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RECITAL REVIEW
November 29, 2005
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By Anna Carol Dudley
San Francisco Performances offers a lovely annual gift to its
subscribers: a concert given by the year's winner of the prestigious Naumburg Award. Soprano Sari Gruber was this year's winner, and she was a winner Tuesday night in a recital in Herbst Theatre. Her program, unlike those of many recitalists who focus on particular specialties, followed the variety-pack model: French, German, Spanish, Polish, and American.
Gruber has a gift for narrative, which became evident in songs by Hugo
Wolf, especially in Der Knabe und das Immlein (The youth and the little bee), Das verlassene Mägdlein (The forsaken girl) and Begegnung (Encounter) — all stories well told. Cameron Stowe, her accompanist, rose magnificently to Wolf's considerable pianistic demands. Going on to Spanish composers,
Gruber's formidable chest voice came into play and her voice bloomed
with color. In Jesús Guridi's Jota a distinctive, individual sound emerged
to combine with her impressive musical and verbal expression, and the same
qualities infused songs by Manuel de Falla and Enrique Granados. The
first half of the recital ended with a terrific patter song, Joaqu“n
Valverde's ĄClavelitos!
The recital began with songs by Gabriel Fauré, sung stylishly but in a
voice that had an edge, especially in the upper range. Keeping the piano lid
all the way up throughout the concert caused no balance problems, but in the
French set one wondered whether Gruber felt pushed to press her voice.
Missing was the beguiling, sensuous appeal of the French language.
The second half of the concert began in Polish with Karol Szymanowski's Songs of the Infatuated Muezzin. They are settings of poems by Jaroslaw Iwaskiewicz purporting to be uttered by a muezzin who, in calling the faithful to prayer, is also calling to a lady friend. In Szymanowski's music, the mingled religious and erotic fervor are underlined by the use of exotic harmonies and vocal coloratura evocative of Arabic music. Gruber's voice was beautifully used in the sinuous lines and vocal outbursts, and Stowe was fully up to the pianistic extravagance. American songs followed: three by Samuel Barber and two by Charles Ives, including Serenity — two quietly chanted verses from a beautiful Whittier poem known to Ives and many other church-going folk as Dear Lord and Father of Mankind (set to a tune by Frederick Maker). The program ended with two popular music selections, which made a nice segue to a couple of encores — all told, Speak low by Kurt Weill, two darkly comic songs by Sheldon Harnick, and William Bolcom's Wait'n.
(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 emerita of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Baroque Music Workshop.)
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Sari Gruber
