San Francisco Classical Voice

Debussy's Chansons de Bilitis, no less commitedly performed, suffered from the same failings. They, too, are rhetorical songs. Overt dramatic expression pulls apart the delicately evocative poetic threads with which they are constructed. The "persona" of the second song, "La chevelure," is problematical and tenuous. The girl is recounting the lover's reporting of, not his own feelings in the present, but those in a dream he had. The singer's "telling" of his dream by the girl is at three removes from the emotion generated by the passionate dream. How can the singer represent only one "voice?" Yet this is what Upshaw tried to do, by singing with outright passion but no hint of the subtle multiple filters of voice.

Again, in the third song Upshaw characterized the lover as angry, and there he was before us, the angry lover in the person of the singer. But he is not meant to be angry in either the poem or the song; he is cool, removed, distant, a mere rhetorical echo of the passion of the second song. Upshaw was not able to convey either the coolness or the distance, because she tried to portray a dramatic characterization and not the elusive, evocative poetry. But she was convincing through the strength of her musicality and the fervor of her presentation.

Rachmaninoff's six op. 38 songs, the last he composed (though he lived on for almost three more decades) differ from his earlier songs, which are more exuberant: intricate, complex, at times almost classical, with shades of a Stravinskian austerity, they were composed in harmony with the symbolic style of the set's poets. The inventive ideas are mostly in the piano part, consummately played by Prutsman, while the voice is given plenty of scope for dramatic expressiveness, which Upshaw exploited to the utmost. Piano and voice were a beguiling match producing, for example, a gorgeous performance of "A Dream" and a disturbing "A-oo." To hear these infrequently performed, wonderfully crafted songs, realized beautifully by both artists, was a special treat.

But in the end, there was no doubt that Upshaw sounded happiest of all in the second half, when she presented several singer-songwriters of the American 1960's, in whose songs she ardently believes. She sang these songs mostly in her rich lower range, venturing into the upper regions less often but tellingly. Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-changing," sung a capella and without comment from Upshaw, set the stage for the half, followed by three Joni Mitchell songs, of which "All I Want" was particularly lovely and the famous "Circle Game" impressive. Sandy Denny was represented by "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?" and Laura Nyro by the gospel-y, moving "When I Die." Even a child of the 40's and 50's recognized Simon and Garfunkel's "Dangling Conversation," with its evocative yet distancing poetry.

These songs were an excellent fit for Upshaw, and yet there is a puzzle, maybe even a paradox at work in her very success with them. They, like the earlier Dowland, are rhetorical. Many of the texts are formulaic, the thoughts expressed are conventional, impersonal. But Upshaw caught a rhetorical song like the "Dangling Conversation" perfectly, as she did the other 60's songs, bringing to them a judicious mix of ironic distance with just the right kind of slightly underexpressed drama. Call it chemistry. That she could accomplish this mix with her singing of the popular songs, if not with Dowland or Debussy, was a testament to her prowess with American song and to the magic of her artistry.

With the singing of "Dream a Little Dream of Me," an homage to Mama Cass Elliot who brought it back in the 60's, Upshaw signaled a hearkening back to the earlier time of her two encores. Kurt Weill's "I'm a Stranger Here Myself" from One Touch of Venus was an opportunity for vamping and "messing with" the pianist — ruffling his hair and caressing his limbs, to his mock consternation and the audience's amusement, while he supplied a good dose of low-down whorehouse piano. But it was in the second and final encore that she reached arguably her highest point of artistry: Irving Berlin's "What'll I Do?" This unassuming song by a prolific Tin Pan Alley composer of a bygone era attained the profoundly simple clarity of truth, as Upshaw, repeating the chorus pianissimo, withdrew amazingly into her own core, drawing the audience in with her, and making us all supremely grateful, at this time when such life-affirming moments of truth are as necessary to us as air, for this gifted, courageous artist.