The final New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) program at Merkin Concert Hall for the season, on April 28, considered Spain and its poetry as treated in song by non-Spanish-speaking European, an American, and native Spanish-speaking composers.  The diverse musical evening was billed as “Letters From Spain: A World of Song in Spanish Poetry” and featured outstanding lyric singers soprano Corinne Winters, tenor Theo Lebow, and baritone Alexey Lavrov, with NYFOS Artistic Director and Co-Founder Steven Blier and Associate Artistic Director and Co-Founder Michael Barrett at the Steinway pianos.  It was quite a compelling musical journey that they took us on!
The concert began with settings of Spanish poems by German Lieder Meisters Robert Schumann and Hugo Wolf.  With Blier assisting, Winters lent her dusky soprano and Lebow, his ingratiating tenor, to the former’s “In der Nacht,” to a poem adapted by Emanuel von Geibel, and sung here in the original Spanish as “Todos duermen, corazόn,” more or less as a round, which she began solo, then he began again, and then they harmonized, ruminating in the wake of a failed romance.  Lavrov lavished his rich, dark baritone on an impassioned, German-language account of Schumann and Geibel’s “Gestӓndnis” (Confession), adapted from Francisco de Portugal, conde de Mimioso’s “Mis amores, tanto os amo.”  With Barrett, Lebow gave us a heart-rending rendition, in Spanish, of Wolf’s dejected prayer “Herr, was trӓgt die Boden Hier,” as Paul Heyse translated “Qué producirá mi Dios,” culminating in a very quiet final line.  In Wolf and Geibel’s “Geh’, Geliebter, geh’ jetzt,” from an anonymous Spanish love poem, Winters offered an impassioned outpouring, drawing on both the dark core of her soprano and the incandescent overtones crowning it, as she and Barrett reveled in the almost Wagnerian writing for singer and pianist.
A full-throated Lavrov, assisted by Blier, delivered four of Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Six Spanish Songs,” in Russian: the swashbuckling, swaggering “Little Stars;” gypsy song “The First Meeting,” more Slavic than Spanish; somewhat hushed, tormented ode to a beloved
“Dark-Eyed Girl;” and anguished, sometimes melismatic “Farewell, Granada!,” the cry of an exile.  Lavrov and Barrett followed these with Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Count Alexey Konstantinovich Tolstoy’s scarcely secretive or nocturnal “Don Juan’s Serenade,” an almost rollicking appeal to “Nisetta [to] hurry out to [her] balcony!,” capped by a big high note.
With Blier and Barrett at the pianos, Lebow took center stage for four of William Bolcom’s “Canciones de Lorca,” to poems by Federico García Lorca: the heavy-hearted “Alba,” the singer now sounding defeated, then in full dramatic cry; fiery ‘danse macabre’ “Danza da lúa en Santiago,” its cathedral cemetery setting reflecting the oppression by the Spanish church that Lorca felt as a gay man; “Soneto de la dulce queja,” seemingly providing a moment of relative repose, but disturbing nonetheless with its tumultuous underpinnings; and “El poeta llega a la Habana,” capturing and embracing the boisterous emotion that Lorca experienced as he came out fully in Cuba.
Winters and Blier tackled songs by 20th century Argentinean composer Carlos Guastavino, marked by something of a verismo lyricism: “Se equivocό la paloma,” an understated plaint about deception, with poem by Rafael Alberti; “La palomita,” almost prayerfully, then vehemently limning a false-hearted lover, to 18th century poetry by José Iglesias de la Casa; and “Elegia,” progressing from childlike simplicity to maturity, to poetry, written by Alberti while convalescing from a pulmonary illness, giving his take on what little he saw of the outside world.
The full company treated us to Blas de Laserna’s cheerful “Tirana del Trípili,” from the 18th century zarzuela “El Trípili.”  Lebow chanted, a cappella, a haunting, Eastern-flavored melismatic “¡Ay, trista vida corporal!,” an anonymous Renaissance lament.  Lavrov and Barrett dedicated a heartfelt declaration of devotion, in “Zorongo,” by Anton García Abril, to a Lorca poem to a male beloved, to Blier’s spouse, Jim Russell, its final lines “lo que valen son tus brazos/cuando de noche me abrazan” (What matters are your arms/When they hold me at night) particularly caressingly sung.  Winters and Blier dedicated an emotional bel canto elegy, Enrique Granados and Apel les Mestres’ “Elegía eterna,” in Catalan, with Winters’ wide-ranging florid cadenza near the climax, to Blier’s brother.  And the full company concluded with an exuberant “Anda, jaleo” (Let’s give a shout), collected and arranged by Lorca, its sizzling refrain punctuated by clapping and stamping.  The ensemble and Blier’s indeed “dreamy” encore, as Blier put it, was a Guastavino song about “desire,” with the singers reading the poem in English before singing it in Spanish.  “Letters from Spain” was slated for repetition at the Kennedy Center, in Washington D.C., on April 30.
For NYFOS’ next season at Merkin, at 129 West 67th Street, anticipate “From Russia to Riverside Drive: Rachmaninoff and Friends,” with Dina Kuznetsova and Shea Owens, on November 10; “Schubert/Beatles,” with Sari Gruber, Paul Appleby, and Andrew Garland, on December 8; “Houseful of Song,” with Caramoor’s 2016 Schwab Vocal Rising Stars, on March 15, 2016; and “Fina Estampa: Songs by Latin-American Women,” with Maria Valdés, on April 26.  Visit www.nyfos.org for further information.