SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL CONCERT REVIEW


Chopin, Schumann, Prutsman: Dawn Upshaw, soprano; Emanuel Ax, piano. Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco. 20.3.2010 (HS)


When two musical stars as restless and adventurous as soprano Dawn Upshaw and pianist Emanuel Ax team up for a recital, a program of familiar works would never do. On the other hand, going too far out could rub their many fans the wrong way. They found a welcome middle ground by filling the first half of their recital Sunday with a number of songs by Chopin, better known for his piano works, and a new song set called Piano Lessons by the contemporary pianist Stephen Prutsman, who writes extensively for the Kronos Quartet.

They broke up the seven Chopin songs midway through with a brief digression into the composer’s more familiar Four Mazurkas, Op. 41. Two Chopin piano Nocturnes (No. 1 in C-sharp minor, No. 2 in D-flat major) opened the second half before they delved into a delicious group of Schumann songs that put Ax as much in the spotlight as much as Upshaw.

The stage set-up provided an easy chair and flower-bedecked side table for Upshaw to relax and sip water while Ax played alone, creating a genteel feeling of a salon to the proceedings. The music only accentuated this. The Chopin songs leaned toward quiet longing over overt drama, and the Mazurkas and Nocturnes contained little of of the showy pianism of the composer’s more flamboyant works. The Schumann songs showed the most color; there is a reason Schumann is better known for his vocal writing than Chopin for his.

Prutsman’s new song set, written for this soprano, fit right in to this mix. The melodic and harmonic language are conservative and easy on the ears. His emphasis is on the words with sly reflections and digressions to them in the piano. A gentle sense of humor percolates through it all. The poems, from Billy Collins’ The Art of Drowning, trace the early experiences of a young pianist taking his or her first lessons.

The first, “My teacher lies on the floor with a bad back,” begins with a quiet version of piano exercises, over which Upshaw floats a lovely counterpoint that evolves into melisma, and, finally, a slow scale of a melody. In the second, she sings about scales in different keys against rapid-fire arpeggiated chords in the piano. Over a lilting waltz, the next song finally reaches a scale-like melody on the words, “this is the way it must be.” “I am doing my scales” is set against jazzy chords, broken and full of added sixths and ninths; a final reference to the jazz great Horace Silver is accompanied by a high-register tinkling he often used to finish a tune.

A song about learning to play “It Might As Well Be Spring” starts with a swaying two-note phrase that almost quotes the music for the first line (“I’m as restless as a willow in a windstorm”). The final song, “Even when I am not playing, I think about the piano,” weaves chords around a pedal tone (nice musical pun there) and finishes, of course, on an upward scale to the words “this curious beast with its enormous moonlit smile.” It’s all as charming as it sounds, and both Upshaw and Ax seemed delighted to be performing it.

Ax’s playing in this, and in the Chopin Mazurkas and Nocturnes, was remarkable for its subtlety. He brought delicacy to the phrasing, never yielding to any temptations to aggrandize the music.

Upshaw sang the Chopin songs in their original Polish, making the words on the page sound utterly natural (although I cannot say whether her pronunciation was as good as it seemed). Perhaps it was Chopin’s lesser mastery of song writing, but the range of emotion seemed limited. First on the program was exactly right for such delicate little baubles as “Melody,” “Sorrow” and “My Darling.” They showed Chopin’s natural flair for melody, but, without all the extras he lavished on the tunes in his piano works, they came off as pretty rather than ravishing.

The 12 Schumann songs, however, brought out Upshaw’s best singing and Ax’s best playing. The suave richness of the sustained chords in “Nachtlied” and Upshaw’s caressing of the melody was indeed ravishing. “Singet niche in Trauertönen” suited her clarity and deftness, and “Röselein, Röselein” fit so perfectly between the voice and piano that it took my breath away. If a song such as “Widmung” might have made me wish Upshaw could employ a bigger voice for the climaxes, the rest was so shapely of phrase that it was impossible to complain.

Her encore, Hugo Wolf’s setting of the same “Röselein” poem, may have been her best singing of the night. Maybe next time a whole set of Wolf songs?

Harvey Steiman