Intimate power of singing at the Stissing Center – The Millbrook Independent

by Kevin T McEneaney

Last Friday evening, pianist Sophia Zhou accompanied tenor Daniel McGrew and soprano Katherine Lerner Lee in a challenging and varied program at the Stissing Center in Pine Plains. Sophia opened the program by praising the great European song tradition as one of the greatest musical achievements on the globe.

Yale graduate Daniel McGrew holds a PhD from the University of Michigan. I heard him sing last fall at St. James Place (Great Barrington, in the Clarion Concert series) and was overjoyed. Accompanied by Sophia, Daniel opened with To the Distant Beloved (To the distant beloved). Daniel sang with great passion and nuance, accompanied by mimic gestures with powerful vocal projection. Above all, he conveyed this eloquent feeling of hearing his voice ringing in the ears with dramatic sharpness, while in six long verses with precise German diction he fused despair, memory and deep affection into the shape of a rose with thorns.

Katherine Lerner Lee then appeared, performing two short French songs by Charles Gounod and Gabriel Fauré. The first was a charming song in which a man urges his lover to rise with the sun and enjoy the splendor of spring, and the other was an autumnal lament about the passing of spring and summer, which has more charm in French than any translation. Katherine’s French was impeccable and her sentiments sounded plaintive without being over the top.

Daniel joined Katherine to perform (with Sophia) Benjamin Britten’s second (of five) Canticles, Abraham and Isaac (1953). It is Britten’s most famous canticle, bearing the influence of Henry Purcell. It is full of tension and presents the Agon in two voices rather than three, with the Creator’s voice suggested by the sublime quality of two voices, Father and Son, the latter submitting to the Father and the Creator. The use of successive falling thirds reinforces the Trinitarian aspect of the composition and heightens the pathos. The composition is Britten’s most ingenious and complicated of his hymns and has been performed here with fused pathos between the divine aspect of the piano and two voices marked by excessive religious devotion.

After the interval, the second half of the concert offered a lighter cabaret style. Katherine sang four poems by Emily Dickinson, arranged by Aaron Copland. These were all light-hearted poems with pleasant musical settings, although Emily was not at her best. My favourite was the shortest, “Heart! We shall forget him!”, which was full of the light irony that makes her poetry so charming!

Sophia Zhou played “It’s A New World” by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin. To refresh my memory, I listened to a version on YouTube and was appalled by the performance, which was far too slow and sentimental. This made me realize that Sophia’s interpretation was far superior in terms of rhythm, timing and resonance. By the time you read this, I hope I’ve erased the YouTube trash from my memory. And yes, I would love to hear Sophia play the piece again!

For the comic interlude, Daniel sang “Sara Lee: by Ebb and Kander. He sang with exuberant finesse and amusing theatrical gestures. Katherine sang “I Wish It So” by Marc Blitzstein. This number is usually performed with exaggerated, booming piano acoustics and sentimental Broadway tempos, but here the song and accompaniment came with a tender intimacy that was an unforgettable self-reflection.

For the finale of the group, “Move On” by Stephen Sondheim was performed. This song comes from his most successful musical, Sunday in the park with George (1984). This dialogue between woman and man was delivered with warm dramatic tension and intimacy, eschewing the dazzling Broadway declamations and stage bombast, creating a more personal and rural atmosphere that concluded an evening of fluid piano playing with voices that alternately expressed pathos, wonder and generosity.