English collaborative pianist Julius Drake joked at the start of his concert with Canadian baritone Philippe Sly on Tuesday at Walter Hall about the wisdom of following a day of masterclasses with a recital. But he needn’t have worried.
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- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
Drake managed to prove every point he had made earlier in the afternoon with a wonderfully poised and evocative concert with Sly, where each art song became a small, impeccably realised dramatic scene.
Sly had chosen to split the concert into two halves, one French, the other German, offering up a selection of some favourite songs by Henri Duparc, Maurice Ravel, Hugo Wolf and the earlier Romantic Franz Schubert, while also introducing us to three mélodies by lesser-known Joseph-Guy Ropartz, a counterpart of the composers born later in the 19th century.
Most of the programme was dark and ponderous, encouraging both Sly and Drake to plumb emotional and musical depths without falling into a bottomless abyss. It was quite the balancing act — one that would have been served even better by choosing a few lighter songs.
The two lightest works we did hear — the “Chanson à boire” (Drinking Song) from Ravel’s Don Quichotte à Dulcinée and Schubert’s “Fischerweise” — gave Sly a chance to show off his lyrical side, to great effect.
There is nothing harder to sing convincingly than an art song. Push the envelope too much, and it sounds unappealing and contrived. Restrain yourself, and it comes across as flat and unconvincing. The singer has to colour individual vowels, yet still maintain a sense of where the larger musical thoughts are headed.
This is not ideal territory for a novice, but Sly showed himself to be a much more developed artist than the vast majority of his peers, possessing self-confidence as well as musicality, and a very clear sense of the sort of message he wanted to convey.
Having a consummate collaborator such as Drake on hand certainly helped. There wasn’t a single vocal inflection that didn’t find its counterpart on the keyboard, making real the most important point that the pianist had made at the masterclass earlier in the day: that piano and voice have to be as one for art song to be truly convincing.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
