San Francisco Classical Voice

At the Grammys

Once again Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony came up winners at the 49th annual Grammys on Sunday. Their previously honored Mahler cycle, scored this time with the Seventh Symphony, won for Best Classical Album (Andreas Neubronner, producer) and Best Orchestral Performance.

Robert Spano's Atlanta Symphony not only won its first Grammy, but it did it in triplicate: for Best Opera Recording, Best Classical Contemporary Composition (Golijov's Ainadamar), and for Classical Producer of Year (Elaine Martone with Atlanta for Tredici, Theofanidis, and Bernstein).

American Debut for Peter Tóth

A young Hungarian pianist, Peter Tóth, already well-received in Europe and Korea, is making his debut here at the Liszt Festival, which has received little or no ink, so far. The festival, March 29-31, is cosponsored by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Bay Area chapter of the American Liszt Society. Tóth will give a recital of music by Liszt and Schubert at Old First Church on March 30.

There is an intriguing story about Tóth. He was born in Békéscsaba, a small town three hours from Budapest, and he started playing the piano relatively late, at age 11. He won a scholarship to the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, and when his career took off (including a Grand Prix du Disque) ... he moved back home. He still lives and practices in the same small apartment in Békéscsaba with his parents, brother, sister-in-law, and baby nephew. What's even stranger, in the manner of, say, Glenn Gould, is that Tóth regularly makes the six-hour round-trip commute to the Liszt Academy where he can practice on a good piano.

Lost in Translation, Found in Opera

Sofia Coppola, possibly the world's only film director who is also a wine label (such as the — zut alors! — canned Sofia blanc de blancs from Napa's Niebaum-Coppola Winery, recently renamed as Rubicon Estate), will make her debut as an opera director. In two years she will lead Puccini's Manon Lescaut at Montpellier Opera, in southern France.

Boston Concerts on the Internet

Boston Symphony concerts are now available in streaming audio from WGBH. Broadcasts began with last week's Damnation de Faust (with Paul Groves, Yvonne Naef, and José van Dam). Programs include this week's world premiere of Charles Wuorinen's Eighth Symphony, Theologoumena, and the following week's premiere of Kaija Saariaho's Notes on Light. March 23-27 there is Beethoven's Fidelio, with Karita Mattila.

Berlioz: Peak Experience, Total Coverage

A year ago, when Michael Tilson Thomas was asked about the upcoming San Francisco Symphony season, he said that the collaboration he anticipated the most is with Susan Graham in Berlioz's Les Nuits d’été (Summer Nights). Last week, that concert series arrived, and MTT's anticipation was well-fulfilled. This event was such a highlight of the season that it would be a shame to report on only one of the four concerts between Feb. 7 and 10 — so here are notes from each.

Lisa Hirsch's review is in this edition of Classical Voice. "Put MTT together with mezzo-soprano Susan Graham ... and magic ensues," Hirsch writes.

Robert Commanday attended the Thursday concert:

Berlioz's Les Nuits d’été has had elevating performances on San Francisco Symphony programs before, but none more of a transport than that given by Susan Graham at this concert. The smooth, rich quality of her voice is given to the sensuous character of these pieces and the composer's distinctive phrasing. In the subtle shadings, varieties of tone and intensity, it was as if her singing was implanted in the orchestral painting Berlioz made of his original piano accompaniments.

Graham found a continuity, an artistic wholeness in what is a set, not really a cycle. The succession of different moods and atmospheres somehow became the expression of one singer-poet, this time plausibly. There is the light, almost insouciant character of "Villanelle," the haunting "Spectre de la rose," the almost lugubrious "Sur les lagunes," and the still darker, haunting "Au cimetière" — all of which frame the wistful almost ecstatic appeal of "Absence," almost parenthetical in mood, which creates a line of intense melancholy.

The final "L’ile Inconnue" is a song apart, an exultant invitation to a voyage of love (that may well have inspired Fauré's great song). Berlioz’ invitation has an ironic twist and it came through in Thursday’s performance. The audience respected Tilson Thomas’ request to listen to the whole "arc" of the set without applauding between songs. (Simply holding his hands high at the end of each piece would have accomplished the same end.) This doubtless helped Graham sustain concentration and keep her listeners deep in the songs.

I was simply bowled over by the performance during the Symphony's 6.5 concert. I found this Les Nuits d’été an awesome, soul-stirring, enchanting, Légion d'honneur-class event: Graham and MTT created memories of a lifetime. Most of the audience — myself included — felt overcome by each of the six songs, but perhaps not everyone shared in this peak experience. Those who do not allow themselves to be touched by unbridled, unguarded, bleeding-heart on-the-sleeve sentimentality might have considered the program well-played or even nice. From those who are more open (or foolish), the response was a combination of tears and smiles.

Having been an avid fan of Graham since her Merola days 20 years ago, and of MTT for much longer than that, I might have expected this superb performance, but there was still an element of surprise. Davies Hall is OK acoustically (not more than that), and it's not particularly friendly to the unamplified voice. Yet, not since Montserrat Caballe's witchcraft in this hall have I heard projection overcoming distance and echoes like this. Even in the faraway Row T, Graham's voice caressed. It enveloped as if she were standing next to me, which is impressive considering that almost all of Nuits is "quiet music."

From MTT and a gloriously present and involved San Francisco Symphony, there was a rich, soft velvet carpet for Graham, perfectly in balance, both in the background and in an enchanting duet. What was unexpected was Mahlerite, echt-American MTT leading this quintessentially French Romantic music better than any native that I have heard. Special kudos to the conductor for getting the audience to refrain from applause between the songs. It was also laudable that the lights were left on, which allowed for reading the text. Sure, many listeners prefer to focus on the music — and they may just close their eyes — but Gautier's text is such an essential part of this work that the option to refer to it is important.

"Villanelle" often gets the short shrift as a kind of warm-up or entree to the cycle. Not with Graham. She started singing it as if already in the middle of the work. Her quartet with violas, cellos, and the bassoon immediately established a warm cocoon that shut out the world.

"The Specter of the Rose" — all quicksilver and burnished gold — was a highlight, of course. The single instance of Graham's voice breaking was unimportant, but not the usual end-all. If anything, the following "On the Lagoons" was an even more intense experience. With its enormous and yet restrained grief, Graham produced an almost unbearable crescendo of pain with repetitions of "Sans amour s'en aller sur la mer." And she sang the final "Ah!" with great impact that was, at the same time, almost imperceptible. If that doesn't make sense, listen to the broadcast, which may be on KDFC-FM in a couple of weeks.

At the beginning of "Absence," Graham followed "reviens, reviens" with a tiny, heartbreaking mesa di voce. The orchestra embraced her voice there as it did throughout the performance. "In the Cemetery" came as a culmination of the four quiet songs preceding it, before the almost unwelcome forte of "The Unknown Isle." My own pensée fantastique was an encore of the first three songs, several times over, which will perhaps last all the way to the arrival of summer.

Veteran music fan Max Paley thought that my Friday bliss was based on a slightly different performance (part of the irreplaceable magic of live music). While he agreed with the praise from others, he also made other important points. Paley wrote:

One thing was clearly different last night: While MTT managed to get the audience to hold back applause between the numbers, he certainly didn't get silence. The second the music stopped, storms of coughs detonated throughout the hall, which also happened more than one would have liked during some of the sustained, quiet sections of the songs. An off-and-on rainy day had turned into a downpour in the half-hour before the concert began, so a huge portion of the audience came in absolutely doused.

In manner, gown, and coiffure, Susan Graham is now the total grande dame. Her voice was in stunning form: free, fluid, and steady with power and amplitude in the big climaxes that exceeded anything I've heard from her before. She's able to spin out exquisite pianissimo phrases, although more than one of these decided to cut itself off before she had intended it to do so.

Now, I have to admit that with these songs I happen to be outrageously picky and I also to have enormous expectations. They've been in my mind and subconscious for 40 years now (since I first heard that Crespin/Ansermet recording). I've become obsessed with the layers of content that reside behind the sometimes simple-seeming facade. Some of the most striking effects are the most subtle: Those chromatic downward scales in the strings that slash across the vocal line in "Au Cimitiére" at the verse "Les belle de nuit, demi-closes" give me eerie shivers.

I think keys matter a great deal in this cycle. Overall, as published in the orchestral version, they sit well for a mezzo with both an easy top and an extended lower register. Any other voice type would have to make adjustments. Crespin sang those keys in her recording with Ansermet. Janet Baker did as well did when she sang them in San Francisco under Ozawa in the early 1970s (one of my memories of a lifetime), though in her studio recording under Barbirolli, she took "Villanelle" down a major third.

Graham and MTT took the "Villanelle" down a third also, which gave it an ease and sensuousness at the cost of a more tangy, bracing element, which I missed. However, while she sang "Absence," "Au Cimitiére," and "L'ile Inconnue" in their original, rather high tessitura keys, she took "Le Spectre de la Rose" and "Sur les Lagunes" up a minor third (i.e., used the "Steber" keys) which allowed her several sumptuous climaxes on high A-flats. That enabled exquisitely silvery pianissimos, but at the cost of an element of mystery in "Le Spectre" and of ultimate sombreness in "Sur les Lagunes." The key for the latter allowed her to take an impressive low option on the phrase "Sur moi la nuit immense, s'étend comme un linceul" on a low G-flat, without having to match Janet Baker's thunderous low E-flat.

The two elements that left me dissatisfied, which are closely connected, were what I felt to be an inability to take off the mask behind the mask and really give us raw emotion in the dark side of this cycle (notably in "Sur les Lagunes" and "Au Cimitiére"). Vocally, there lacked real variety of tone color. To address the latter first, the sound was a stream of gold and she could sing very quietly and very powerfully. But at a certain point I felt that it was too much of the same caramel sauce and wanted something a little more biting. Graham tried at the opening of "Sur les Lagunes": She darkened her sound and scrunched up her face, but I just didn't feel she got there. This want of pathos struck me when I saw Graham as Sister Helen in Dead Man Walking. It was confirmed in a later performance when I saw Kristine Jepson (again, with less sumptuous vocal equipment) provide exactly what had been missing.

On the other hand, when discussing it with my other half at the interval, he commented, "What do you mean? She was perfect." And maybe she was.