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Comings and goings
Susan Davenny Wyner and Elisabeth Phinney, Roberta and La finta giardiniera, Sergey Schepkin and the Díaz family
BY LLOYD SCHWARTZ

Boston’s classical-music world has lost one of its best conductors and one of its best teachers. Both are in good health, but they’re moving on to new phases of life and career.

In her six years as director of the New England String Ensemble, Susan Davenny Wyner has transformed and energized that orchestra and filled its audience’s memory book with a series of distinguished and powerful performances, some — like Shostakovich’s harrowing Symphony No. 14 — not limited to the string-only repertoire. Her final concert as NESE music director, "Ancient Spirits, New Voices," included a tonally complex C.P.E. Bach, a Boston premiere by Israeli composer Betty Olivero, a rarely heard Schubert choral piece with the Harvard Glee Club, and Richard Strauss’s valedictory Metamorphosen, for 23 solo strings, one of the treasures of the string repertoire.

The Olivero, Achot Ketana — In Memoriam, is a memorial for legendary violinist and humanitarian Yehudi Menuhin. This short, affecting piece combines a Jewish prayer (mezzo-soprano Pamela Dellal giving a radiant performance in the higher tessitura of the soprano solo) with the rough-edged, tragic opening theme of Bach’s famous Chaconne echoing among three solo violins (Gregory Vitale, Ala Jojatu, and Boston’s own Colin Davis) and answered by a wailing clarinet (the always-impressive Bruce Creditor).

Wyner led the Strauss, with its quotation of the funeral march from Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, not for stasis but for forward motion; at the end, she brushed away tears. Peter Stickel, NESE’s executive director, promised that she’d be back as a guest conductor. And the Harvard Glee Club, in the Jordan Hall balcony, surprised her with a Latin hymn by Gounod, adding the word "conductor." The players aren’t the only ones who’ll miss her.

SOPRANO ELISABETH PHINNEY was until the early 1980s Boston’s Elisabeth Schwarzkopf — a subtle and stylish singer, especially in Mozart, with a thrilling voice and a riveting stage presence. Her comically heroic Fiordiligi in Cosí fan tutte and her complex, demonic Vitellia in the first New England performances of La clemenza di Tito (with Monadnock Music and Boston Lyric Opera) set a standard few singers have equaled. She’s the only Vitellia I’ve ever encountered who seemed truly torn in opposite directions. After 32 years at the Boston Conservatory, she’s retiring from full-time teaching, and the conservatory gave her a rousing and affectionate send-off, with colleagues and students, former and current, singing in her honor and singing her praises.

LAST WEEKEND, BOSTON CONSERVATORY gave us a rare chance to see Jerome Kern & Otto Harbach’s 1933 musical Roberta. The original cast included such future Hollywood celebrities as Bob Hope and George Murphy, but the show, about an American football hero who inherits the Paris dressmaking salon of his "Aunt Minnie," is better remembered as the film in which, as Arlene Croce wrote, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers "become Astaire-Rogers." It has one of Kern’s most memorable scores: "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," "Yesterdays," "You’re Devastating," the exquisite "The Touch of Your Hand" (dropped from the movie), "I Won’t Dance" (from a different show but added to the movie), "Lovely To Look At" (introduced in the movie), the raucous "I’ll Be Hard To Handle," and the witty "Let’s Begin" ("What is it gonna be/Love or gin?/Wife or sin?/Let’s begin!"). These were all worked into the Boston Conservatory production.

Neil Donahoe, who staged the conservatory’s dazzling Candide in 2003, brought this "staged concert" to life with a minimum of scenery (some furniture, some hangings, and a mirror ball), props, and costumes. (Boston couturier Fiandaca donated some of the dresses for the big fashion show.) Reuben M. Reynolds led the enthusiastic student orchestra. The cast ranged from good-looking, energetic young singing actors with attractive voices (Becca Zaretsky as the Russian princess working as a dressmaker’s assistant, Jesse Kissel as the football player) and terrific singing dancers making the most of Michelle Chassé’s skillful choreography (exuberant Travis Nesbitt as the hero’s friendly rival) to actors who slowed the pace with poor timing or projection. The painful, diction-blurring amplification was surely unnecessary for these trained voices in the conservatory’s small theater. All in all, though, Roberta was hard to resist, and everywhere people were humming along with Kern’s endless outpouring of unforgettable melodies.

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Issue Date: April 29 - May 5, 2005
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