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RECITAL REVIEW
Sylvan's Emotional Impact, And All American
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By Anna Carol Dudley
Baritone Sanford Sylvan did a wonderful thing Sunday in Hertz Hall at UC Berkeley. Strongly partnered by pianist David Breitman, he treated an American audience to a recital made up entirely of American songs. This was a welcome opportunity for listeners to reflect on the relation between words and music, to notice the kinds of poetry six composers chose to set and how they went about it.
Sylvan uses his voice--secure and expressive throughout its considerable range--in the service of strong musical and emotional feeling. He communicates words by staying true to speech-- for example, in his use of the American "R"--without sacrificing beauty of sound. His phrasing follows the text without letting individual words undermine his beautiful legato.
His insight into words, feelings and ideas is so profound, his projection of text so vivid, that a listener who misses a word or phrase knows the fault does not lie with the performer. Virgil Thomson's "Prayer to St. Catherine," for instance, was one of few songs on the program completely understandable without recourse to the printed texts. Thomson's other three songs, "Mostly About Love," comprised a good, singable opening group, showing the beauty of Sylvan's singing though not being particularly memorable on their own. Kenneth Koch's poetry and Thomson's music have a discursive quality.
Earl Kim's three songs, "Letters Found Near A Suicide," on the other hand, reveal a striking musical voice. Frank Horne's poetry is terse and concentrated. Every word counts and so does every carefully chosen note of Kim's music. The third song,"To Telie," was particularly affecting, with its use of such devices as the melismatic manner of singing many notes on one syllable, variety of range and repetition. Announcing Kim's recent death, Sylvan dedicated the concert to his memory.
David Leisner's songs to four Emily Bronte's poems from "Confiding," matched regular metric form and traditional tonality to the poetry's evenly measured scansion and rhymes. Within this formal framework, there were interesting rhythmic cross-currents and big leaps in the vocal line. (Singers in the audience might have been reminded that if you can sing Mozart well, you can sing anything.) The fourth song, "Faith," showed Sylvan's wonderful adaptation of voice color and dynamics to shifts in text and music--starting with an assertive, confident sound, changing to a softer, more lyrical sound, and back again.
John Harbison's "Flashes and Dedications," written for Sylvan and Breitman, began the second half with a whole new body of poetry, in various forms, from various sources. The tonal language was rich, and the musical structure did not always adhere strictly to the poetic forms. Imaginative details enhanced the musical language, like the word-painting in "Cirque d'Hiver" and an expressive use of falsetto in "December 1." Piano writing was varied, expressive and often virtuosic, and Breitman was fully in command of it.
Wes York's "Solitary Songs" to extraordinary poems by Emily Dickinson, were extraordinary settings, sung a cappella. Of all in the recital, these made most use of techniques specific to singing: extended melismatic passages on neutral vowels between lines or verses, word and phrase repetition, portamento, notes repeated staccato (trillo) and at the end, an amusing octave leap.
The recital closed with Samuel Barber's "Hermit Songs," a collection long and short, sacred and profane, to texts translated from medieval Latin. each song meets the poetry on its own terms, sometimes formal in organization as in the recitative/aria for "St. Ita's Vision," sometimes full of metrical irregularity as in "Sea Snatch"or "The Monk and His Cat." I might quibble with a couple of Sylvan's interpretations. "The Heavenly Banquet" could be more bumptious, "Promiscuity" more like a bit of Washington gossip. By and large, he caught the mood and sound of each song, especially "The Crucifixion," infused with a beautiful sound and lovely legato.
An encore from the AIDS Quilt Songbook, "Walt Whitman in 1989," came across with the clarity of diction and great emotional impact true of the entire recital.
(Anna Carol Dudley is a singer, teacher, lecturer emerita at San Francisco State University, and director of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Baroque Music Workshop.)
©1998 Anna Carol Dudley, all rights reserved
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