United States SongStudio 2025: Various, Anthony Roth Costanzo (Creative Advisor), Renée Fleming (soprano), Sir Bryn Terfel (bass-baritone), Hartmut Höll (piano). Carnegie Hall, New York, 13-19.1.2025. (RP)
Participants:
Jazmine Saunders (soprano) / Elitsa Desseva (piano)
Jaeeun Shin (soprano) / Aozora Deguchi (piano)
Margaret Tigue (soprano) / Jarod Yap (piano)
Sophia Baete (mezzo-soprano) / Marc Serra (piano)
Matthew McKinney (tenor) / Corey Silberstein (piano)
Joël Terrin (tenor) / Jong Sun Woo (piano)
Anton Kirchhoff (baritone) / Jou-an Chen (piano)
Wencong Xue (baritone) / Chris Soong (piano)
SongStudio returned to Carnegie Hall with countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo as Creative Advisor. His predecessors were the legendary mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, who founded The Song Continues, as the program was originally named, and the equally celebrated soprano Renée Fleming, who led SongStudio for the past six years.
Fleming chose to step down as the program’s Artistic Director due to the ongoing demands of her performance schedule and other commitments. She tapped Costanzo to take over this year, but she returned to lead one of the four public master classes. Bass-baritone Sir Bryn Terfel, pianist Hartmut Höll and Costanzo conducted the others.
Eight pairs of singers and pianists participated in the week-long ‘boot camp for singers’, as Fleming once dubbed it. Most sessions occur outside the public eye, but the masterclasses and the closing Young Artists Recital are open to all. The former are sold-out events, and Zankel Hall was impressively full for the recital, given that it was a cold, snowy evening.
The masterclasses offered fascinating insights into the artistic predilections and aspirations of the sixteen musicians. It is also where they are most vulnerable – receiving input and instantly processing it before an audience – with the entire process preserved on video for worldwide distribution. The near-instantaneous change in a singer or pianist’s approach to a song can be revelatory, both to the performer and the audience.
Costanzo declared the theme of his masterclass to be ‘connect everything, carve everything and marry them’. His approach yielded impressive results with soprano Margaret Tigue and pianist Jarod Yap in ‘Résurrection’ from Messiaen’s song cycle Chants de terre et de ciel. Constanzo urged them to make the difficult song more legible to the listener by imposing an arc to the drama, executing the rhythms with more exactitude and providing greater dynamic variance. The results were immediately evident at the masterclass, and their performance of it was one of the recital’s highlights.
Soprano Jazmine Saunders and pianist Elitsa Desseva benefited from Fleming’s intimate knowledge of the textural and musical challenges of Samuel Barber’s ‘Nuvoletta’. With her prodding, singer and pianist took flight in the song with James Joyce’s fanciful words emerging with sparkling clarity. In the recital, Saunders and Desseva gave a full-voiced, impassioned performance of the same composer’s ‘Sure on this shining night’. Their affinity with the composer and his style was self-evident in both songs.
Although he has sung on stages around the world, this was Terfel’s first masterclass. He knows his way around a song, having won the Lieder Prize in the 1989 Cardiff Singer of the World competition. Terfel is a natural in the role, which calls upon his love of poetry and his ability to convey the most subtle concepts with clarity and often a dollop of humor. Digressions into the past were few, but he did point with pride to singing for one minute and forty seconds at the coronation of King Charles III.
Terfel stressed to baritone Anton Kirchhoff that audiences are very demanding of a singing storyteller, especially regarding the basics – words, vocal colors and dynamics. He guided Kirchhoff through the complexities of Herbert Howell’s ‘Kind David’ in which all three elements are essential to make the narrative come alive. Equally illuminating was Terfel’s work with pianist Jou-an Chen in refining the shadings of the nightingale’s song, in whose plaintive sadness King David finds release from his grief.
Terfel and tenor Joël Terrin were both students of Rudolf Piernay at London’s Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Pianist Jong Sun Woo shares in the lineage, having first played for Terrin during voice lessons when a student. Terfel urged Terrin to indulge in cajoling the flower to do his bidding in Roger Quilter’s ‘Go, lovely Rose!’ The results were simply stunning, abetted by Terrin’s immaculate English diction. His command of French was equally impressive in Duparc’s ‘Phidylé’, which he coached with Fleming.
As in prior years, Höll’s session was, in many ways, the most illuminative. Fleming and Terfel, in particular, paid due attention to the pianists, but this is Höll’s métier. His approach was best illustrated in his work with baritone Wencong Xue and pianist Chris Soong in Schubert’s dramatic and dark ‘Der Zwerg’. With Xue, Höll focused on delineating the three characters in the song through vocal color, dynamics and mood. He delved far deeper into technical issues with Soong, even suggesting that he adjust the piano bench height for a better arm position when playing.
Song Studio’s dual mission is to preserve art songs as a genre and to renew and refresh the experience of the vocal recital. The latter goal was manifested by the infusion of additional elements into the closing recital to create an experience appealing to a broader audience. To this end, Costanzo, together with Javier Arrebola, Song Studio’s longtime Artistic Advisor, enlisted the National Black Theatre (NBT) to fashion an evening of storytelling that combined spoken dialogue, dance, song and solo piano works. Jonathan McCory, the NBT’s Executive Artistic Director, curated and directed the production.
Entitled Double Tone: The Duality of Dark to Light, the musical pieces performed were stitched together by dialogue crafted by Hope Boykin and a.k. payne. Actor Michael Rishawn delivered the narrative in the first half and Boykin in the second. Dance was also included, with Terri Ayanna Wright moving evocatively throughout the performance.
The musicians provided many stellar moments. Serra’s playing was spellbinding in Tōru Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketch II ‘In memoriam Olivier Messiaen’. Tenor Matthew McKinney and pianist Corey Silberstein gave an emotion-laden performance of Jake Heggie’s ‘Paul Éluard’ from Friendly Persuasions. Soprano Jaeeun Shin, accompanied by Aozora Deguchi, was rapturous in Debussy’s ‘Apparition’ and Rachmaninoff’s ‘How fair this spot’.
There were also moments when time stood still, such as mezzo-soprano Sophia Baete’s contrasting performances of Liza Lehmann’s ‘Evensong’ and Kurt Weill’s ‘Youkali’. Another was Terrin and Woo’s twinning of Schubert’s ‘Nacht und Träume’ and Don McLean’s ‘Vincent’, proving that a mid-century American troubadour could spin magic as effectively as perhaps the greatest of all song composers.
Chris Soong provided the musical carpet which helped to make Wencong Xue’s performances of Robert Schumann’s ‘Stille Tränen’ and Schubert’s ‘Frühlingsglaube’ so satisfying. The pianist later proved himself to be a musical storyteller of the first rank in Bartók’s ‘The Night’s Music’ from Out of Doors through playing laden with emotion, intensity and precision.
Double Tone: The Duality of Dark to Light was a natural extension of last year’s recital, in which baritone Will Liverman developed its theatrical and visual aspects. This year, it was a step too far. One yearned for more from these superb, probing musicians, who excelled in creating fascinating miniature worlds through their imagination and artistry alone. Nothing more was needed.
Rick Perdian
Feature Image: Sir Bryn Terfel with Anton Kirchhoff (baritone) © Chris Lee