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Blier & NYFOS Weave Chansons, Show Tunes & Lieder into Entertaining Pastiche |
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by Bruce-Michael Gelbert | >> see bio |
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Sari Gruber -
photo .courtesy of NYFOS |
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Pastiche, in which preexisting melodies are pressed into service to tell a tale other than the one for which they were conceived, has a long history. John Gay's play with songs, "The Beggar's Opera," from the 18th century, is one. Baz Luhrmann's movie "Moulin Rouge" is another. And veterans of Cherry Grove, Fire Island theatrical shows are very familiar with the form.
At Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, on November 15 (and 13), in a New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) program entitled "Love at the Crossroads," artistic director, co-founder, and pianist Steven Blier and a top-drawer quartet of singers examined relationships, going through the stages of infatuation, disenchantment, experimentation, and reunion, using a pastiche of art songs of various nations and selections from Broadway musicals and the result proved quite entertaining. Soprano Sari Gruber, Irish mezzo-soprano Paula Murrihy, tenor Hal Cazalet, and baritone Matthew Worth were the vocalists. Blier referred to his creation as "'Così'-meets-'La Ronde'"-i.e. Mozart and da Ponte's opera "Così Fan Tutte," looking at relationships and how they're tested, crossed with Arthur Schnitzler's play "La Ronde," concerning serial sexual encounters.
French chansons made up the 'First Movement: Head Over Heels,' which began with the infatuated lovers' a cappella, almost medieval-sounding "Chères fleurs," by Jules Massenet and Marc Legrand. In Camille Saint-Saëns' "Vénus," the men's paean to their loves, they by turns expressed awe, waxed effusive, regretted they lacked enough time with their beloveds, and concluded with an outpouring, a rush of emotion. The women sighed in harmony, in Ernest Chausson and Honoré de Balzac's "Réveil," over the mates they deeply adored, ending ecstatically. Gruber and Cazalet celebrated their love and innocence in Gabriel Fauré's setting of Victor Hugo's "Dans les ruines d'une abbaye." Édouard Lalo and André Theuriet's "Au fond des halliers" found Murrihy and Worth entranced, or did something dark and troubling lurk? A quarrel, about who loves whom more, was clearly brewing in the quartet's "Madrigal," of Fauré and Armand Silvestre, although a light tone still prevailed.
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Steven Blier -
photo by - Dario Acosta |
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The 'Second Movement: The Honeymoon Is Over" began with some Stephen Sondheim cynicism. The lovers recounted "Two Fairy Tales"--written for young Anne and Henrik, in "A Little Night Music," but eliminated-in which heroic fantasies turned dismal and drove a wedge between the sexes. In a "Country House," written for Ben and Phyllis to sing in the London production of "Follies," Gruber and Cazalet sought solutions to their alienation, couldn't agree on apt ones, and became exasperated. Gruber ruefully judged her flawed love to be "Just Like a Man," in Vernon Duke and Ogden Nash's song from "Two's Company," written for Bette Davis, which reminded of Anna Russell's parody in which a blues singer wishes a lover would "come back and make me miserable again." In Jason Robert Brown's "A Miracle Would Happen," from "The Last Five Years," Worth, his nerves fraying, wondered whether quarrelling with his love gave him a valid excuse to stray. In traditional Irish ballad, "I Will Walk with My Love," arranged by Gerald Moore, Murrihy wistfully lamented that another woman "has taken my bonny, bonny boy" away. The foursome was extravagant in the praises and brickbats flung at one another in Cole Porter's "Cherry Pies Ought to Be You," from "Out of This World," to which Mark Campbell appended an updated verse with references to Enron, Leona Helmsley, LAX, and Dick Cheney, and including, with naughty pertinence, "You and me as tootsies?/I'd rather The Plague!/I'd as soon play footsies/With Senator Craig."
In the third movement 'Scherzo: Philandering,' the women advised each other to play around in "Underneath the Abject Willow," which Blier interprets as poet W.H. Auden's message to his fellow gay man, composer Benjamin Britten, to loosen up. The women provided the backup "Sha-la-la"s to the men's weighing a decision to wait for them against taking matters into their own familiar hands in Edward Kleban's up-tempo "Do it yourself." The determined ladies were on the prowl in Marc Blitzstein's wry waltz "Modest Maid," intended for Beatrice Lillie, but adopted by Charlotte Rae, lauding "lechery-/Lovely lechery." The guys got much closer in Cy Coleman and David Zippel's "The Tennis Song," replete with seductive double entendres, from "City of Angels." In "So Many People," from Sondheim's "Saturday Night," as an interlude before the finale, the singers quietly, affectionately considered their estranged mates and Blier indulged in a rhapsodic piano solo before its climax.
Blier selected German lieder for the 'Finale: Reconciliation.' Cazalet and Gruber made their peace with a gentle "Licht und Liebe (Nachgesang)," a nocturne by Franz Schubert and Matthäus von Collin, and Murrihy and Worth reached an understanding in a restrained "Es rauschet das Wasser," by Johannes Brahms, to poetry by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The quartet saluted concord regained, in their own lives and in Nature, with a jubilant "Die Geselligkeit" (conviviality), of Schubert and Johann Karl Unger, and more quietly, in a contrasting epilogue, in Catalan composer Manuel Oltra's angular a cappella, chant-like "Eco" (echo), to a poem by Federico García Lorca.
On February 5 and 7, at Weill Hall, NYFOS probes music of "Harry [Warren], Hoagy [Carmichael] & Harold [Arlen]," with singers Jonita Lattimore, Mary Testa and James Martin, pianist Blier, and guitarist and banjo player Greg Utzig. Tickets at $48 are available at the Carnegie Hall box office at 57th Street and Seventh Avenue or by calling 212/247-7800. Visit NYFOS' web site, www.nyfos.org, for further information.
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