Word: sopranoes
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Songs by Stephen Foster (Mezzo-Soprano Jan DeGaetani, Baritone Leslie Guinn, Pianist Gilbert Kalish; Nonesuch, $2.98). One of the prime movers in the Scott Joplin revival, Nonesuch now appears to be trying the same trick for the composer of Old Black Joe and Old Folks at Home. The company deserves to succeed. Foster (1826-64) was America's first great songwriter, and there is much more in his song bag than just the minstrel ballads with Uncle Tomish lyrics by which he is usually remembered. There is, for example, the sprightly If You've Only Got a Moustache...
...When Korngold was 13, Artur Schnabel was playing his piano sonata in Vienna and Berlin. Four years later Conductors Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer were doing his orchestral works. In 1921, when Korngold was 24, his opera The Dead City was mounted at the Metropolitan Opera, and legendary Soprano Maria Jeritza made her debut in it. Korngold promised much, but he kept that promise, sad to say for the world of serious music, in Hollywood, where he died...
There is a duet written on a theme and variations with the words, "This duet is a set of variations based on a very short theme." The soprano embarks upon a classical slow-fast aria whose lyrics explain, "I sing this aria twice, the first time I sing it slowly in order that I may display my lyrical quality...the second time so I can display my virtuosity." A busy quartet has the baritone declaiming, "This is the quartet"; the contralto rejoicing, "I have a nice theme"; the soprano warbling, "I just sing la, la, la, la" and the tenor...
Undaunted by the prospect of playing music so difficult to present successfully, the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra gave a program principally of Britten, Berg, and Ravel. All three pieces employed a soprano soloist, a role Phyllis Curtin fulfilled with ability equal to any singer here in recent memory. All the mechanics of sound production were displayed with ease uncommon to the student efforts so familiar in Cambridge. Even Curtin's stage presence was a model of professionalism...
SANDERS THEATER: Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, James Yannatos, conductor, and Phyllis Curtin, soprano, Sat., 8:30 p.m., reserved sents...