The mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and the pianist Evgeny Kissin have memorable outings in Carnegie Hall
Joyce DiDonato received more applause on entering the stage at Carnegie Hall than most musicians do after their best effort. She is a singer—a mezzo-soprano from Kansas—who has pretty much all the goods a singer could want: an excellent voice, gobs of technique, ample musicality—and the X factor of lovability. No wonder the world’s at her feet. It ought to be.
With the pianist David Zobel, she gave a recital of Haydn, Rossini, Chaminade and assorted others. Part of the program was a new song cycle by Jake Heggie, written expressly for the occasion. DiDonato is a versatile singer, like most singers of high intelligence and musicality. I don’t believe I have ever heard her in lieder. But they are surely not beyond her.
Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato in her Carnegie Hall recital debut, March 6. © 2011 Steve J. Sherman
Given her great technical control, she can do anything she wants, interpretively. If she can think it, she can execute it. This allows her to be daring. It also allows the audience member to sit secure in his seat: You know that she won’t stumble. The Chaminade songs, she sang deliciously. Another mezzo-soprano, the Swede Anne Sofie von Otter, is also a champion of this composer. Chaminade is lucky to have two such stylish and winning champions.
DiDonato did rather more acting—physical expressing—than I like in a recital, but I am in a distinct minority here. “Show it on the face, dear,” the voice teachers say. I often find myself wishing they’d show less. But, again, that is a minority view. DiDonato had a handheld microphone tucked in the piano, and she talked to the audience throughout the recital. Everyone’s doing this now. (They used to do it only at encore time.) It is part of the Oprah-ization of classical music. DiDonato is a very, very good talker—she talks as charmingly as she sings. But, if I sang like her, I wouldn’t talk onstage. I’m not sure I’d talk offstage.
The new Heggie cycle is called The Breaking Waves, with words by Sister Helen Prejean, of Dead Man Walking fame. (Heggie composed an opera based on that memoir.) At least one of the songs has a touch of the blues; a couple of them have a jazzy motor. There are people who find Heggie masterly and moving; there are people who find him arty and dull. I have most often been in the latter camp, while recognizing his talent. I’m always hoping to join the former camp. In any case, DiDonato sang this new cycle with total conviction. In one of the poems set here, Sister Helen, true to reputation, expresses the utmost sympathy for a death-row inmate. I might even say this is an ostentatious sympathy. And, thinking of that man’s victim, or victims, I recalled an old saying: “People can bear very lightly the wrongs done to others.”
DiDonato sang three encores, the last of which was “Over the Rainbow,” that Harold Arlen masterpiece. Before she sang, DiDonato explained that her father didn’t care for Judy Garland, practically forbidding her in the home. Quipped DiDonato, “Who would have known that I would grow up to have so many Friends of Dorothy?” The crowd hooted in appreciation. Then DiDonato sang “Over the Rainbow” as purely and beautifully as possible. A recital by her is not merely a clinic in singing; it is a lifter-up.
Liszt on a Pedestal
Three days after DiDonato appeared in Carnegie Hall, Evgeny Kissin arrived for his own recital, in the same hall. The Russian-born pianist played an all-Liszt program—it is the bicentennial of that composer’s birth. There was a spillover crowd, meaning that many sat on the stage. The person closest to the pianist was a little girl in a pink dress with pink bows in her hair. She was rapt all through.
Kissin began with one of the Transcendental Etudes, the one known as “Ricordanza.” He played it dreamily, silkily. Frankly, I didn’t know he could play like this. Kissin has always been a brilliant pianist, certainly a formidable one. But he has also been hard, percussive, jabbing and blunt. Moreover, he is a thumper: a pianist guilty of thumping. But there was not a trace of this in “Ricordanza,” or in pieces to come (with one exception).
After this opener, Kissin tucked into the B-minor Sonata, which is often described as “sprawling.” Kissin tamed it, unifying the disparate elements. But, as he did this, he gave the work all the vibrancy, color and bite it needs. He played extraordinarily cleanly, although his sound was somewhat dry. Also to his credit, he exercised care without fussing. And he lavished great seriousness of purpose on this piece. He could not have been more serious in a late Beethoven sonata.
Funérailles was frighteningly good, and I mean that almost literally—Kissin was terrifying in this gloomy and heaven-storming (hell-storming?) piece. Vallée d’Obermann was less free and ruminative than you often hear it. Again, Kissin showed stout discipline. But, again, he was plenty imaginative—or rather, he put Liszt’s imagination in a proper frame. The printed program ended with Venezia e Napoli, in which Kissin was maybe just slightly cold, but to which he imparted enough charm. In addition to dazzling, jaw-dropping technique. Even in an age when technique is assumed, Kissin’s stands out.
There were three encores, all of them Liszt, as they should have been. The first was “Widmung” (the composer’s transcription of that Schumann song). And here, for the first time, Kissin did some of his trademark thumping—but only a little. The final encore was almost as dreamy as “Ricordanza”: the Liebestraum No. 3. In fact, Kissin played this beautiful and beloved number soul-fillingly.
I’ve always been reluctant to say that a musician “is maturing” or “has matured.” For one thing, it seems condescending. But I could not help thinking that about Kissin. At intermission, a fellow critic remarked to me, “He’s really developing, isn’t he?” I smiled on hearing this statement of what had been my thought, too. On this night, I felt that I was listening to a great pianist. And this has been a banner couple of months for Liszt recitals in Carnegie Hall: Five weeks before Kissin, the French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet gave a great one too. People are always saying that the Romantic tradition is dying, or is already dead. No way.
Kissin gives an old-fashioned recital, by which I mean this: He dresses in concert tails, rather than the solid-black Mao suit of today. He carries himself with great dignity, even some mystery, bowing formally. (In this recent recital, he took care to bow to the patrons on the stage, as well as to the ones out in the hall.) He does no talking whatsoever, letting the music do all the talking. And at Carnegie Hall, the crowd screamed and screamed for him into the night. The place practically shook with applause and gratitude. Concert organizations today are always talking about “outreach.” “How do we reach out to audiences?” By supplying good music, well performed. <
