San Francisco Classical Voice

RECITAL REVIEW Music In The Words At Mills

October 23, 1999

By Stephanie Friedman

Marcia Gronewold, an experienced mezzo-soprano specializing in music of the 20th century, writes excellent program notes and has all the right moves, but lacks solid technique and a forceful delivery.

Her interesting and varied concert on Saturday evening at Mills College, entitled "The Music in the Words," featured those non-traditional, "non-singing" techniques abounding in vocal music since Schoenberg wrote Pierrot Lunaire. On a program that opened with the Berio Sequenza III (a classic written in 1966 to and for his then-wife, the late Cathy Berberian) and closed with a haunting setting by George Crumb of lines from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, there was much to be grateful for.

Gronewold's notes describe "the difficulty in achieving accuracy in ensemble between the two performers," pianist and vocalist, in John Cage's fetching piece, She Is Asleep. The prepared piano, excellently played by Kristin Pankonin, sounded notes resembling wooden raindrops or a child's xylophone--crisp, simple, and beguiling-- in intervals of fourths and fifths, while the singer vocalized on selected vowels in a low register difficult even for a true contralto. Accuracy did not seem to be a problem as much as the need for a stronger, more committed vocal presence to balance the incisiveness of the piano. Ms. Gronewold sounded strangely reticent and careful here as she did throughout the concert--a puzzling impression to receive considering her flair for costume changes at crucial points during the evening, and her obvious intent to sing dramatically.

In The Sleeper, Crumb sets an evocative fragment of a Poe poem and proves once again what a masterful composer he is for the voice. By contrast, the vocal effects that Berio lays out on the table like so many surgical instruments in Sequenza are here stitched seamlessly into the expressive vocal line. Crumb's pianist is called upon to play both on the keys and under the lid, strumming the strings, embellishing, supporting and completing the fabric with effects eerie enough, no doubt, to have pleased the poet. Jonas Muller played the piano part expressively.

Declaiming Shakespeare To Music

Alison Bauld, an Australian composer living in England, was represented by two U.S. premieres and one world premiere on the program, all of them settings from two Shakespeare plays--Macbeth (the witches' and sleepwalking scenes), and Richard III (Lady Anne's lament for her slain husband), the last accompanied by string quartet. The voice mostly declaimed the pieces, with some singing, as well as some swooping and nasal exclamations appropriate to the three weird sisters. On the whole however, one had to wonder at the desire of the composer to have the singer attempt declamation, where an actor, trained in the technique, would have been more effective. Gronewold didn't evince the requisite authority and presence to hold the stage or project the characters convincingly.

Then too, where the speeches were sung or recited in an alternating speech/song, one wondered whether either straight declamation by an actor against an instumental ensemble, or excerpts of the speeches set to music in a (gasp!) song wouldn't have told better.

In three pieces by Mauricio Kagel, entitled Rrrrrr..., excerpts of revolutionary writings by Julia Ward Howe and two other authors were recited offstage, all but inaudibly, while a double bass and piano punctuated them onstage. Gronewold then entered onstage in the role of a lascivious monk in a long white robe, to sing an excerpt from the Decameron in Italian; and finally, disrobed to reveal engineer's overalls, donning a cap to sing Railroad Song, barely audible against a strong piano, while the quartet's violist, Jorge Boehringer, appeared as "train", reading "chugs" from several pieces of paper, deadpan.

Marcia Gronewold's scholarship is persuasive, and the outlines for a strong dramatic presentation of this music seemed to be there. Her voice, however, is problematical. Her legato lines waver, the lower-middle part of her voice sounds hollow, and the lower tones are unsteady and without depth, surprising in a mezzo, even a high one. Gronewold's strength of personality does not penetrate her performance convincingly, and she comes across as disconcertingly reticent, even at times bordering on uncommunicative, which works against the delivery to the audience of all she has to say.

The encore was a lovely setting of William Schuman to a song from Shakespeare's Henry the VIII, "Orpheus with his lute." Here, in a more traditional song, Ms. Gronewold's difficulty in sustaining a consistent tone was distressingly evident and undermined her interpretation.

Two production quibbles: the excellent program notes, including texts and musical examples, were unreadable in the total house darkness during the performance; and there were no biographical notes on the singer or the other performers.

(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.)