Tuesday’s lunchtime recital at the Four Seasons Centre was given by soprano Sara Schabas and pianist Isabelle David backed up by some (mercifully concise) musicological/historical background from Robin Elliott.  The concert was in two parts.  The first celebrated the work of Austrian-Jewish composers active in Vienna in the first third of the 20th century.  The second was a song cycle in Yiddish celebrating the Jewish immigrant experience in New York.

The six songs that made up the first part of the programme were carefully chosen.  Some of the music was from the pre Nazi era and some written when the composers had been forced to move to the US (or worse).  So there were early works like “Nacht” from Berg’s Sieben frúhe Lieder, Schoenberg’s cabaret inspired “Galathea” from the Bretti Lieder, Alma Mahler’s “Ich wandle unter Blumen” from the Fünf Lieder and Zemlinsky’s “Empfängnis” from the Dreizehn Lieder.  The Berg and Schoenberg were early works so these were all very much in the romantic song tradition of Zemlinsky, (who was Schoenberg’s teacher, who was Berg’s teacher etc) rather than the more challenging works of the Second Vienna School.  Two works were from the 1940s; Korngold’s very weird setting of “When birds do sing”, written in the US, which is almost an Elizabethan pastiche but not quite, and Ullmann’s “Claire Vénus” from the Six sonnets de Louize Labé, written in Prague in 1941.  Ullmann, of course, was the one of our six composers who did not survive the Nazi era.

All of these songs were skilfully and sympathetically performed.  There’s enough of a foreshadowing of things to come in the piano part of the Berg and the Schoenberg to arouse some interest and there was variation in the singing style required to.  Schabas hit just the right tone in the slightly risqué, cabaret style of the Schoenberg and skilfully navigated whatever it was Korngold was up to.  Whatever it was, much of it was cruelly high but well handled.

Alex Weiser’s 2022 work In a dark blue night sets five poems in Yiddish exploring New York at night.  I have a pretty mixed experience with contemporary New York art song.  Some of it is very good indeed but a lot sounds like a second rate attempt to recreate The Great American Songbook.  The Weiser piece avoids that trap and is rather good.  It’s largely tonal but it’s quite dramatic and doesn’t fall back on a few “go to” chords.  There’s a nice mix of drama and lyricism and both singer and pianist have plenty to do.  I would definitely listen to it again.  Nicely done here with Isabelle David navigating the varied demands of the piano parts with aplomb and Sara Schabas managing equally well with the gently lyrical opening numbers and the much more declamatory, dramatic material that followed.

Dessert was a very elegantly sung version of “Marietta’s Lied” from Die tote Stadt.  There were some nicely floated high notes here.  And then, why not?  There was some Gershwin to round things off.

Photo credits: Karen E. Reeves