Lovefeasts

José van Dam, Emmanuel Schubert, Boston Baroque, and the Cantata Singers

by Lloyd Schwartz

For a couple of hours on a rainy Saturday night at Jordan Hall time seemed to stop. A slightly bedraggled and far from overflow crowd was captivated by a program of music and poetry -- no trendy interactive multimedia event but an old-fashioned lieder recital: the belated Boston solo debut by one of the world's greatest living singers, the Belgian bass-baritone José van Dam. Last year, after long absence, he returned to the BSO in Mahler's Rückert-lieder and Ravel's children's opera, L'enfant et les sortilèges, playing a couple of delicious cameo parts. Now, thanks to the BankBoston Celebrity Series, and with the help of his gifted young Polish accompanist, Maciej Pikulski, he consolidated his place in the Hub's consciousness.

He offered an elegantly symmetrical program of masterpieces in German and French: 10 lieder (Brahms and Richard Strauss), nine chansons (Fauré and Duparc), and Ravel's three-song cycle, Don Quichotte à Dulcinée. In the intimate but still-problematic acoustic of Jordan Hall, it took one song -- Brahms's "Meine Liebe ist grün" ("My love is green as the lilac") -- before van Dam got vocally settled and Pikulski found the right level not to overpower him. Van Dam doesn't have the world's biggest or most luscious voice, but he has a beautiful and honest one. At full volume it has the powerful natural solidity of a redwood. At lower volumes, it tends to get dry, breathy, even a little hoarse. Yet he uses this limitation to express exhaustion or despair, and with stunning effect.

"Mein Liebe ist grün" had an impetuous onrush, but almost everything afterward was slowed down, as if the singer were savoring every moment of his state of perpetual indrawing wonderment: the hush of "Dein blaues Auge" ("Your Blue Eye"), the ecstasy of "Feldeinsamkeit" ("Solitude in the Field"), the restrained lament of the storm-tossed "Auf dem Kirchhofe" ("At the Cemetery"), or the couple's impassioned declaration of eternal love in "Von ewiger Liebe."

"Ich gehe nicht schnell, ich eile nicht" ("I don't walk fast, I don't hurry"), van Dam sang in Strauss's hypnotic "Traum durch die Dämmerung" ("Dream through Dusk"), and the "gentle blue light" at the end of this song seemed to float in the air forever. With Pikulski's sensitive support, the quiet rapture of "Morgen" unfolded like rose petals. There was repressed tension in the quieted storms of "Ruhe, meine Seele" ("Peace, my soul"), and a deceptive relaxation in "Allerseelen" ("All Souls"), in which the lover (or is it his beloved?) turns out to be dead. The famous "Zueignung" ("Dedication") conveyed less a lover's extroverted gratitude than a state of religious awe.

Three of the exquisite Fauré songs -- the rippling "Clair de lune" ("Moonlight"), the slow-treaded knell of "Prison," the leaping rhythms of "Mandoline" -- are settings of equally exquisite Verlaine poems, whose language van Dam obviously relishes. Yet he suggests undercurrents of sensuality and spirituality beyond the poems: the way he and Pikulski caught how the rocking rhythm in "Le long du quai" ("Along the quai") is both barcarolle and lullaby; the way he turned the seductive dream-world melismas in Faure's great "Après un rêve" ("After a dream") into a wavering lament, his voice almost shredded, when the dream is over; or the way, at the return of the opening verse, he transformed Verlaine's satirical portrait of the affected aristocrats in "Mandoline" into a Watteau-like image of heavenly bliss.

Van Dam is the complete artist. There isn't a wasted gesture. He just stands there and sings. In his three Duparc songs -- the somber "Lamento," the lilting "Serenade," the nightmarish "Le galop" ("The Gallop"), with its rapid, silent-movie descending scales brilliantly played by Pikulski -- his voice seemed to grow fuller and fuller. Ravel's Don Quixote cycle, with its Spanish rhythms (Pikulski breathtaking) and radical mood swings (the startling almost falsetto outcry of "O Dulcinea" at the end of the first song, followed by the tenderness of the prayer to St. Michael and the inebriated abandon of the drinking song), ended with his only theatrical flourish of the evening: Don Q's sweeping bow on the last bar.

No one wanted him to stop.

And he nearly didn't. After the official program, standing ovations led to three encores. His profound intensity in one of Schumann's greatest songs, "Ich grolle nicht" ("I bear no grudge"), from Dichterliebe, made one yearn to hear him do the whole cycle. Then for the second time this season (after Bryn Terfel at the BSO opening gala), "Some Enchanted Evening," which van Dam presented as a tribute to Ezio Pinza, perhaps this century's greatest bass-baritone, who died 40 years ago and for whom Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote it. Did they know it was an "art song"? "Once you have found her never let her go," van Dam sang in his charming not-quite-English, with occasional glances at his score (the only song he needed one for). Then finally, a devastatingly sly, hilariously understated version of Don Basilio's "Calumny" aria from The Barber of Seville, van Dam's debut role some four decades ago. What could follow that?

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After the latest installment in Emmanuel Music's noble seven-year exploration of Schubert's vocal, piano, and chamber music, I was wondering about the difference, perhaps only a hair's breadth, between a very good performance and a great one. Soprano Kendra Colton is one of the most promising young singers around. Her voice is golden. She's a good actress. She knows what the words mean. And she's musical. She sang four Schubert songs -- two of them quite obscure -- beautifully, expressively. And she was eloquently accompanied by Kayo Iwama. They did everything right. Yet I ended up wanting something more. Was there some shortage of nuance? Was Colton merely acting out the songs instead of living them the way, say, José van Dam does? She has plenty of time to be in van Dam's league. But why she isn't already remains mysterious.

On the same program, Donald Berman played Liszt transcriptions of Schubert songs and the Soirée de Vienne No. 6, Liszt's exuberant fantasia on Schubert themes. Berman's Vienna, I'm afraid, lacked wine, women, and song (especially wine). The Lydian Quartet played Schubert's first string-quartet masterpiece (in E-flat, Opus 125), and they got both the thoughtful tenderness (Mary Ruth Ray's heart-easing viola) and all the jokes (like Rhonda Rider's deadpan cello pizzicatos). The audience was guffawing (and in the right places). These marvelous players were living the music.

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Martin Pearlman and Boston Baroque launched their 24th year with some new tricks up their sleeves. Like the Camerata, another early-music-oriented ensemble that has been exploring the hiding places of American music, Boston Baroque came up with music by 18th- and 19th-century American Moravians. Originally followers of Czech reformer Jan Hus, who was martyred as a heretic in 1415, the Moravians moved on to Germany and, later, to Pennsylvania and North Carolina (around Winston-Salem). They have always been a church that loves and incorporates in its services the music of its time. Some "lost" Haydn scores have been found in American Moravian churches.

For this program Pearlman assembled two enchanting Moravian "lovefeasts" -- extended musical services of songs, hymns, and chorales for holidays and other special occasions (on July 4, 1783, the Moravians were the first Americans to celebrate Independence Day!). The songs are uncomplicated, with a charming tunefulness. Some of the chorales have a haunting modality. (These and other lovefeasts will be on Boston Baroque's next recording.)

Pearlman alternated these with Haydn (the playful Symphony No. 7, Le midi -- not from a Moravian manuscript) and Handel (Laudate pueri). The Haydn was lively, if generic; the Handel colorful and exuberant. The chorus was in good form, and one of the two soprano soloists, silver-and-copper-voiced Sharon Baker (who looks like Claire Trevor), was exemplary in her rhythmic energy and crisp diction. Next to her, the sweet-toned coloratura Cyndia Sieden, perhaps not in her best element here (she's reported to be a superb Queen of Night), paled in her inability to articulate either words or feelings.

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Another boston mainstay, the Cantata Singers, began their 34th season by reverting to their origins. David Hoose put together a powerful program of Bach cantatas and Schütz motets, each of which had at least one moment of sublimity. Bach's Freue dich, erlöste Schar ("Rejoice, O redeemed throng"), BWV 30, began life as a secular cantata in praise of a wealthy landowner. Without changing a note, Bach recast it for the feast of St. John the Baptist. The highlight is an alto aria that was perfect for Gloria Raymond's cool fluency, a pastoral gavotte/lullaby ("Come you lost sheep, rise up from sin's sleep") with long-breathed solo flute (the endearing Christopher Krueger) and violin (superb concertmaster Danielle Maddon).

This was answered by Schütz's Wo der Herr nicht das Haus bauet ("Unless the Lord build the house, those who build it labor in vain"), with its astonishing cornet punctuation (Fred Holmgren on trumpet). Then Bach's Ich glaube, lieber Herr ("I believe, dear Lord"), BWV 109, which is actually a cry for help to cure unbelief. After a magnificent opening chorus, with trumpet and circling oboe (Peggy Pearson), comes a self-tormented tenor recitative that's like the inner dialogue of a George Herbert poem (Gerald Gray a bit stiff and strained), and a firmly resolved alto solo (Lynn Torgove excelling in her new low range) with two gloriously wreathing oboes (Pearson and Barbara LaFitte).

Then a heavenly Schütz Our Father and more Bach: the compact Du Friedefürst ("Thou Prince of Peace"), BWV 116, whose highpoints are a poignant lament for alto (Majie Zeller) and oboe d'amore (Pearson), a delectable trio (soprano Karyl Ryczek, Gray, and bass Benjamin Cole), and a quiet ending. Cellist Beth Pearson and organist Michael Beattie supplied the eloquent continuo.

You can count on the Cantata chorus and orchestra to function at the highest levels. The soloists, drawn from the chorus, are more hit-and-miss. Raymond, Torgove, Zeller, and veteran bass John Graef were fine -- others less so. But Hoose's incisive, insightful conducting and his uncanny ability to put together moving and thoughtful programs remain the Cantata Singers' central glories.