I consider myself lucky to live in Rochester, where you can hear voices at the Eastman School just about any day of the week, often in free concerts. If you ask me what kind of performance I like most of all, I'll probably tell you that I can't choose, any more than a parent can pick a favorite child. Still, there is pretty much nothing that beats a song recital -- a singer alone on stage with a piano and an audience, collectively recreating that alchemy that transforms poetry and music into an unforgettable experience.
Song (sometimes referred to as art song) recitals will never be as popular as symphony concerts or operas -- but songs (at least the classical music sort I'm talking about here) encapsulate a composer's response to poetry, and, like poetry, they are a fundamentally intimate art form. As the accompanist Graham Johnson has said, "All that is needed is a voice and a piano and a great deal of imagination on both sides of the platform." Don't be intimidated -- there is so much wonderful music to explore and enjoy!
Here are five suggestions to help you to get started:
1) Start with a composer you already know and love. Song was a latecomer to the classical music party, so you won't find more than a smattering of songs by J. S. Bach, or even composers like Mozart, Haydn, or Beethoven (though all of them wrote some wonderful songs).
More than any other composer, Franz Schubert astonished the world with the possibilities that were available to song composers, and in more than 600 songs (200 or so of which he wrote in a single year!), he demonstrated poetic sensitivity, psychological insight, and artistic range that are Shakespearean in their power and depth. Still, Schumann, Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Faure, Debussy, Henri Duparc, Poulenc, Strauss, Mahler, Mendelssohn, and Liszt (a few composers of German or French songs) all explored songs deeply and developed Schubert's example in their own ways. There are equally exciting and fascinating American, English, Russian, Spanish, Italian, and Nordic song composers, too.
2) Start with a poem or a poet you love. Perhaps, like me, you adore Thomas Hardy. At oxfordsong.org/songs, you can find settings of his poetry by Benjamin Britten, Gerald Finzi, Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams, John Ireland, and Judith Weir. Maybe you prefer Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Keats, Verlaine, Goethe, or Pushkin. You can find songs and translations of their poetry at the same site. In fact, tenor Ian Bostridge began singing as an exercise in his German class at school. His teacher knew that singing a poem can help one understand it and its language far better than letting it sit inert on the page.
3) Start with a singer or voice you love. Even if I don't know the poem or the music that Lorraine Hunt Lieberson is singing, I know that I will enjoy her performance of any song. The same is true for me of Elly Ameling, or Janet Baker, or (among more contemporary singers) Liv Redpath and Theo Hoffman. Not everything will necessarily speak to you with the same force, but a singer can help you discover new songs or composers.
4) Try a live concert; this is even more important in such an intimate and personal art form. Perhaps we'll never quite recreate a Schubertiade, those concerts at which Schubert introduced his closest friends to his latest compositions with everyone gathered in a room around the piano, but the immediacy is part of the experience. As I mentioned earlier, Eastman students give dozens of free vocal recitals each year. This year, Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis, a very experienced song partnership, are presenting a program of Schumann songs in late September at Eastman. Somewhat further away, Matthias Goerne and Daniil Trifonov offer Schubert's Winterreise in Toronto in October. Next year, the outstanding baritone Roderick Williams sings Schubert with Myra Huang in Schenectady in late April.
5) Most important of all -- don't feel that there is a right way or a wrong way to explore, discover, and enjoy songs. If you get the bug, you can definitely delve further at the Oxford Song site that has heaps of information. Graham Johnson is as skilled a writer about songs as he is an accompanist of singers -- his notes and videos are fascinating. The “rules” are the same for song recitals as they are for all classical music – there aren’t any! Dive in, find your starting point, and enjoy the journey!
