It was the “farewell to the Ensemble Studio” show for Vlad Soloviev and Jonah Spungin yesterday and they put on a great show enhanced by an informal, witty approach.  Jonah’s singing was excellent.  I especially liked his take on Wolf’s “Der Feuerreiter” and a set of Swedish songs by Wilhelm Peterson-Berger.  He clearly has power to spare and can be subtle too.  Nice going.

Vlad accompanied beautifully and proved that “he can still play the piano” with the second of Liszt’s pieces on the legend of St. Francis (of Paola not Assissi).  It’s true, he can.  He also made one of the great sad/funny song introductions for Svidirov’s Petersburg songs.  TL;DR It sucks to be Russian.  These were beautifully sung and played.

And who knew Jonah Spungin was a folkie with top guitar skills?  He produced a really idiomatic version of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”.  And, inevitably, to cap things off we got the “Largo al factotum” as an encore.  All in all, nicely done and lots of fun.

Photo credit: Karen E. Reeves