Lisa Delan

By Anna Carol Dudley

Old First Concerts in San Francisco, closing in on their thirtieth annversary of quality programming in the year 2000, on Sunday presented a recital typical of that history. In a program imaginatively selected and arranged, Lisa Delan, soprano, and Kristin Pankonin, pianist were the featured artists, ably assisted by three woodwind players.

Delan, singing in German, Russian, English and Auvergnois, seemed most at home in a group of Romances by Rachmaninoff. Schubert's "Shepherd on the Rock," opening the program, was memorable chiefly for the expressive playing of clarinetist Carmen Creel. The initial impression of Ms Delan's singing was of a sound somewhat bottled up and lacking in color and variety, in a body not much engaged. She fully caught the spirit of Rachmaninoff's "Daisies" and "The Pied Piper," songs full of striking visual images and romantic feelings, which she communicated admirably. There were some beautifully placed high notes, for instance, in "My Garden at Night." "Dreams" showed the depth of her understanding of music and text, but lacked depth of sound. With more attention to variety of vowel colors and stronger use of consonants in phrasing, her voice will better serve her interpretive gifts.

Oboist Roger Wiesmeyer played a three-movement sonata by Poulenc. "Elegie" was accurate and pretty, but not especially elegiac; the scherzo was more energetic than playful. But just as I began to suspect that Poulenc's music needs performers to make it sound better than it is, Mr. Wiesmeyer came through with a strongly felt "Deploration."

Creel played Schumann's "Fantasiestuke," opus 73, with magnetic temperament, beauty of sound and technical command. Pankonin was an accomplished piano accompanist throughout the recital, always in close ensemble with her colleagues. In the Schumann however, I would liked to have heard her less as an accompanist, more as an equal player.

Of Jake Heggie's arrangements of three folk songs in English, "The Leather-Winged Bat" had the most attractive accompaniment and received the most spirited delivery by Delan. The concert ended with five of Canteloube's beguiling "Songs of the Auvergne," performed by the full ensemble, including flutist Carole Adee. Canteloube's orchestration of these folk songs is justly famous. The three gorgeous woodwind parts were used along with an orchestral reduction for the piano in Sunday's happy arrangement. Wiesmeyer's oboe playing was particularly haunting. Delan's singing was responsive to the text (if "Bailero" might have had a stronger sense of dialog), and she ended with panache.

For an encore, Ms Delan sang Gordon Getty's arrangement of "All Through the Night."

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

©1998 Anna Carol Dudley, all rights reserved