5196105728

28

>n sm ai ^ii;kk a

The Art of Singing Lieder

Souzav and Baldwin conduct intensive workshop

lllcaiior Kcats

On its mile-high campus, domi-natcd by thc unusual rocky shapcs of thc “fiat irons” and by the vast mountain meadows spreading abovc FtoulderY historie Chautaucjua building, thc University of Colorado^ College of Musie held its fourth annual Song Symposium from June 28 through July 2. This ycar, baritone Gerard Souzay and pianist Dalton F^aldwin shared sonie of their vast knowlcdge of nuancts (their favor-ite word) with twclve pairs of singers and pianists and a large group oF “participants,” most of them per-formers and teachers. (In 1980, Ju-dith Raskin, Gerhard Huesch, and Martin Katz were the mainstays of the symposium, and the previous year—Ely Amcling joined Baldwin and Souzay.)

“I’d do anything—break my ncck—to help singers cxpress them-selves in IJeder and keep that mag-ical repertoirc alive!” Baldwin cx-claimed during his stay in Colorado. “This country is opera mad. TheyYe physical in this country. TheyYe not sensitivc enough. They want musie to be so loud they can feel the vibrations. What Fm striving for is the poetic es-sence in a song and ho w to project that as a musical team. It has some-thing to do with inner vision. If the interpreter is truły committed, the vi-sion comes through even if you don't know the language. FYople say that Souzay can strip himsclf nudę when he sings a German song, and make audienccs ery. What Im trying to do is keep the art song alive\ It sounds as though Tm a crusader, but I don’t want singers to feel that opera is the only way to stay alive. On a strictly musical levcl, in Die Winterreise, for cxamplc, everything is said in one

A

Souzav: “Usc vour lifc!”

song in three minutes. That would take Wagner hours to do!

“Marilyn Horne prefers Lie-der,” he went on, “bccause she can rcally be herself, not a cardboard character in a white wig. The scalę is closer to human life. And do you know that you can give a IJeder recital for three thousand people in Korea? TheyYe discovering Western musie tFicre, and it's a glorious discov-ery!”

By coincidencc, a young Ko-rean-American singer named Dai-sietta Kim, at this ycar's symposium, was strongly admired by both Baldwin and Souzay. In contrast, another singer—with a large, rich, opulent voice—scemed much less in favor with Souzay. I asked Baldwin and Souzay, why?

“Daisietta’s intensely musical,” Baldwin answered. “She started out

as a pianist, and as a result she starts with the musical framework and nothing will stop her till she finds a way of rcaching it with tonę and in-terpretation. She sings knowing thc piano part inside out.”

Souzay's answer stressed art-istry above all. “An artist is someone with a strong personality. You can’t tcach that. This singer with the big voice doesn’t express anything. She just sings. A voicc is not everything. A voice is many things, induding tem-jx*rament, and it’s rare if you find them all in the same person; that’s why so few singers really make it.”

“We trv to imitate”

4

Sp>eaking of his own role, Baldwin remarked that “we pianists try to imitate the exprcssiveness and hu-manity of the voicc.” He cxplained that when he was in the eighth grade, he had a public school tcachcr who was headed for a career as a singer, and she asked him to accompany her in I)ebussy's “Beau soir.” I'he piano part was a masterpiccc of coloring, and from that moment on he had no doubts about his dircction. “From the pianist's point of view, we have a whole palctte of colors that’s not in the solo repertoirc. For examplc, in ‘Wie l,ange Schon by Hugo Wolf, a trill played by the aging violinist de-scribed in that piece is totally differ-ent from a trill played, say, in a FYo-koficv sonata. And in SchubcrtY ^łGreichen am Spinnrade,' you have the colorof the wheel, and the heartbeat, in the left hand.”

Baldwin has an exccptionally warm and supportive manner with his students. He will stand within easy eye-distance of the singer (w ith-out cramping his or her sense of psy-