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RECITAL REVIEW
May 7, 2004
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By Fernando Benadon
Of the 300-plus songs submitted to the American Art Song Competition, six were selected and showcased during last Friday's inaugural concert of the San Francisco Song Festival at Old First Church. The winning works, two each in the categories of established professional, emerging artist, or student, sounded remarkably alike. Considering the high number of submissions, one can conclude either that the vast majority of art song composers young and old are operating under the same aesthetic umbrella, or that the judges were strikingly consistent (not to say exclusivist) in the adjudication process. I hope the former is untrue, but if indeed this concert painted an accurate landscape of current art song composition, then we must wonder why composers are not delving beyond the effective but uninspiring realm of predictable text painting, straightforward accompaniment, and complacently mild chromaticism. If the latter is true, then we may conclude that the competition is recognizing only selectively (as the program touts) “the country's most highly talented composers of art song.”
A glance at the winning criteria (as listed on the SFSF website) may prove relevant: “appropriate treatment of text, substance of musical ideas, harmonic control, idiomatic and appropriate accompaniment, freshness/originality, notational clarity, sensitive vocal writing, and other criteria.” Beyond the objectivity of “notational clarity” and the intangibility of “other criteria,” one cannot dispute that all the winning compositions superbly and consistently satisfied someone's definitions of the above criteria. And why couldn't the judges mix things up a bit by honoring songs that feature “inappropriate” treatment of text, “inappropriate” accompaniment, and “insensitive” vocal writing? Charles Ives and Langston Hughes, to cite just two of the names on the program, might not have deemed this suggestion overly progressive.
The overwhelmingly homogeneous selection should not reflect negatively on the composers, whose guilt by association may have been imparted upon them. On the contrary, their songs were well crafted and entertaining; each one would have stood out in the context of more diverse programming. The concert opened with Edward Knight's Life is Fine, a seven-part setting of Langston Hughes poems. The piece exhibited a remarkable expressive range, with each song in the cycle deploying a different musical strategy to match each poem's mood, from dreamlike to jazzy to sarcastic. Soprano Marnie Breckenridge's vitality brought the piece to life. Though she was careful not to overpower the accompaniment, at times (as in “Georgia Dusk”) her intense projection and the venue's uncooperative acoustics may have undone some of the work's Debussyan longing. “World War II” was the cycle's highlight, both for the singer and the composer. She delivered the scat-like cadenza with perfectly nuanced blue notes and a wonderful sensitivity to expressive timing.
When Breckenridge returned later to sing Mark Buntag's Six Nocturnes and an Aubade (poetry by Sara Teasdale), she was not as cautious and as a result many of the composer's fragile harmonies were trodden. This piece was successful in juxtaposing contrasting musical materials, thankfully not always in parallel to the text. It was also the only work to contain a (very refreshing) unison between the voice and the piano (in the line “All things that hurt me and all things that healed”). “Men with Small Heads” by Lori Laitman (poetry by Thomas Lux) was short and witty, but musically it felt bland. Baritone Brad Alexander's impeccable diction and clever delivery drew laughter from the audience with such lines as “I'd say to my mother, father, Why does that man have a small head?” Alexander also sang “Willow Poem” by Michael Ippolito. The opening Phrygian touches lent the short song a magical ambiance, and the subsequent mood shifts did justice to William Carlos Williams' powerful imagery. Daniel Levin's Two Longfellow Songs was the strongest of the six winning works. Crystalline textures in the piano laid an elegant groundwork for the singer's floating melodies, which flowed seamlessly and obliquely throughout. Mezzo soprano Sonia Gariaeff did a commendable job of negotiating the sticky harmonies, though her skillful rendition of three of Aaron Copland's Emily Dickinson Songs on the concert's second half was by far more profound. Francisco Hinojosa's ”Mis ojos sin tus ojos” (poetry by Miguel Hernández) began with a charming Latin Americanish flavor. However, the song was slipshoddily put together, and despite tenor Gary Ruschman's efforts to the contrary, the music often wandered off course. Ruschman did get a chance to shine in the second half, which was devoted to songs by established contemporary composers. In Samuel Barber's Three Songs, Ruschman blended beautifully with the slow, somber harmonies and assumed an engagingly giddy tone when the music prompted it. Also of note in the second half was Bruce Broughton's “General William Booth Enters into Heaven” (poetry by Vachel Lindsay). Here the ongoing textural variation was validated by an underlying musical fabric that provided continuity and tied the 56 lines of surrealist poetry together. If Brad Alexander's diction suffered during the opening rhythmic passages, he more than made up for this during the delicate mellismas and melancholic stanzas that followed. Broughton, an Oscar-nominated composer and winner of numerous Emmys, accompanied at the piano with ease. Peter Grünberg provided sensitive and assertive piano accompaniment on all other works in both halves.
(Fernando Benadon is a PhD student in Composition at the University of California, Berkeley)
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Marnie Breckenridge
Sonya Gariaeff
Gary Ruschman
Brad Alexander
