It is a rare delight when world-class artists at their
peak devote appearances to unusual repertoire. Dawn Upshaw, making
singing sound so easy, was with her regular partner Gilbert Kalish,
one of the best song recital pianists before the public. This perfectly
attuned American duo temporarily eclipsed memories of even the best
British song accompanists regularly heard on the same platform. Three
Wolf Möricke songs with strong and subtle accompaniment (piano
lid wide open, dynamics correspondingly wide and full) left you wishing
for a whole Wolf recital from artists who understand his every nuance
perfectly.
Kalish relished every harmonic shift in his timing
and voicing of chords and together they pointed every turn of phase
in lighter songs from Mahler's Das Knaben Wunderhorn in perfect
synchrony. In praise of high intellect, a singing contest between
nightingale & cuckoo (judged the winner by the donkey judge) was
a nice dig at conservative competition adjudicators! A group from the
young Paul Hindemith's Das Marienleben, given in the more instinctive
version generally preferred to the more sober 1948 revision, speeded
us through the Virgin's own life from her birth to the Consoling
by the risen Christ. Upshaw and Kalish easily persuaded us to share
Glenn Gould's belief that the 1923 Das Marienleben is 'the greatest
song cycle ever written'.
A few of Bartok's Twenty Hungarian Folksongs of 1929,
which are elaborated to through-composed art songs, gave Kalish the
opportunity to give rein to unbuttoned virtuosity; immensely exciting
- a neglected treasure trove. Finally, five (only) of Mussorgsky's The
Nursery cameos, introduced and then acted by this experienced opera
star whilst she sang them in Russian very nicely, trotting off on her
hobby-horse to end an exhilarating evening.
To declare a special interest in that masterwork, long
ago I produced an enthusiastically reviewed LP of these, sung with Steuart
Bedford by my small son Simon Woolf in my own English adaptation of
Mussorgsky's original version (which finishes very differently). We
worked with the great Oda Slobodskaya, who had recorded them in old
age, & met Gerald Abraham and David Lloyd-Jones on the project.
We studied every recording, Boris Christoff's (in bizarre falsetto)
& Irmgard Seefried (in German) outstanding in those days. Ours has
been transferred to CD but in that form still awaits a record company
to give it a new home; loan copies available on request.
Peter Grahame Woolf
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