Issue #80

What does it matter that tears flow as I remember the Sunday afternoon when friends of Lisa Relaford Coston gathered at Royster Memorial Presbyterian Church in Norfolk on May 23, 2010? We, her soul clan, gathered to celebrate her life, a life devoted to bringing joy to everyone who heard her sing. Musicians and listeners alike came “In loving memory,” as the program was titled, to honor her gift of voice and loving heart in service to music, freely given.

Andrey Kasparov and Oksana Lutsyshyn organized this secular, though spiritual, memorial with Andrey as host. Spoken tributes, recordings of her singing and live performances of art song and aria were offered.

In the program notes Andrey Kasparov tells us of his and his wife Oksana's first meeting Lisa.

It was an emergency. In 2000, while bombs were still exploding in Belgrade, I started working on organizing a concert of contemporary Serbian composers. After I had finally got the scores, with great difficulties may I add, my attention was drawn to a piece by Isidora Žebeljan Rukoveti, a large-scale composition for mezzo soprano and orchestra or piano. As the concert was approaching in less than two months, I urgently needed a mezzo soprano with an acute sense of pitch and strong linguistic skills to be able to sing in a completely unknown language combined with a contemporary music idiom.

After a few unsuccessful attempts I finally got a break when Agnes Wynne introduced me to Lisa during one of the concerts in the Chandler Recital Hall. Unpretentious and friendly, she attempted to rise from her seat while shaking my hand, even though she was very much in pain pending her hip replacement surgery. I had very little idea that Oksana and I were about to enter one of the most fruitful and profound personal and professional relationships of our lives. It was not only her musical talent, but also her wit, brilliance and the deliciously unexpected turns of her humor that made our friendship so fulfilling.

To open the program, soprano Agnes Mobley-Wynne sang Prayer by Ricky Ian Gordon, accompanied by Oksana Lutsyshyn at the piano. The searching text of the song “I do not know” focused us on the mystery of death. Exploring the theme with a lighter heart, Robert Shoup, who conducted Lisa for many years in the Virginia Symphony Chorus and the Virginia Chorale, sang Ralph Vaughan Williams' Whither Must I Wander with Kasparov as accompanist. It was an exuberant delivery of a wistful tune with a closing line of “I'll come again no more.”

Composer Adolphus Hailstork's recorded message casting himself in the role of chief mourner remembered the ravishing beauty of her voice and her spirit. We then heard a fragment from Dr. Hailstork's cantata Crispus Attucks (2005) with Lisa as soloist with the I.Sherman Green Chorale, Old Dominion University Chamber Chorus with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer.

Accompanied by Ms. Lutsyshyn, contralto and local voice teacher Sondra Gelb sang Rachmaninoff's Let us rest with its message of the end of suffering in a calm peace that is as lovely as a sweet caress. There was a haunting beauty in this deeply felt goodbye by Ms. Gelb. This was followed by the recorded Rachmaninoff song Oh, do not grieve by Lisa with Andrey at the piano.

Tenor Scott Williamson, current conductor of the Virginia Chorale, gave us Mahler's Wo die schönen trompeten blasen (Where the beautiful trumpets blow). With Kasparov at the piano the liquid tone of the voice gave us this folk-like, heartfelt tune of trumpets over his house of green sod growing. Following a recording of Lisa singing Debussy's C'est l'extase with Andrey at the piano, Amy Cofield Williamson sang the ravishingly beautiful Depuis le jour (Louise) by Charpentier. Under the agile fingers of Ms. Lutsyshyn the keys rippled out a foundation for a blissful statement of the sweetness of life – and the first day of love. Like Lisa, Amy enters into the world of a song and brings the listener in with her.

Two years ago, challenged by her collaboration with Dr. Kasparov, Lisa sang several selections from Olivier Messiaen Poèms pour Mi for a Norfolk Chamber Consort program. As a remembrance he asked Robynne Redmon, the Met Opera mezzo-soprano from Deep Creek to sing Le Collier (The necklace) and Prière exaucée (Fulfilled prayer) with Kasparov at the piano. It was Ms. Redmon's first performance of these songs. The depth of passion plumbed by Ms. Redmon in Messiaen in the full richness of her instrument with complex overtones was exciting to experience. The piano is wild in the music and it was a most satisfying experience.

The final selections were recordings of Lisa singing as soloist with the Cantata Chorus, led by her friend and collaborator Allen Shaffer in Is there anybody here that loves my Jesus? and Sometimes I feel like a moanin' dove set by Alice Parker. Lisa's singing has an urgency that cuts straight to the heart. Her firm, earthy voice anchors me inside my self. Her sound is spare and uncomplicated. I will continue to miss her. So many of us will carry on inspired by the memory of a soul and voice devoted to music. We shared a moment of silence to end.

Instead of trying to recap the spoken tribures, we will give Andrey Kasparov the last word, once again from the program booklet.

Since we met, Lisa sang not only in Serbian, but also in Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, Hungarian, Dutch and Russian, not to mention the standard Western European languages. She performed and gave world, Virginian and North American premieres of works by the composers Jurriaan Andriessen (The Netherlands), Tsippi Fleischer (Israel), Adolphus Hailstork (USA), Tom Johnson (USA), Ton de Leeuw (The Netherlands), Vera Stanojevic (Serbia/USA), Alicia Terzian (Argentina), and numerous others.
In her later years, when she worked closely with the Norfolk Chamber Consort, of which Oksana and I are the artistic co-directors, we concentrated our attention on more traditional repertoire, including her favorites: French and Russian lieder. Describing her performance on the CD Hommages Musicaux (Albany Records), Stephen Eddins of All Music Guide writes that her “warm voice soars in the Satie song.”
We kept planning our repertoire for the 2010/2011 concert season up to the time of her shockingly unexpected illness and passing. Now, Oksana and I struggle and fail to find the right words in our first, second and third language to express the feeling of this enormous loss. But perhaps the words are not even necessary—let the music take over and speak for us all.

On June 12, 2010 at Chandler Recital Hall mezzo-soprano Chrystal Evangeline Williams sang a stunning recital with Oksana Lutsyshyn at the piano. This is the seventh year of Chrystal's annual concert, “An Evening With Chrystal E.” She has allowed us to track her ever-growing maturity as a performer from 2004, as a graduating senior at I.C. Norcom High School to her four year degree program at Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh and her early June 2010 graduation with a masters degree form Yale University School of Music.

Looking radiant in a black gown with a brocade top, close-fitted at the neck but with bare shoulders and a flared, pleated skirt and with a smile a mile wide she sang an extended section of the opera Arianna à Naxos by Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). The story is of a young woman totally in love. Her boyfriend Theseus has gone hunting and to see where he is she climbs the Alpine rocks only to see him departing by boat with his Greek warriors. Suddenly they are swallowed by the waves leaving her bitter and angry and inviting her own death. Instead of dying she continues to tell us of her suffering. The expressive emotional range unfolded before us was deeply affecting and the piano added to the powerful climax.

Three selection from Das Knaben Wunderhorn set by Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) followed. The perky, happy tune Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht? (Who made up this little song?) displayed some lovely low notes. By contrast the somber mood of Der Tamboursg 'sell (The Drummer Boy) grows heavier as the drumbeat to the gallows is in the accompaniment. At the last moment he plucks-up courage to die, wishing us all a good night. In the third song, Rheinlegendchen (Rhine Legend) the reaper muses on having a sweetheart. He dreams of tossing a ring into the river and seeing it eaten by a fish that is served to a king who asks whose ring it is. The girl of his fancy says it's hers and brings it back to him. Thankfully he has continued to reap the grain while fantasizing.

In Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Chansons Madécasses (Madagascar Songs) Ms. Williams' approach is more lyrical than the recording that introduced me to these songs in the late 1960's: Ravel was the pianist and soprano Madeleine Gray sang with the ardor of one possessed. Written as a quartet for voice, cello, flute and piano, the cycle is, to quote Ned Rorem, “a trio of savage cries.” The poet, Vicomte Evariste-Désiré de Parny (1753-1814) lyrical, free-verse prose is anti-colonial and as timely as today's news. The setting is viseral, demanding extended vocal technique. In the first song the melancholy gives way to a joyous exuberance at the arrival of the beloved, Nahandove, to the bower prepared for lovemaking. The mood is both reflective and enfolding, returning to a fulfilled melancholy. In Aoua! the opening shrieks create a sense of panic, warning of the danger of whites who descend on our coast promising to be our brothers only to introduce an unknown god and slavery. The music becomes most somber as the song winds down. The relaxation of Il est doux (It is nice) is a quiet meditation on all the things the cooling breeze of evening brings: the young maiden's song, the slow pace, abandoning oneself to voluptuous pleasures until time for a late supper. The mood is wistful and languorous like the mood of Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer 1915 (1947).

Ravel later made the voice and piano version of Madagascar Songs that we heard. The chamber version (1925-26) was commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, an American pianist and patron of music. It is fitting that Ms. Williams sing a piece commissioned by Mrs. Coolidge; Sprague Memorial Hall on the Yale campus was financed by Mrs. Coolidge. In addition to the Ravel cycle, she also commissioned string quartets by Schoenberg, Bartók, Webern, Britten and Copland's Appalachian Spring and a host of other 20th century works.

How often have you heard songs by French composers Georges Hüe, Cécile Chaminade or Lili Boulanger? Soprano Sarah Adams Hoover appeared as guest soloist at Ghent United Methodist Church with Music Director Jason Paul Peterson at the piano on April 11th in what is proving to be an exciting 2010 concert series. As fellow doctoral candidates at Peabody Conservatory they had talked of working together. This was their first collaboration on a program they would repeat out of town later in the week. Titled “Music for the French Salon,” we also heard French songs (melodie) by Camille Saint-Saëns, Reynaldo Hahn, Erik Satie, Francis Poulenc and piano music by Frédéric Chopin - a Parisian at heart.

In addition to presenting insightful recitals, Ms. Hoover sings in oratorio, opera and chamber music throughout the United States. As a teacher she has a voice studio and appears at workshops and master classes: Washington Opera's Summer Institute, Shenandoah Conservatory, Levine School of Music and National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS). Originally from Washington, D.C., she currently lives with her husband David Ware and daughter Helena in Cold Springs Harbor, NY.

There were several songs from the French salon that were new to me. The opening, Le bonheur est chose légère (Happiness is a delicate thing) by Saint-Saëns, was one of them. It has a soft, sustained vocal line and speaks of the fleeting nature of happiness.

After three familiar songs by Hahn, Dr. Peterson played Chopin Mazurka in A minor, Opus 17 no. 4 with a dreamy, relaxed flow as if Chopin had invented cocktail piano but with a certain intensity. The pianist's complete immersion in the music was visible in his animated intensity as the music seemed to flow through his body.

More music new to this reviewer followed - three songs we had never heard by impressionist Georges Hüe (1858-1948) . Because Hüe did not change from an Impressionist musical language to Modernism his music has been neglected. In Sur l'eau (On the water) Ms. Hoover's voice created a sense of mystery. A thin sliver of a crescent moon illuminates a scene on the river where a rose gently rocks on the waves. The singer's beloved is silhouetted there singing a melancholy song where the rose she tossed sways as she watches. The gentle wave motion is in the piano, the longing in the singer's voice. J'ai pleuré en rêve (I wept in a dream) is a most intense song of lost love in both piano and voice. In D'avoir tenu vos chères mains (To have held your dear hands) the lover speaks of his hyper-alert state of synesthesia caused by such intense infatuation.

This was also our first live hearing of works by two other composers, Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944) and Lili Boulanger (1893-1918). The Chaminade songs are familiar from a CD by Annie Sophie von Otter: Melodies: Mots d'amour (DG 289-47133-2). Hüe and Boulanger were both winners of the Prix de Rome for composition while studying at the Paris Conservatory. Chaminade was born in Paris and studied with various teachers. Her attendance at the conservatory was arranged by Bizet who called her “little Mozart.” She was a fine pianist and performed her music in many concert tours around Europe, especially in England from 1892. This charming and often disarmingly elegant salon music was much enjoyed in its day.

We heard five of Chaminade's 140 songs. Charm and exuberance characterize this experience as communicated by Ms. Hoover who created the characters in the songs with unfailing skill in gesture and voice. The piano marches along joyously in Bonne humeur (Good cheer), but is more somber in the nostalgic reminiscence of Ma première lettre (My first letter) and is over the top in L'Été (Summer): “Summer comes, sing! Sing!” The runs in a wildly expressive piano accompaniment create bird songs as the vocal aria marches along.

We heard the first five of the thirteen songs of Boulanger's Clairières dans le ciel (Clearings in the sky). The opening song seems to continue the summer joy of the previous set but soon descends into a sadness that grows deeper with each selection. Ms. Hoover's voice, so delicate, so precise, is a model of French sound. In the first song she evoked tears from this listener. By the fourth song the sad intensity is embedded in a rushing flood of notes as she sings of a fountain seeming to bubble in the poet's heart. I was so drawn-in by the experience that I just had to hear the entire cycle. See the following review.

The program continued with Sonatine – Modéré for solo piano. Played from memory, the pianist looks out and up as if he sees an object far away. Ms. Hoover gave us Erik Satie's Trois Melodies, capturing the subtle humor in La Statue de Bronze, the silliness of the girl in Daphénéo and the fun in Le Chapelier (The Mad Hatter) whose watch runs three days slow but he insists that it's always greased with the finest quality butter! She closed with Francis Poulenc's gushy cabaret song Les chemins de l'amour (The paths of love). As an encore she sang Paris in New York by Vernon Duke.

This year's concert series raised money for maintenance of the church's Casavant pipe organ. Perhaps next year the series could raise money to buy a piano worthy of Dr. Peterson's skill and talent.