United Kingdom SongStudio 2024: Renée Fleming (Artistic Director and host), Graham Johnson (piano), Nicolas Phan (tenor), Angel Blue (soprano). Carnegie Hall, New York, 22 to 27.1.2024. (RP)
Participants:
Khayakazi Madlala (soprano) / Natalie Sherer (piano)
Gabrielle Barkidjija (mezzo-soprano) / Anni Laukkanen (piano)
Ruby Dibble (mezzo-soprano) / Tzu Kuang Tan (piano)
Chuanyuan Liu (countertenor) / Ye In Kwak (piano)
Edmond Rodriguez (tenor) / Daniel Peter Silcock (piano)
Felix Gygli (baritone) / Aleksandra Myslek (piano)
Gabriel Rollinson (baritone) / Yuriko Watanabe (piano)
Florian Störtz (bass-baritone) / Jeong-Eun Lee (piano)
‘This is incredible!! Taylor tells the best stories through her music’. So comments a fan on the YouTube post of Taylor Swift’s 2023 hit song ‘I Can See You’. Every young singer and collaborative pianist who participates in Carnegie Hall’s SongStudio aspires to hear the same words said about them. Getting there is what SongStudio is about.
The annual week-long series of master classes is run by world-renowned soprano Renée Fleming, together with other leading artists, and it mentors a new generation in the art of performing classical song. In many ways, the process is much the same for these artists as it is for Taylor Swift. The focus is on conveying emotion through words and music – the most basic and universal of musical forms.
The differences lie chiefly in the musical styles, although those boundaries are becoming ever more fluid. Sooner or later, someone will program a Taylor Swift song in a recital. And, of course, Swift tends to write her own material, while classical song interpreters explore a repertoire that spans centuries, encompassing a variety of styles and just about as many languages.
It is a genre that may seem fusty and quaint, but it still has global appeal. As is to be expected, participants in SongStudio 2024 came from Europe and the Americas, but also from Malaysia and South Africa. I overheard a young man standing in line to enter a master class say that he had known nothing about classical song, but then he heard one by Schubert. After that, he was hooked and decided to become a singer.
A new wind blew through SongStudio this year, but it was not really noticeable in the public masterclasses with their focus on the nuts and bolts of performing a song. As usual, Fleming assembled a stellar cohort of colleagues – pianist Graham Johnson, tenor Nicholas Phan and soprano Angel Blue.
Graham Johnson, acclaimed as ‘that peerless song accompanist’, chose to focus on Schubert songs. Johnson not only coached singers and pianists alike in the nuances of performing Schubert but discoursed on the composer’s life and his relationship to the poets whose words he set to music. One can hope for a BBC series with this superb raconteur revealing the secrets of classical song, akin to Sister Wendy’s exploration of the great masterpieces of European art.
Fleming introduced tenor Nicholas Phan as one of that rare breed who, without being an opera star, enjoys a career in song and concert work. He, as did Fleming in her master class, took a holistic approach to the songs being performed, focusing as much on the pianist as the singer. Soprano Angel Blue tended to work mostly with the singers, but the advice she gave applied as readily to the pianists. An established star with an international career, Blue is still a relatively young singer, and her empathy with the artists whom she coached was all the more real for that reason.
The final recital, however, was where SongStudio’s mission to ‘renew and refresh’ the vocal recital experience was revealed. Rather than the traditional format of a singer standing in the crook of a piano, it was transformed into the present-day equivalent of a Schubertiad, those evenings when nineteenth-century devotees of Franz Schubert gathered to celebrate his music.
Whether intentional or not, the stage upon which the artists performed evoked depictions of those gatherings as captured by contemporary artists such as Moritz von Schwind and Julius Schmidt. The role of the artists likewise hearkened back to that earlier time when people provided their own entertainment, with singers and pianists alike being called upon to introduce the works. The pianists were sometimes afforded the opportunity to perform solo works too.
Fleming gave credit to baritone Will Liverman, who serves as SongStudio’s Creative Advisor, for developing all the theatrical and visual aspects of the performance. Liverman catapulted to stardom in X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X and Fire Shut Up in My Bones at the Metropolitan Opera. He nonetheless maintains that ‘art song is a foundational part of who I am as a singer’ and has ‘provided me with endless opportunities for expression’.
Once upon a time, we purists frowned upon a singer doing much more than standing on stage and singing, but this generation is changing that dynamic: SongStudio has just jumped on a train that has already left the station. Choreographer Hope Boykin and dancer and movement coach Amina Lydia assisted Liverman in creating the physical flow of the performance. In the context of Liverman’s approach, it worked, although every singer would have communicated as effectively in the traditional format.
The moments that stick in my mind from SongStudio 2024 did not all come from the closing recital, though for soprano Khayakazi Madlala that was so. Her singing of Marx’s ‘Nocturne’ in the recital displayed to full advantage her gleaming, resplendent voice and her passion for singing. It was equally fascinating to experience the song take shape under Fleming’s guidance in the master class. Madlala also sang Richard Strauss’s ‘Morgen’ in which Natalie Sherer created magic in the piano postlude.
Nothing in the master classes quite prepared one for mezzo-soprano Gabrielle Barkidjija’s impassioned performance of ‘What Can One Woman Do?’ from Stacy Garrop’s 2006 song cycle, In Eleanor’s Words. The songs are settings of excerpts from Eleanor Roosevelt’s syndicated newspaper columns. Anni Laukkanen was Barkidjija’s equal partner in expressing the Former First Lady’s denunciation of war. They introduced many to the Croatian composer Dora Pejačević through her setting of ‘Viele Fähren sind auf den Flüssen’ with words by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Ruby Dibble’s magnificent mezzo-soprano was impressive whether working on Mahler’s ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ with Phan or singing Debussy’s Chansons de Bilitis in performance. Pianist Tzu Kuang Tan, her collaborator, is a stunning talent, whose ability to express the most profound emotions was revealed in his playing in the Mahler, as well as in William Bolcom’s ‘New York Lights’, a work for solo piano that he played at the recital.
The magical moment for countertenor Chuanyuan Liu came in Phan’s masterclass with Loewe’s ‘Erlkörnig’. Liu created four distinct characters with his voice and body that vividly captured the drama in the story. The cool precision of Ye In Kwak’s playing enhanced the song’s emotional impact, as it did in their equally fine performance of Crumb’s ‘Night’.
Tenor Edmond Rodriguez’s most polished work came in the Rachmaninoff and Bridge songs that he sang in the recital, but the experience of witnessing him do André Previn’s ‘The Revelation’ (with a text by William Carlos Williams) with Fleming was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Fleming and Previn were frequent collaborators, and her insights into the composer’s style and how to perform his music were invaluable. Fleming paid his engaging musical partner, Daniel Peter Silcock, a high compliment by saying that he really got Previn’s style.
Baritone Felix Gygli singing Vaughan William’s ‘Heart’s Haven’ is something I will never forget. Phan described his voice as a ‘beautiful, glorious instrument’ and it is. Gygli is also a remarkably expressive singer. It took a large musical personality to partner with him effectively, and Aleksandra Myslek is such a pianist.
One of the most intriguing contributions to the recital was baritone Gabriel Rollinson and pianist Yuriko Watanabe performing Ravel’s ‘Don Quichotte à Dulcinée’, followed by Ibert’s ‘Chanson de la mort’ from his Chansons de Don Quichotte. These songs are often performed by older men, and the lyricism and beauty of Rollinson’s voice brought a new dimension to them. Watanabe offered Rollinson complete support with her stylish playing of the colorful accompaniments.
Looking at the program, one had the sense that Florian Störtz and Jeong-Eun Lee got the short end of the stick. It was not that the best was saved for last – any of the teams would have been up to the challenge of concluding the recital. Whether any would have had the intensity that Störtz and Lee brought to Mahler’s ‘Um Mitternacht’ is impossible to know. But with that number, they told a story that might have converted a Swiftie to art song.
Rick Perdian
A wonderful way to explore and exchange the nuances of music.