From the opening phrase declaimed on virtually a
single pitch in Monteverdi’s “Io ch’armato sin hor”
we are captured and simply have to hear what the next note will sound like,
and the next, and the next. Whether or not we approve of this and the other
Monteverdi pieces that begin the program is another matter and will likely
depend upon our concerns about authenticity in early music performance.
Elaine Bonazzi doesn’t hold back from using her whole voice to sing
these pieces, nor does she shrink from shaping the phrases of the three
Scherzi Musicali with a flowing legato that frequently becomes
full-fledged portamento, set off by the spare piano accompaniment. This was
an “old-fashioned” approach to music of this period by the time
this disc was recorded in 1985, but it works remarkably well here, probably
because the artist’s concern is with shaping the phrases into beautiful
lines that express the emotion of the text without sacrificing the integrity
of the music’s essential purity. That this was a stylistic choice is
clear when we hear the Messenger’s scene from Monteverdi’s opera
Orfeo, which is beautifully phrased without portamento to bring out
the drama of the extended declamation. To my ear the artists do an admirable
job of performing early music in a way that resonates with modern
sensibilities while not forsaking the fundamental emotional integrity of the
music.
The description of Euridice sinking into death sets us up for a program of
more recent music united by a theme of sleep or dreaminess. Britten’s
A Charm of Lullabies opens with “Sleep, sleep, beauty
bright”, with a gently rocking accompaniment that can make us think
we’re hearing a conventional lullaby—until Bonazzi’s
excellent English diction brings out Blake’s unsettling text that hints
at “dreadful lightnings” when the child wakens into adulthood. We
get a better idea of what these might look like in “The Highland
Balou”, where a poor highland woman imagines her young son stealing
livestock in raids into the more prosperous lowlands, sung in a Scottish
accent (the authenticity of which I can’t evaluate) over a humorous
syncopated dance rhythm. “Sephestia’s Lullaby” alternates
tender consolation to the child too young to know adult sorrow with a
frantically abbreviated history of how the baby’s arrival has
ultimately led to the father’s departure. Bonazzi handles the mood
swings very effectively, pattering out the frantic sections, and beautifully
sustaining the last note of the penultimate phrase of the final slow section.
In the humorously hostile “A Charm”, the frustrated mother or
nurse threatens the child with the vividly described wrath of the Furies if
it does not quiet down and sleep. After the energy of these two songs, a
peaceful sleep would seem impossible for any child, but then we hear
“The Nurse’s Song”, a quietly spectacular song of
reassurance that the child’s nurse will be there to take care of it.
The vocal line is extremely exposed, beginning with several unaccompanied
lines of melodic but unusual intervals that must be sung with supreme
musicality so that, when the piano enters at the end of the first verse, it
is a perfect meeting. Bonazzi’s artistry is well up to the challenge,
spinning a vocal line that combines the improvisational sound of the nurse
singing alone with the sure musicality that allows the audience to relax with
the child at the moment the piano enters in perfect tune with the voice,
reassuring us that the nurse will always be right where she needs to be.
Following the spare precision of the Orfeo scene and the Britten
songs, the listener is invited to bask in the sheer beauty of Brahms’s
Opus 91 songs for voice, piano and viola, which set two texts that continue
the theme of sleep and rest. First is a setting of a R¸ckert poem seeking
rest from yearning, and in the second, the viola begins playing the old
German Christmas song “Joseph lieber, Joseph mein” as the voice
takes the part of the Virgin Mary asking the winds to be quiet so that her
baby may find rest from the sorrow he came into the world to bear. Interwoven
with the viola line, sensitively executed by Karen Tuttle, Bonazzi’s
rendition of Brahms’s gorgeous vocal melodies flows seamlessly while
allowing every German consonant to be clearly heard. In listening to these
pieces I am struck by some similarity I hear between the timbre of
Bonazzi’s voice and that of the string instruments, which I confess
makes it less pleasant to me than the sound of some other mezzos. This is
largely a matter of personal taste however, and I have to say that at all
times on this recording she brings out the best in her instrument.
A phrase by another string instrument, in this case the cello, opens the
Chansons MadÈcasses of Ravel, easing the rather abrupt transition
from the lush Brahms songs to the twentieth-century dissonances of
Ravel’s late work. The first and third songs in the set, which Ravel
set as a quartet for voice, cello, flute, and piano, are languid and dreamy
with more than a little eroticism expressed in these spare musical lines. The
dream turns temporarily to a nightmare in the dissonant “Aoua!”
that separates them, whose text is a lament upon the effects of colonialism.
In all three songs the ensemble is seamless, making the disc a true showpiece
of the talents of the faculty at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, where
Bonazzi was teaching when this performance was recorded. My one quibble at
this point is that, while the Chansons MadÈcasses bring together the
most instruments with the voice and might therefore be expected to be a
fitting climax to the recital, the fact is that “Il est doux”,
which closes the set, so perfectly expresses the indolence of the tropical
afternoon that it describes, that it peters off into a single a
capella vocal phrase before dropping into complete silence, bringing the
recital to an abrupt end.
The CD booklet includes texts and English translations, and some brief
notes on the songs, but the bulk of the booklet is given over to a summary of
Elaine Bonazzi’s career, with photographs from her personal collection.
Given the number of world premieres in which she participated and the high
level of her artistry that is clearly demonstrated by this recital, this
information is a valuable adjunct to the recording and a welcome memento to
those who enjoyed her work during her performing career, as well as an
impressive introduction for those who will be encountering it for the first
time in this recital performance.
Barbara Miller
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product_title=The Art of Elaine Bonazzi
product_by=Elaine Bonazzi, mezzo-soprano, Ellen Mack, piano, Karen Tuttle, viola, Timothy Day, flute, Stephen Kates, violoncello
product_id=Bridge 9176 [CD]
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