Shafer Offers Delightful Gift Concert for SFP

 Soprano Sarah Shafer (photograph by Vanessa Briceño, from the SFP program for this performance)

Last night in Herbst Theatre San Francisco Performances (SFP) presented its annual free Gift Concert for subscribers and donors. This season the recitalist was soprano Sarah Shafer, accompanied at the piano by her father, Timothy Shafer. As has already been observed, Shafer is no stranger to this city, having taken major roles in four San Francisco Opera productions. However, last night marked her San Francisco recital debut; and it was definitely an occasion to remember.

The first half of the program surveyed three eras of German vocal music. Proceeding chronologically, Shafer began with an aria from Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 245 setting of the Passion text taken from the eighteenth and nineteenth chapters of the Gospel According to Saint John. The attribution of the aria text to Scripture in the program book was incorrect; the sources for the reflective poems in BWV 245 are unknown.

Bach scored this aria for soprano, continuo, and two flutes playing in unison. In other words, for all intents and purposes, the aria is a three-part invention, with the vocal line engaging with single lines for the right and left hands at the keyboard. This may not have been a “historically-informed” performance; but it still presented a keen understanding of the composer’s skills through an engagingly expressive interpretation.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart followed Bach with four of his songs for voice and piano. These were K. 476 (“Das Veilchen,” the little violet), K. 531 (“Die kleine Spinnerin,” the spinning girl), K. 520 (“Als Luise die Briefe ihres ungetreuen Liebhabers verbrannt,” when Luise burned the letters of her unfaithful lover), and K. 523 (“Abendempfindung,” evening sensation). The first three of these are all basically narratives in miniature; and, with her opera experience, Shafer knew just how to color her account of the narrative with both bodily comportment and facial expression. K. 523, on the other hand, is a “mood piece” that reflects on an unstated narrative; and here, too, Shafer commanded just the right level of “stage magic” to allow that mood to resonate.

The first half concluded with seven of the 53 settings of poems by Eduard Mörike collected by Hugo Wolf as his Mörike-Lieder. These are intensely personal texts; and, as was recently observed, Wolf enhanced that intensity through highly sophisticated compositional techniques. These often involved thick fabrics of polyphony in which the vocal line is intertwined with the other contrapuntal voices. There are also many virtuoso passages for solo piano, which usually serve as afterthoughts after the text has been completed.

As a result, this was an account in which both vocalist and pianist could shine in equal measure. Soprano always knew how to fit her line into the contrapuntal fabric, while pianist always maintained that fabric to make sure that the words would register with utmost clarity. There may also have been a warm gesture of homage in the final selection, “Im Frühling” (springtime). Those most serious about collecting recordings of performances of Wolf’s songs are sure to have the album of a recital given on August 12, 1953 at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. The vocalist was soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and her pianist was Wilhelm Furtwängler. The program consisted entirely of Wolf songs and began with “Im Frühling.”

The second half of the program shifted mood by coupling Francis Poulenc and Samuel Barber. It began with the six songs based on texts by Louise de Vilmorin that Poulenc collected under the title Fiançailles pour rire (betrothal for laughs). They were composed in September and October 1939, virtually immediately after the German invasion of Poland that marked the beginning of World War II. In contrast to the collection’s title, there is considerable darkness in the text; and there are any number of passages in which the text seems to abandon any need for meaning in the interest of making a good rhyme. Last night’s performance responded to the underlying absurdity and surrealism by letting both music and words speak for themselves, which was all that was really necessary to maintain the attention of the serious listener.

The program then concluded with the second performance of Barber’s Opus 29 Hermit Songs to take place in less than a week’s time. This time, in contrast to last week’s presentation, all of the songs were presented by a single vocalist (which is probably what Barber intended). Both soprano and pianist gave a rich account of the wide spectrum of emotions captured in the marginalia that Barber set to music. Individual songs again benefitted from Shafer’s command of stage presence, particularly in her approach to the extreme brevity of “Promiscuity.” As usual, Pangur took his stroll up the keyboard during “The Monk and his Cat.”

The evening was then wrapped up with a single encore. Shafer returned to Wolf with a performance of the very first song from his Italienisches Liederbuch (Italian songbook) collection, “Auch kleine Dinge” (little things, too). This presented Wolf’s skill at brevity at its best, providing just the right punctuation mark at the conclusion of a richly satisfying evening.