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RECITAL REVIEW
Athletic Approach to Art Song February 17, 2002
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By Stephanie Friedman
Ewa Podles, the Polish contralto, overflows with histrionic gifts.
They inhabit her body, her arresting voice and everything she sings. Her
formidable coloratura is charged with dramatic force and her physical
miming of a character runs the gamut from the squeaking simpering of a
girl caught out in a lie to the ferocious lineaments of a woman abandoned.
But where, in all of this, is attention to musical values, to diction, to
line — yes, even to taste? In a strangely monotonous program at Zellerbach
on Sunday afternoon that gave Podles nothing to express but full
dose after full dose of everything, a fierce storm of drama battered and
all too soon wearied and defeated a helpless listener.
Podles used the same repertoire of vocal and physical gestures
throughout: gritty chesty tones, forceful coloratura, and a set of facial
and bodily gestures that would have been at home in Victorian melodrama. A
trio of Rossini settings of French texts were, however (or perhaps
therefore), musically and dramatically indistinguishable from one another.
Podles' idiosyncratic pronunciation of French and Italian likewise
obscured the linguistic differences. An unfortunate "s" lisp only added to
the blur. Giovanna d'Arco ("Joan of Arc"), a cantata in Italian, fared
no better than the French compositions, either in diction or expression,
although a single line, sung in mindfully focused, beautiful tone — "O
dolce mio loco nativo" ("O my beloved childhood home") — provided one of
the rare felicitous moments of the afternoon, and showed what
Podles could do when fully engaged with text and not just with
histrionics. It was a moment to treasure: there were disappointingly few
of them.
A group of rarely-heard songs by Chopin, sung in Polish, was an oddity but
not a change. Largely folkish, the songs were frail reeds for
Podles
The final set, Brahms' Zigeunerlieder ("Gypsy Songs"), nos. 1-7 and
11, from op. 103 (originally for vocal quartet, arranged for solo voice
and piano by Brahms), demanded from the singer, and received, nothing
different. Emotional but rarely beautiful, the songs encouraged
Podles' worst vocal features: a disturbing break between chest and
head registers; a tendency to push the chesty quality for effect on an
attack, resulting in an alarming loss of power and focus on the following
note; hollow breathiness in the middle voice (more than just the
breathiness she often used for enhanced expressiveness); high-chest
breathing, causing her shoulders to heave, followed by energetic vocal
pumping and body English to propel the tone around her torso. Her voice
has been described as large, but here it sounded merely forced.
Since Podles stood tranquil and expressionless between pieces, such
gymnastics when she sang were even more bewildering and off-putting,
especially as they obviated any attempt at a simple, straightforward
musical line. The soft, reticent dynamic she chose for coyness, as
appropriate as the emotion was for a major part of these Romantic love
songs, was the occasion for her to back away from her tone so far that it
almost sounded as if she had stopped singing. Yet the facial and gestural
representation of coyness presented to the eye was frighteningly larger
than life.
The term "contralto" seems oddly ill-suited to Podles. Even though
her voice is undeniably capacious and some of her low notes are dark and
individually strong, when the whole package is put together the low-lying
lines fail in strength. The middle area sounds gruffy and unfocused, more
like the weak lower part of a soprano range. Only her high notes tell
reliably. They can be quite thrilling — even when sung piano, quite
the best part of her voice.
Yet her first encore, "Cruda sorte" from Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri
("The Italian Girl in Algiers"), a "coloratura contralto" aria, engaged
her completely and was thoroughly convincing: "spot on," as the Brits
would say. How to account for her sudden involvement? The appearance of a
really good piece, perhaps? Podles announced each of her two
encores (the second was Rossini's early "Canzonetta spagnuola" ("Spanish
song")) carefully and audibly. Would that she could have sung as clearly as
she spoke. She basked in the warmly receptive audience's bravas, and
bowed graciously and modestly. The enervating storm had lasted too long
and was finally past. But whether it had been called forth by a misguided attempt to overcome an unimaginative program with formulaic exaggeration or by
the unbridled effusions of a temperamentally over-endowed singer remained
a mystery.
Her competent accompanist was Ania Marchwinska. Subtlety from the pianist
was neither required nor forthcoming.
(Stephanie Friedman, mezzo-soprano, has performed in this country and abroad, in opera and recital. She teaches vocal literature at U.C. Davis and Holy Names College.)
©2002 Stephanie Friedman, all rights reserved
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