United States Various – ‘The Power and the Glory’: Fleur Barron (mezzo-soprano), Kunal Lahiry (piano). Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, 20.3.2025. (RP)
Mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron and pianist Kunal Lahiry presented a fantastic recital at Well Recital Hall. There was a celebratory air due to the many family members and friends in the audience, but this was not merely a victory lap of classical crowd-pleasers. Instead, Barron and Lahiry presented an intriguing selection of songs from around the world, most possessing a political edge, in a program titled ‘The Power and the Glory’.
The Indian-American pianist Lahiry, a former BBC New Generation Artist, hails from Gainesville, Georgia. He has impeccable credentials as a collaborator in art songs, with Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson among his mentors. Lahiry is as engaged in the present as he is in exploring the past, having commissioned and premiered many works by prominent contemporary composers. Kian Ravaei’s ‘I Will Greet the Sun Again’, which Barron and Lahiry commissioned, received its world premiere at this concert.
Barron was born in Northern Ireland to a Singaporean mother and a British father, with a childhood spent in Hong Kong, and later living and studying in New York. The most striking features of this rare gem of a voice are its scintillating dark timbre and evenness. Her remarkable facility with languages and the ability to get to the heart of a song make her a superb storyteller.
Barron and Lahiry explored the legacy of imperialism and aggression through songs from Central America, Europe and East Asia, although there was a byway or two. It sounds like heavy going, but it was not. So many of the songs were just so beautiful, regardless of the sentiments they expressed.
The worst of human impulses were explored in Isle Weber’s ‘Ich wandre durch Theresienstadt’. Weber was murdered at Auschwitz along with the children whom she volunteered to accompany to their deaths. Barron expressed Weber’s longing for freedom and home with a heartfelt simplicity that cut to the bone, transforming the song’s final lines into an anthem of hope rather than despair.
The impact of imperialism received a lighter touch, illuminating the connections between indigenous music from a variety of cultures and European classical forms. It was not a one-sided affair as demonstrated by the first two songs on the program: ‘Tungu, Tungu’ by Peruvian composer Theodoro Valcárcel, and ‘Doundou Tchil’ from Olivier Messiaen’s 1945 song cycle, Harawi – Chant d’amour et de mort.
Valcárcel, who studied with Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni, fused his Andean heritage and European training in his music. ‘Tungu, tungu’ is from his collection of 31 songs in vernacular Andean languages. Messiaen, a lover of the exotic, used a combination of words from Quechua, an Andean language, interspersed with French in ‘Doundou Tchil’. Barron’s deadpan delivery of the Messiaen was priceless.
This musical cross-fertilization was further explored in works by Maurice Ravel and Ravaei. Ravel’s fascination with the exoticism of The Arabian Nights was expressed in one of his most popular works, the song cycle Schéhérazade, named after the heroine and narrator of the collection of Middle Eastern folktales. Barron and Lahiry’s performances of ‘La flûte enchantée’ and ‘L’indifférent’ from the cycle were mysterious, luxurious and sensual.
Ravaei conceived ‘I Will Greet the Sun Again’ as a companion piece to the Ravel. Ravaei’s song combines the ornamented melodies of Iranian music with the colorful harmonies of the Western classical tradition. It is a setting of a poem by Forugh Farrokhzad, an Iranian modernist poet and feminist author who faced societal constraints similar to those of the fictional Scheherazade despite the passage of centuries. Ravaei captured the ecstasies of love and nature in music as wondrous and exotic as anything Ravel composed.
Barron and Lahiry also probed their respective multicultural identities in the program. For Lahiry, it was through songs by Maurice Delage and Kamala Sankaram. Delage studied with Ravel, who hailed him as one of the supreme French composers of his day. His ‘Ragamalika’ was inspired by Indian classical music, with the sound of an Indian drum replicated by a piece of paper placed under the strings in the piano’s lower range.
Sankaram is a biracial Indian-American composer and trained sitarist who employs Indian classical music sensibilities in many of her works. ‘The Far Shore’ is a setting of a text by the sixteenth-century mystic poet Mirabai in which sparkling piano bursts contrasted with the more somber sentiments of the poem to which Barron gave voice. Equally intriguing was Zubaida Azezi and Edo Frenkel’s ‘Ananurhan’, a setting of an Uyghur folk song in which Barron sang for a while with her head inside the piano.
To close the recital, Barron returned to the Chinese songs she learned as a child, preceded by two songs by contemporary composers Huang Ruo and Chen Yi. Huang Ruo’s setting of the folk song ‘Fishman’s Sonnet’ was a gift to the singer, and Lahiry established the mood perfectly with playing as fluid and rippling as a moving stream. Barron produced the unique vocal sounds associated with kunqu, one of the oldest forms of Chinese opera for inspiration, which inspired the song.
‘Northeastern Lullaby’ is a popular folk song known throughout China, which Barron’s Auntie sang to her as a child. Barron’s rendition of it was tender and beautiful, as was her lively version of another traditional song, ‘Fengyang Flower Drum Song’. It was the first song that her mother had learned when she came to Singapore.
For an encore, Barron and Lahiry repeated Valcárcel’s ‘Tungu, tungu’, the first song on the program. As Barron had said at the start of the concert, as well as being one of her favorites, the song is beautiful, and the language intrigues her. Reason enough to perform it and for all to enjoy it one more time.
Rick Perdian
Theodoro Valcárcel – ‘Tungu, tungu’ (31 Cantos de alma vernacular)
Olivier Messiaen – ‘Doundou Tchil’ (Harawi – Chant d’amour et de mort)
Xavier Montsalvatge – ‘Cuba dentro de un piano’, ‘Punto de habanera’ (Canciones negras)
Ernesto Lecuona – ‘La señora luna’ (Cinco canciones con versos de Juana de Ibarbourou)
G. Mahler – ‘Von der Schönheit’ (Das Lied von der Erde)
Schoenberg – ‘Tot’ (‘Drei Lieder’)
Isle Weber – ‘Ich wandre durch Theresienstadt’
Kurt Weill – ‘Neid’, ‘Epilog’ (The Seven Deadly Sins)
Maurice Delage – ‘Ragamalika’
Kamala Sankaram – ‘The Far Shore’
Ravel – ‘La flûte enchantée’, ‘L’indifférent’ (Shéhérazade)
Kian Ravaei – ‘I Will Greet the Sun Again’
Zubaida Azezi / Edo Frenkel – ‘Ananurhan’
Huang Ruo – ‘Fisherman’s Sonnet’
Chen Yi – ‘Monologue’ (Meditation)
Chinese Traditional – ‘Northeastern Lullaby’, ‘Fengyang Flower Drum’