San Francisco Classical Voice

The Schwabacher Debut Recital Season opened at Old First Church in San Francisco Sunday evening with a born-again voice, that of soprano Kristin Clayton, who has been absent from the concert scene for a few years as she dealt with vocal difficulties. She walked on stage to a large and demonstrative audience glad to see her back. We were treated to a beautiful voice, expressively used.

The second half of her program was devoted to her debut performance of Jake Heggie's song cycle Eve-Song, written for her four years ago on a commission by James Schwabacher. Heggie, who was at the piano, informed the audience that the songs were meant to make full use of her vocal gifts. Clayton rose magnificently to the challenge.

The text is poet Philip Littell's take on the Biblical story of Eve, presenting Eve's side with a bitter feminist slant. I especially liked the snaky songs: Listen and Snake. Clayton made the most of them, creating a convincing dialog between Eve and the snake, shaping lovely turns on "ahs" and "ohs," going with the boogie beat of Snake, and ending it with beautiful timing and color on short words: "sweet.sour.salty.bitter." (We're talking about the apple here.)

Woe to man was set in a music-hall style that gave her some great la-de-das and coloratura moments and a couple of lines--"Oh, you haven't lived until a man has said that to you"--that she put across just right. The first two songs, though sung with assurance, I found less satisfactory--the first partly because of awkwardness in Littell's text, the second because the music meandered without much shape. The last song, The Farm, is a beauty, and was very nicely performed.

Curiously, Heggie's playing of his own music, as well as of others', while always supportive of the singer, was too understated. His writing often involves a nice ebb and flow between singer and piano, and sometimes more was wanted from the piano. There was no danger of overwhelming this singer.

At the recitals'end, Clayton thanked the audience for their support, and sang another song by Heggie, If you were coming in the Fall, which won him the G. Schirmer National Art Song Competition in l995. Emily Dickinson's poem brought out the best in both composer and performers.

While the Heggie songs were a triumph for Clayton, the first half of the concert was more of a mixed bag. Her strongest performance was of three songs by Richard Strauss, with a splendid opening phrase in Einerlei, a heartfelt Befreit, and the nicely turned phrases of Ständchen. Her sound and spirit are well suited to this repertoire.

Elsewhere, there were stylistic and technical problems. Clayton still seems to be having difficulty in her high range, where loud notes betrayed tension that caused too wide a vibrato and some pitch problems. In a group of Fauré songs, she sang Notre Amour and La Lune Blanche beautifully. However, Mandoline and Clair de Lune both have a kind of magical moonlit mood that eluded her, Mandoline being too arch and Clair de Lune not dancing closely enough with the evocative piano part.

I had a similar reaction to her singing of Liszt's Lorelei. It needs a different sound than she gave it, something eerier and, in the end, more reflective of the Lorelei's triumphant exultation. With the four songs by Charles Ives, I wanted, as elsewhere, more pizzazz from the piano. But they were sung with verve and understanding, reminding us of how happy we are to have Kristin Clayton singing again.

(Anna Carol Dudley is a singer, teacher, member of the faculties of the University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco State University [lecturer emerita] and director of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Baroque Music Workshop.)

©2000 Anna Carol Dudley, all rights reserved