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RECITAL REVIEW
The Beautiful and the Deep April 7, 2002
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By Stephanie Friedman
Brad Alexander, baritone and Elena Bocharova, mezzo-soprano shared a
Schwabacher Recital on Sunday, each singing a half; but (pace
my math-teacher grandfather) the halves were unequal — not in length,
though Bocharova's half was longer, but in quality.
Alexander has a beautiful voice, but an appreciation of the sound of his
voice was not enough to illuminate the complexities of Schumann's
Dichterliebe (A Poet's Love). He chose a uniformly "serious" tone
for the cycle, as if all the songs were alike and simply applying his
voice would reveal them. But once or twice he permitted a less-hard-driving tone, tempting the listener with a more-variegated vocal
palette that would probably spring to life in a better-selected group of
songs. In the last two lines of "Aus alten Märchen winkt es"
("From old fairy tales beckons") he exhibited the lightness required by
"zerflieht wie eitel Schaum" ("it melts like mere froth") to lovely
effect, though he sounded more puzzled than deeply disappointed by the
vanishing of the magical land.
"Ich grolle nicht" ("I bear no grudge") is a problematical song. Even
Schumann's setting of Heine's poem doesn't capture all the ironic bite and
shifting emphases of the poet's bitterness towards his faithless beloved.
The singer has little enough opportunity to reveal the layer upon layer of
subtlety in the poem. Alexander diminished even this small amount by
fixing on the sole emotion of anger as his vehicle and riding it through
the whole song.
Arguably the two most beautiful songs in the group, "Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen" ("On a shining summer morning") and the stark, flawlessly crafted "Ich hab' im Traum geweinet" ("I wept in my dream") lacked, in Alexander's performance, all their abundant irony and variety. Here Schumann was an equal partner to Heine in refinement of feeling: opportunities for subtlety of expression lay at the singer's beck and call, had he but acknowledged them. The fault lies partly with Heine, that master of the deceptively simple lyric which conceals and protects the deepest feelings. His "whispering flowers" speak gently to the broken-hearted poet — a convention, to be sure; but like the paranoid with enemies, even conventions can embody feelings and in Heine's case they most certainly do. The singer must inhabit the poet, give himself over to the poet's feelings, find and express the slightest nuance of the poet's rapidly-shifting thoughts. Alexander may, in time, learn to do this; and then it will be worthwhile to hear his particular contribution to this frequently-performed cycle. Meanwhile, he would do well to find songs whose drama and meaning match his own understanding and temperament more rewardingly. His listeners will be the beneficiaries.
This matching of song and singer, in fact, was exactly what made Bocharova's excellent selection of songs by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff so satisfying. The emotions, whether passionate or delicate, were easily available to her, yet the poetry is not without subtlety. The Rachmaninoff songs ranged from the wistfully sad "Ostrovok" ("The isle") and "Siren" ("Lilacs") to the no-holds-barred dramatic "V molchan'ji nochi tajnoj" ("In the silence of the mysterious night") and Tchaikovsky's famous "Net, tolko tot, kto znal" ("None but the lonely heart"). In the mid-range emotionally there were the exquisite Tchaikovsky setting of "Ni slova, o drug moj" ("Not a word, o my friend") and the thoughtful "Ja tebe nichevo ne skazhu" ("I will say nothing to you"). On all of these, and more, Bocharova lavished her rich, molten-lava-like tone, which she easily pulled back to an expressive pianissimo when necessary, for example at the final word of "Ostrovok": "zasypajet", as the little island falls asleep — nestling on the fifth degree of the scale as if drifting peacefully off from its tonic moorings. There was humor, too: Tchaikovsky's "Kukushka" ("The Cuckoo") ends with a dozen or so repetitions of the bird's familiar "song", each of which Bocharova dressed in a different color. The accomplished pianist for the singers, John Parr, was a true partner as he matched Bocharova's assured delivery in song after song. She, too, participated fully in the artistic association: for example, listening attentively and letting her face and body react to the music of the long piano postlude of "Den'li Tsarit?" ("Does the day reign?"). Every song of these two magnificent song composers was carefully chosen to complement the others. Bocharova performed these gems with complete understanding and a voice and temperament guaranteed to make a success of each one. Her enthusiastic audience brought her back for one more Rachmaninoff blockbuster, the great, surging "Spring Waters". (Stephanie Friedman, mezzo-soprano, has performed in this country and abroad, in opera and recital. She teaches singing at U.C. Davis and Holy Names College.) ©2002 Stephanie Friedman, all rights reserved |
