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Of mermaids and slave ships
Lyric Fest's "Voices of the Sea'
Tom Purdom
The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society has been expanding the number of programs that feature local performers; and now it's including local chamber groups in its schedule. This season, Lyric Fest got the nod. Next season the Society will feature a Dolce Suono concert.
It's an astute strategy. The Chamber Music Society taps into the following many of these groups have attracted, and the groups get a well-publicized position on a schedule that includes some of the most famous soloists and chamber ensembles on the international circuit.
Given the value of the opportunity, it's too bad that Lyric Fest didn't show off a program like the "Music in the White House" event it put on last month. Its "Voices of the Sea" program ranged over four types of sea song but could have used more of the narrative drive that ties together Lyric Fest's best concerts.
The sea is a subject is so varied, with so many different aspects, that the bits of narrative interspersed between the songs never acquired the continuity that creates a cumulative impact.
Still, the narrative sections scored points nevertheless. The subject was a good choice, too, for a concert in the older part of Center City. Philadelphia has played a major role in America's nautical history, even if Philadelphians must cross an alien state to visit the beach.
John Adams sails to France
The opening anecdote was a brief account of John Adams's voyage to France during the American Revolution, complete with three sea battles and a ferocious storm, that set the stage with a graphic reminder that the ocean is a dangerous place.
The songs themselves were a good example of the wide-ranging knowledge of the repertoire that Lyric Fest's organizers bring to their work, along their showmanly ability to create a parade of light and weighty material. Leslie Johnson displayed a talent for musical comedy with songs like Cole Porter's Tale of the Oyster, which follows its social-climbing subject from its life in the ocean through the climactic moment when it got a taste of high society and "society had a taste of me."
Inspired nonsense
Randall Scarlata opened the evening with a stirring setting of John Masefield's Sea Fever, and Scarlata and Johnson collaborated on a bit of inspired nonsense that mixed a romance with a mermaid with choruses of Rule Britannia (a song that always seems to amuse Americans). Soprano Randi Marrazzo had a good outing with selections that included a touching evocation of the sea by a Swedish composer, Gosta Nystroem. A Schubert meditation on time and the sea received a quietly moving performance by soprano Jennifer Casey Cabot. Tenor David Adams covered the English and American seafaring tradition with songs by Henry Purcell and Benjamin Britten and one of the two traditional sea chanteys on the program.
The rest of the lineup included German mermaid songs (a genre in itself), American fishing songs, crooning French chansons, a ballad called Shenandoah, and a paean to life's last voyage, with words by Walt Whitman and music by American composer Lee Holby.
A powerful work on slavery
The most effective combination of narration and music took place during the final section, which focused on the shores and rivers of the U.S. Suzanne DuPlantis raised the specter of the slave ships with a brief accounting of the Amistad case, and Randall Scarlata followed her with a poem by Langston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, set by the noted African-American composer Margaret Bonds. It was a big, powerful piece, with a different musical treatment for every line, and it received a suitably big performance from Scarlata and pianist Laura Ward.
That song would have created a peak moment all by itself, but DuPlantis added to the impact when she followed it with a moving setting of the most famous words in the inscription on the Statue of Liberty. In a sequence that lasted less than ten minutes, Lyric Fest's combination of narration and music captured one of the permanent tensions of American history: the dissonant, endlessly troubling memory of a destination that was a land of despair to one group of seafarers and a vision of hope to millions of others.
It's an astute strategy. The Chamber Music Society taps into the following many of these groups have attracted, and the groups get a well-publicized position on a schedule that includes some of the most famous soloists and chamber ensembles on the international circuit.
Given the value of the opportunity, it's too bad that Lyric Fest didn't show off a program like the "Music in the White House" event it put on last month. Its "Voices of the Sea" program ranged over four types of sea song but could have used more of the narrative drive that ties together Lyric Fest's best concerts.
The sea is a subject is so varied, with so many different aspects, that the bits of narrative interspersed between the songs never acquired the continuity that creates a cumulative impact.
Still, the narrative sections scored points nevertheless. The subject was a good choice, too, for a concert in the older part of Center City. Philadelphia has played a major role in America's nautical history, even if Philadelphians must cross an alien state to visit the beach.
John Adams sails to France
The opening anecdote was a brief account of John Adams's voyage to France during the American Revolution, complete with three sea battles and a ferocious storm, that set the stage with a graphic reminder that the ocean is a dangerous place.
The songs themselves were a good example of the wide-ranging knowledge of the repertoire that Lyric Fest's organizers bring to their work, along their showmanly ability to create a parade of light and weighty material. Leslie Johnson displayed a talent for musical comedy with songs like Cole Porter's Tale of the Oyster, which follows its social-climbing subject from its life in the ocean through the climactic moment when it got a taste of high society and "society had a taste of me."
Inspired nonsense
Randall Scarlata opened the evening with a stirring setting of John Masefield's Sea Fever, and Scarlata and Johnson collaborated on a bit of inspired nonsense that mixed a romance with a mermaid with choruses of Rule Britannia (a song that always seems to amuse Americans). Soprano Randi Marrazzo had a good outing with selections that included a touching evocation of the sea by a Swedish composer, Gosta Nystroem. A Schubert meditation on time and the sea received a quietly moving performance by soprano Jennifer Casey Cabot. Tenor David Adams covered the English and American seafaring tradition with songs by Henry Purcell and Benjamin Britten and one of the two traditional sea chanteys on the program.
The rest of the lineup included German mermaid songs (a genre in itself), American fishing songs, crooning French chansons, a ballad called Shenandoah, and a paean to life's last voyage, with words by Walt Whitman and music by American composer Lee Holby.
A powerful work on slavery
The most effective combination of narration and music took place during the final section, which focused on the shores and rivers of the U.S. Suzanne DuPlantis raised the specter of the slave ships with a brief accounting of the Amistad case, and Randall Scarlata followed her with a poem by Langston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, set by the noted African-American composer Margaret Bonds. It was a big, powerful piece, with a different musical treatment for every line, and it received a suitably big performance from Scarlata and pianist Laura Ward.
That song would have created a peak moment all by itself, but DuPlantis added to the impact when she followed it with a moving setting of the most famous words in the inscription on the Statue of Liberty. In a sequence that lasted less than ten minutes, Lyric Fest's combination of narration and music captured one of the permanent tensions of American history: the dissonant, endlessly troubling memory of a destination that was a land of despair to one group of seafarers and a vision of hope to millions of others.
What, When, Where
Lyric Fest: “Voices of the Sea.†Songs by Elgar, Berlioz, Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, Britten, Mendelssohn, Porter, et al. David Adams, tenor; Jennifer Casey Cabot, Randi J. Marrazzo and Leslie Johnson, sopranos; Suzanne DuPlantis, mezzo-soprano; Randall Scarlata, baritone; Laura Ward piano. March 12, 2009 at American Philosophical Society, 427 Chestnut St. (215) 438-1702 or www.lyricfest.org
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