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RECITAL REVIEW
A Singer and a Pianist, On Different Planes
March 4, 2001
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By Stephanie Friedman
Nathan Gunn, a young baritone, has looks, musicality, a taut, expressive voice, and a charming stage presence, as he proved in his recital of German and American songs on Sunday in Hertz Hall. His instrument is pleasing and his range wide. But if he aspires to artistry, he will have to find himself a pianist whose musical attributes are on a par with his own. His wife, Julie Jordan Gunn, has the fingers, perhaps, but none of the interpretive gifts needed for even basic accompanying. Winning as it may be to see a handsome husband-and-wife team working together, it's a case of the family that plays together dismays together.
The German first half of the program was the more distressing. Gunn the singer was earnest and not unaffecting in the Brahms Vier ernste Gesänge, coloring "bitter" and "denn das ist sein Teil" ("for that is his portion") admirably, though the tempo of this and the other three songs was too rushed to be at all contemplative. But it was immediately apparent that Gunn the singer and Gunn the pianist were operating on two different planes. He tried out a few ideas, attempting to mold and shade phrases here and there, whereas she simply played too loud.
The Hugo Wolf set that followed suffered even more because of the extraordinary rapport Wolf demands between singer and pianist. Each depends on the harmonic color changes in the other. If they happen in one but not the other, enjoyment and meaning are lost for the listener. This occurred many times, especially in songs with abrupt harmonic modulations, such as the beautiful "Verschwiegene Liebe" ("Silent Love"), in which a tender change of color is needed between the lines "Gedanken sich wiegen" ("Thoughts go swaying") and "Die Nacht ist verschwiegen" ("The night is silent") but the pianist did not furnish it.
Gunn, by himself, carried the chilling, Gothic ballad-like "Der Feuerreiter" ("The Fire-rider") and the amusing "Abschied" ("Farewell"), in which the poet kicks a critic down the stairs. Here Gunn exhibited a varied repertory of facial expressions and bodily gestures, and his arms, which elsewhere often tended to rise to the front for no reason, achieved meaningful positions.
The inability of the pianist to listen to the singer was somewhat less bothersome in the second half of the program, in which Gunn really hit his communicative stride with a series of American songs that showed off his way with words. Even a slight set by Gene Scheer, a group of Voices of World War II written by the composer in a kind of talky, cabaret style, came to life thanks to Gunn's dramatic capabilities. He doesn't overdo it. He speaks the texts with complete naturalness. Lines such as "My buddy and I were on liberty in Hollywood" and "She asked about my California home, about my friends and family" were affecting in their simplicity. If he can achieve the same rhetorical success in German lieder, for which he already has a feeling, he will make his mark in those as well. A selection of William Bolcom's Cabaret Songs, to poems by Arnold Weinstein, an arch, colorful, well-wrought set, was aptly chosen for Gunn's talents. Particularly enjoyable was "Song of Black Max (As Told by the de Kooning Boys)." Ned Rorem was represented by "Early in the Morning" and "The Lordly Hudson" (the latter a setting of a poem by Paul Goodman). E. Y.("Yip") Harburg's bitter Depression text "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?," set by Jay Gorney, which closed the concert, was sung with appropriate fierceness and bite by Gunn. His two encores — "American Anthem" by Scheer (the title of his CD album of American songs) and Charles Ives' "Two Little Flowers" — rounded off a diverting afternoon with a promising baritone who seems to have everything going for him but taste. (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.) ©2001 Stephanie Friedman, all rights reserved |
