star with a world profession, Blue remains to be a comparatively younger singer, and her empathy with the artists whom she coached was all of the extra actual for that cause.
The ultimate recital, nevertheless, was the place SongStudio’s mission to ‘renew and refresh’ the vocal recital expertise was revealed. Quite than the standard format of a singer standing within the criminal of a piano, it was remodeled into the present-day equal of a Schubertiad, these evenings when nineteenth-century devotees of Franz Schubert gathered to rejoice his music.
Whether or not intentional or not, the stage upon which the artists carried out evoked depictions of these gatherings as captured by modern artists reminiscent of Moritz von Schwind and Julius Schmidt. The function of the artists likewise hearkened again to that earlier time when folks supplied their very own leisure, with singers and pianists alike being referred to as upon to introduce the works. The pianists had been typically afforded the chance to carry out solo works too.
Fleming gave credit score to baritone Will Liverman, who serves as SongStudio’s Inventive Advisor, for creating all of the theatrical and visible features of the efficiency. Liverman catapulted to stardom in X: The Life and Instances of Malcolm X and Hearth Shut Up in My Bones on the Metropolitan Opera. He nonetheless maintains that ‘artwork music is a foundational a part of who I’m as a singer’ and has ‘supplied me with countless alternatives for expression’.
As soon as upon a time, we purists frowned upon a singer doing far more than standing on stage and singing, however this technology is altering that dynamic: SongStudio has simply jumped on a prepare that has already left the station. Choreographer Hope Boykin and dancer and motion coach Amina Lydia assisted Liverman in creating the bodily circulate of the efficiency. Within the context of Liverman’s strategy, it labored, though each singer would have communicated as successfully within the conventional format.
The moments that stick in my thoughts from SongStudio 2024 didn’t all come from the closing recital, although for soprano Khayakazi Madlala that was so. Her singing of Marx’s ‘Nocturne’ within the recital exhibited to full benefit her gleaming, resplendent voice and her ardour for singing. It was equally fascinating to expertise the music take form below Fleming’s steerage within the grasp class. Madlala additionally sang Richard Strauss’s ‘Morgen’ by which Natalie Sherer created magic within the piano postlude.
Nothing within the grasp lessons fairly ready one for mezzo-soprano Gabrielle Barkidjija’s impassioned efficiency of ‘What Can One Lady Do?’ from Stacy Garrop’s 2006 music cycle, In Eleanor’s Phrases. The songs are settings of excerpts from Eleanor Roosevelt’s syndicated newspaper columns. Anni Laukkanen was Barkidjija’s equal associate in expressing the Former First Girl’s denunciation of warfare. They launched many to the Croatian composer Dora Pejačević by way of her setting of ‘Viele Fähren sind auf den Flüssen’ with phrases by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Ruby Dibble’s magnificent mezzo-soprano was spectacular whether or not engaged on Mahler’s ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ with Phan or singing Debussy’s Chansons de Bilitis in efficiency. Pianist Tzu Kuang Tan, her collaborator, is a shocking expertise, whose capability to specific probably the most profound feelings was revealed in his taking part in within the Mahler, in addition to in William Bolcom’s ‘New York Lights’, a piece for solo piano that he performed on the recital.
The magical second for countertenor Chuanyuan Liu got here in Phan’s masterclass with Loewe’s ‘Erlkörnig’. Liu created 4 distinct characters along with his voice and physique that vividly captured the drama within the story. The cool precision of Ye In Kwak’s taking part in enhanced the music’s emotional influence, because it did of their equally wonderful efficiency of Crumb’s ‘Evening’.
Tenor Edmond Rodriguez’s most polished work got here within the Rachmaninoff and Bridge songs that he sang within the recital, however the expertise of witnessing him do André Previn’s ‘The Revelation’ (with a textual content by William Carlos Williams) with Fleming was a once-in-a-lifetime expertise. Fleming and Previn had been frequent collaborators, and her insights into the composer’s type and the best way to carry out his music had been invaluable. Fleming paid his partaking musical associate, Daniel Peter Silcock, a excessive praise by saying that he actually bought Previn’s type.
Baritone Felix Gygli singing Vaughan William’s ‘Coronary heart’s Haven’ is one thing I’ll always remember. Phan described his voice as a ‘stunning, wonderful instrument’ and it’s. Gygli can be a remarkably expressive singer. It took a big musical persona to associate with him successfully, and Aleksandra Myslek is such a pianist.
One of the intriguing contributions to the recital was baritone Gabriel Rollinson and pianist Yuriko Watanabe performing Ravel’s ‘Don Quichotte à Dulcinée’, adopted by Ibert’s ‘Chanson de la mort’ from his Chansons de Don Quichotte. These songs are sometimes carried out by older males, and the lyricism and great thing about Rollinson’s voice introduced a brand new dimension to them. Watanabe provided Rollinson full help along with her fashionable taking part in of the colourful accompaniments.
Trying on the program, one had the sense that Florian Störtz and Jeong-Eun Lee bought the quick finish of the stick. It was not that the most effective was saved for final – any of the groups would have been as much as the problem of concluding the recital. Whether or not any would have had the depth that Störtz and Lee delivered to Mahler’s ‘Um Mitternacht’ is unimaginable to know. However with that quantity, they informed a narrative which may have transformed a Swiftie to artwork music.
Rick Perdian
