SINGING TO THE SOUL
IT FELT AS THOUGH EVERYONE HAD STOPPED BREATHING, SO INTENT WAS THEIR FOCUS. I WAS IN AN EXHIBIT ROOM AT THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN AUDIO FEST 2018. I DOUBT THAT ANYONE PRESENT SPOKE GERMAN, BUT AFTER SOPRANO SANDRINE PIAU’S RECORDING, WITH PIANIST SUSAN MANOFF, OF CARL LOEWE’S “ACH NEIGE, DU SCHMERZENREICHE” (AH, INCLINE, YOU WHO ARE LADEN WITH SORROWS) BEGAN TO FILL THE SPACE, THE SILENCE WAS SO DEEP THAT YOU COULD ALMOST HEAR HEARTS BEAT. AS PIAU INTONED WORDS BY WOLFGANG VON GOETHE THAT SPOKE OF A LOSS SO PAINFUL THAT IT PIERCED THE HEART AND BORE INTO ONE’S BONES, EVERYONE PRESENT FELT THE EMPTINESS AND LOSS IN PIAU’S VOICE AND LIZST’S SETTING.
As several people approached me afterward to ask about the recording—the album is Chimère1—I realized that through a single recorded performance, an entire room had been initiated into the magic of art song. Those present were not put off by a 183-year-old song in a foreign language; rather, because Piau had sung so honestly, so expressively, from such an undeniable place of emotional truth, her performance transcended language and time. That’s what can happen when great music and great artistry unite.
I don’t recall exactly when my own initiation into art song took place. I had been weaned on opera, which alternated with Elvis and Little Richard from the time I was 11, but art song came later. Browsing my ancient LP collection, I recall, during college, staying up well past midnight comparing interpretations of art songs. By the time I graduated, song recordings featuring accompanist Gerald Moore and artists including Lotte Lehmann,2 Elisabeth Schumann,3 Elisabeth Schwarzkopf,4 and Hans Hotter5 had entered my collection.
What was it about this music that spoke to me as strongly as the Beatles, the Stones, Joan Baez, Odetta, and The Band? I couldn’t get enough of the endlessly inventive melodies of Franz Schubert, whose tunes touched my heart and affected my emotional and spiritual being. This New York–born, Long Island–raised boy may have spent six years at summer camp in the woods of Londonderry, Vermont—I’d even managed to catch a fish in Lake Derry—but it wasn’t until years later, when I listened in silence to Schubert’s (The Maid of the Mill; see below for specific recommendations) that I understood the mysteries of a babbling brook and the blessings of a flowing stream. It took the power of Schubert’s vocal music to take me out of my private angst and immerse me fully in nature’s beauty.