Tuesday night’s Toronto Summer Music concert in Walter Hall featured Quebec soprano Elisabeth St-Gelais with Louise Pelletier on piano.  The first part of the concert consisted of songs by Brahms and Strauss.  I’m not a huge fan of Brahm’s Zigeunerlieder, Op.103 which are very much an example of Germans misunderstanding just about everything about Hungarian folk music let alone gypsies.  The texts are cliché ridden and the music isn’t much better.  Ms. St-Gelais sang then with a full pleasant tone and some attention to the text but she really needs to work on her German diction.

Strauss is more my thing but this time it didn’t quite work for me either.  We got the Drei Liebeslieder, Op. 29 and three of the songs from Op. 29 including “Morgen!”.  This is, admittedly challenging repertoire and also songs that have been sung and played by just about every great exponent of the German Lied, which makes for inevitable comparisons.  This was pleasant and quite dramatic singing but didn’t bring out the emotional depth of the songs.  I thought the piano playing was a bit mannered too.

The highlight for me came after the break with settings by Ian Cusson of two poems from Émile Nelligan’s Le Récital des Anges.  These are powerful and disturbing texts and the setting includes a rather spare and chromatic piano part that emphasises those qualities.  (He tells me that there’s an orchestral version which I want to hear if only because piano seems so right here.). I really liked the performances by both musicians and, unsurprisingly Ms. St-Gelais’ French is much better than her German!

More French songs, by Bizet, Saint-Saëns, Chaminade and Duparc followed.  These were all done well.  I particularly enjoyed the two Duparc song; “Chanson triste” and “Phidylé” which were sung with real feeling.  She really sounds much more at home in French.  Two Verdi songs concluded in a suitably operatic vein.

It was an odd recital.  There were no introductions.  The only engagement with the audience was a brief acknowledgement of Ian Cusson’s presence.  There wasn’t much “atmosphere”.  I can’t help being reminded how an equally young singer, Ema Nikolovska, completely won over Koerner Hall last year.  Elisabeth St-Gelais has a really good instrument and I think she could become a really good recitalist but there’s work to do.

Photo credits: Lucky Tang