Thursday, February 28, 2019

Pershall Brings Diverse Repertoire to Schwabacher

Baritone David Pershall (courtesy of San Francisco Opera Communications Department)

Last night in the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater, the Schwabacher Recital Series presented the second of the four concerts of its 2019 season. The recitalist was baritone David Pershall, an alumnus of the 2008 Merola Opera Program, who has gone on to establish himself in both the United States (including the San Francisco Opera) and Europe. His accompanist last night was pianist John Churchwell.

Readers probably know that I place high value on any program that turns out to be a journey of discovery. I would hazard the guess that many in last night’s audience had not previously encountered the name of Gerald Finzi, let alone the music he composed. Pershall devoted the second half of his program to Earth and Air and Rain, Finzi’s Opus 15, a collection of ten settings of poems by Thomas Hardy composed between 1928 and 1932. Over the course of his career, Finzi wrote six song cycles based on Hardy poems; and his Opus 15 was the second of them.

Reading Hardy on the printed page can be quite an adventure. His rhyme schemes tend to seek out new ways of thinking about symmetry; and, while his underlying metrical structures are straightforward, the text itself often inclines to being read as prose. The words themselves frequently suggest that the poem is about to relate a narrative, but then it emerges as multiple reflections on a single image or instant. (Cynics might accuse Hardy of having written long-winded haiku.) One way of approaching Hardy’s poems is to read them as “establishing the scene” for the imagined Wessex setting of his novels; but, as last night’s performance made clear, the texts have enough virtues to stand by themselves.

The title of the cycle is Finzi’s rather than Hardy’s. Perhaps Finzi was struck by the elemental nature of many (but not all) the poems he had selected for his Opus 15. To some extent the texts reflect on relations between human nature and the elements; but those reflections emerge as individual images in each of the songs, rather than beads strung on a common thread. Ultimately, each poem captures a moment; and the essence of that moment then emerges through Finzi’s writing.

Pershall seemed to be well aware of this relationship between music and words. His diction was always right on the money; but, since Hardy’s turns of phrases were not always straightforward, having a text sheet at hand was decidedly an asset. Pershall endowed each of the songs with its own unique sense of personality, but he seemed to appreciate that Finzi’s music had its own unique strategy for leading the reader on a discovery of meaning behind each of Hardy’s poems. This is not what one usually expects of a vocal recital, but Pershall’s performance left at least this listener with curiosity about Finzi’s other approaches to Hardy’s texts.

All of the composers selected for the first half of the program were decidedly more familiar. Nevertheless, when compared with his piano and orchestral music, the songs of Sergei Rachmaninoff deserve more attention than they usually get, at least in this country. Pershall selected two from his Opus 14 collection and one each from Opus 21 and Opus 26. Those who know Rachmaninoff only from his symphonic side are likely to be struck by the brevity of his songs. Indeed, like Finzi (who was roughly a contemporary), Rachmaninoff knew how to capture “the moment” in the structure and delivery of a single song. Pershall clearly understood the impact of Rachmaninoff’s brevity and endowed each of the four selections with its own unique rhetorical impact.

Rhetoric also figured significantly in his performance of Gustav Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (songs of a wayfarer). The chronology suggests that this cycle began in a version for voice and piano, which was then orchestrated. However, the first performance seems to have been of the orchestral version. This tends to be the way in which it is usually performed; but the piano version allows the listener to pay more attention to the words themselves, rather than the instrumental fireworks. The words are Mahler’s own, and many would probably dismiss them as being a bit much. Fortunately, Pershall knew how to avoid overplaying his hand, allowing the attentive listener to appreciate details of the relations between music and words that are often washed over by the thick orchestral contexts.

The only real weakness of the program came at the beginning with a performance of An die ferne Geliebte (to the distant beloved), Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 98, often credited as being the first song cycle. Unfortunately, Beethoven’s vocal writing rarely rises to the level he attains in other genres. Indeed, he is at his best in presenting the cycle not as isolated songs but as a continuous unfolding of the poetic texts linked by interstitial thematic material. Pershall’s account was not particularly convincing, but there was not much need for being convinced.

Overall, the recital was a richly endowed journey with any number of impressively weighty moments. One can appreciate that Pershall wanted to lighten things up a bit for his encore. Dispensing with any vestiges of formality, he launched into an impassioned account of “So in Love” from Kiss Me, Kate that could easily have brought a smile or two to Cole Porter’s face. Whether or not Pershall appreciated the many layers of parody that make Kiss Me, Kate such a delight (even after if emerged from the “Hollywood treatment”), Porter’s spirit was definitely alive and well last night; and many in the audience seemed delighted to appreciate its presence.

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