‘Angels…..’ said Lorraine Hunt Lieberson introducing
her third encore, and the rest was lost in a buzz of delighted exclamations:
rightly so, for ‘Angels, ever bright and fair’ from ‘Theodora’ is the
kind of repertoire in which this wonderful mezzo-soprano has few equals,
and her singing of it was as beautifully phrased, as movingly expressed
and as technically fluent as I have ever heard. I was hoping for ‘As
with rosy steps the morn’ after that, but instead she opted to show
her versatility with Telson’s ‘I am calling you.’ That we had to be
content with only a little Handel, was the only real disappointment
of this recital, however, since her opening arias, from ‘Ariodante’
and ‘Rinaldo,’ offered singing of rare distinction.
‘Scherza infida’ is one of the greatest of all Handel’s
dramatic recitative / arias: first performed by the soprano castrato
Carestini, it provides a range of challenges for any singer, especially
at the beginning of a recital, but it is part of Ms Hunt Lieberson’s
style to be able to immerse herself totally in a role almost from the
moment she steps onto the platform. She conveyed every detail of the
dejected hero’s sorrow at the supposed betrayal of his beloved, sometimes
readily sacrificing absolute beauty of tone in order to make a dramatic
point, but always producing the most tender, evocative, vividly characterized
singing you could possibly hope to hear. This melancholy, elaborate
aria, with its dissonant suspensions echoing the hero’s forlorn sentiments
found its perfect interpreter in this singer, and it was received in
a rapt, absorbed silence.
It took Christopher Gould a little time to get into
his stride in terms of being an equal partner for her, but by the time
‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ began he seemed to have settled down and accompanied
this heartbreaking aria with playing of the proper dignity and nobility.
Gould is very young to be at this level, but his elevation will not
have come as a surprise to anyone who heard him accompanying one of
the finalists in last year’s Wigmore Hall Song Competition, and his
playing from this point on was highly sympathetic without being servile.
This aria was perfection: deeply moving in expression - so much so that
there were people openly weeping all around me – as well as tenderly
sensitive to language, Hunt Lieberson’s singing reminded me very much
of that of Kathleen Ferrier, not so much in the colour of the voice,
which is quite different, but in the moving quality of her intonation.
When she produced that final pianissimo at ‘per pietà’ with the
voice fading away to a shiveringly exquisite thread, you could almost
hear the appreciative silence in the hall.
The group of French songs which made up the rest of
the first half of the programme was not quite at the same level, but
then it is difficult to imagine how any singing could be. Debussy’s
‘Beau soir’ gave Gould the chance to reveal his elegant, languid playing
but Hunt Lieberson’s diction was rather hazy here: however, it was a
different story in Chausson’s ‘Le colibri’ where she really seemed to
be savouring the words, and both singer and pianist achieved the perfect
diminuendo at ‘Du premier baiser qu l’a parfumée.’
The second half began with a highly charged, warmly
dramatic performance of Turina’s ‘Farruca,’ where the verbal language
is almost that of the kind of poem favoured by Schumann but the musical
expression is vibrantly coloured, and Hunt Lieberson gave it a performance
worthy of the singer to whom it was dedicated, Conchita Supervia. The
evening’s major work was the five ‘Rilke Songs,’ written for the singer
by her husband Peter Lieberson and premiered in 2001. Rilke’s poetry
is obviously very dear to the composer, and he really does know how
to write for the voice, but these settings are, for me, compromised
by the weakness of the poems, although I know that this view is not
shared by everyone, and some people are quite relaxed about such lines
as ‘...until her womb can feel the polyphonic / light of the sonorous
heavens pouring down.’
That being said, Lieberson sets these vague effusions
as though they are by Goethe, revealing a genuine feeling for the shaping
of a musical line so that it lies gracefully for the voice, and in ‘O
ihr Zärtlichen’ setting words like ‘Seligen’ and phrases such as
‘Aber die Lufte…aber die Räume’ so skilfully that it is no effort
to imagine the bleak spaces and the encircling air. ‘Wolle die Wandlung’
has a very challenging piano part which Gould negotiated with panache,
and the final ‘Stiller Freund’ gave further evidence of the composer’s
deep love for these poems and the singer’s ability to present them with
a passion and beauty of tone merited by the music, if not the word.,
with the final ‘Ich bin’ closing the group with ringing, fervent commitment.
A naturally enthusiastic audience brought them back
for four encores, beginning with an exciting ‘Erlkönig’ in which
Gould thundered out those gruesome octaves as though possessed and Hunt
Lieberson characterized every individual part with real drama, especially
in the malevolent spirit’s ‘so brauch ich Gewalt.’ Both the Telson piece
and Copland’s ‘Pastorale’ were given beautiful performances, the flowing
legato line of the voice in the latter echoed by the gently rippling
piano, but it was ‘Angels, ever bright and fair’ which almost eclipsed
everything else, with singing of a purity, expressiveness and emotional
force that can be equalled by very few other singers of our, or indeed
in my opinion, any other time.
Melanie Eskenazi
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