Reviews

Attucks Theatre Hosts Lawrence Brownlee & Eric Owens
March 3, 2019
Review by John Campbell

It was one of those once in a lifetime evenings when the Virginia Arts Festival brought two of America's greatest opera singers and pianist Craig Terry, a world renowned accompanist, to the historic Attucks Theatre for an evening of diverse music with a totally engaged audience .

Their repertory ranged from opera arias to short scenes, traditional spirituals, American popular songs and Gospel favorites delivered with an intimate, friendly vibe. Their warm comradery and casual energy let the audience relax into all these varieties of music, all performed to perfection.

Bass-baritone Eric Owens opened with Se vuol ballare, signor, signor contino (If, my dear Count, You feel like dancing, It's I who'll call the tune) from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. For its day the opera was revolutionary—the servant Figaro is singing about his master. Somehow this seems a fine opening statement for a very successful African American opera star singing in a theater built by and for African Americans during the Jim Crow era in a part of the Old South. Mr. Owen's huge depth of sound was commanding.

Bel canto tenor Lawrence Brownlee saved his listed program opener for later. He sang Il mio tesoro intanto, speaking of avenging the death of his sweetheart's father, from Mozart's Don Giovanni. His brilliant, high voice was well-grounded in his compact body.

Metropolitan regular Owens (currently singing Wagner) returned with Infelice! E tuo credevi from Ernani by Verdi. Pianist Terry set the atmosphere before Owens sang. The protagonist is still in love with his wife and sees her with two men pursuing her. Spare, effective gestures made his character come alive.

From Donizetti's opera L'elisir d'amore, both singers gave us the duet of huckster snake-oil salesman Dulcamara and the love-struck Nemorino who needs the elixir of love to give him courage to pursue his lady love. We noted the contrast of the two voices in this dramatic conversation. Later they sang superbly one of the loveliest of all opera duets, Au fond du temple saint from Bizet's The Pearl Fishers. Brownlee followed with a solo aria also from Elixir, Una furtiva lagrima, a tender love song. Owens sang Le veau d'or (The Golden Calf) from Gounod's Faust.

Finally Brownlee got to what was his first listed selection in the program, Ah mes amis, quel jour de fête (Oh, my friends, what a happy day) from Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment. With its nine high Cs, it is always a show-stopper. His performance was superb and the audience's outburst acknowledged his triumph. When Owens reappeared from stage left he mimicked in falsetto a fragment of Brownlee's blockbuster and got an appreciative laugh.

After intermission we left the opera house and entered the world of traditional spirituals.

A dozen members of the Boys Choir of Hampton Roads, led by Julius McCullough, sang in the lobby just before the performance. Lawrence Brownlee told the audience that he spoke with them and that you'll never know who you will inspire to make a career in music. He told us that he had been in Norfolk in April of 2007 for The Barber of Seville. Of his performance Lee Teply's review said “He was able to negotiate Rossini's coloratura lines with extraordinary brilliance...” Brownlee followed with All Night, All Day (arr. Damien Sneed), saying it was his personal song for his eight year old autistic son—“his angel.” His unlimited tenor range came off the stage and into our hearts.

Owens followed with Deep River (arr. Hall Johnson) the way you always wish to hear it—basso profundo depth and tears of pain all in the voice. Craig Terry's piano was jazzy in Come by Here (arr. Sneed) and with each repeat the vocal line was embellished and the voice went higher. In a quiet, gentle piano setting of Give Me Jesus, Owens almost whispers when he sings “When I come to die,” but then switches to total power, singing “In the morning when I rise.” My tears rolled! A duet closed the set: He's Got the Whole World in His Hands (arr. Margaret Bonds, Craig Terry, Lawrence Brownlee, Eric Owens). They opened taking turns with the verses until the last one when they joined forces for a most amazing ending. I have never heard it like this before.

In the American Popular Songs set Terry's cocktail piano became an orchestra in Song of Songs (Vicars & Lucas, arr. Terry, Brownlee, Owens). This nostalgic memory of bliss on a moonlit June night with roses and dreams, was a wonderful duet. Sung by Brownlee,Terry's arrangement of Lulu's Back in Town (Warren and Dubin) was a lighthearted, charming song about a gal who's won his heart. He held his high notes forever and Owens joined him in the concluding “Make that gal mine.” Once again the best possible performance you are ever likely to hear was Eric Owens' gorgeous Some Enchanted Evening (Rodgers and Hammerstein). They concluded with Vincent Youmans' Through the Years, a duet of power vocals with the line “Keep my place beside you through the years.”

Gospel favorites had Brownlee singing I Don't Feel No Ways Tired with the reassuring, heart-touching “I don't believe He brought me this far to leave me.” Owens' entry was the 1963 hit Peace Be Still and together they closed the set with a third traditional song, Every Time I Feel the Spirit, with the audience clapping with the piano but stopping so we could luxuriate in their voices.

This Little Light of Mine was the encore. Speaking of understatement, these three men are a shining light on a very tall mountain of human creativity. We were blessed to be in the audience.

Virginia Arts Festival Features World-Class Instrumentalists
Barnatan, Khachatryan, Weilerstein and Curry in Transfigured Nights
May 8, 2019, TCC Roper Performing Arts Center
Review by John Campbell

Four superb instrumental soloists joined together in an evening of outstanding chamber music. Billed as an “experience of the alchemy of genius,” the trio of pianist Inon Barnatan, violinist Sergey Khachatryan and cellist Alisa Weilerstein played Ludwig van Beethoven's (1770-1827) Piano Trio in D Major, Op. 70, No. 1 “Ghost”. It is a massive work with two very rapid movements enclosing a slow, gentle center one. With this piano trio and its expressive challenges, Beethoven expanded the genre.

The opening was briefly lyrical but soon the trio hammered out the opening theme in full unison with the piano in octaves above and below the inner octave filled by violin and cello. The vigorous piano rhythms contrasted with a lyrical countermelody in the cello. This dialectic runs through the movement and was played with rigor and passion.

The second movement began with a whisper; slow and gentle it held us in dramatic suspense as the strings played alone followed by pulsing chords in the piano. This was rich, enfolding music. Tremolos in both piano and strings, sudden and abrupt stops and silences near the close, all added to the enticement of this music. The Presto third movement was most dramatic, allowing the accomplished trio to shine as Beethoven's dualism of weight/lightness, density/lucidity and complexity/simplicity played itself out.

Often transcriptions of pieces for larger forces provide repertory for chamber groups and that was true for two of the evening's four pieces. Next came Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) by Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951). Originally written in 1899 for two violins, two violas and two cellos, and based on a poem by Richard Dehmel, Schoenberg arranged it for string orchestra in 1917 and again in 1943. The transcription we heard for piano trio was by Eduard Steuermann (1892-1964).

Though Schoenberg dropped the programmatic story, that story gives the flavor of the experience we had. It was written in a burst of inspiration by Dehmel's poem and composed in just three weeks. It is a drama in miniature: Two lovers walk in the woods with moonlight shining down. The woman confesses that she became pregnant before they met because she longed for the happiness of motherhood. She laments “Now life has taken its revenge, I have met you.” The poet rejects the romantic pessimism of the Wagner era. Instead of rejection he affirms that the warmth that unites them will transfigure the child and she should bear it as if it were his. They embrace with great exaltation. They walk on through the sublime, shining night.

The trio brought out all of the passion and intensity but also the loveliness in the melodies. Schoenberg has written “simply by reflecting in music what your poems stirred up in me” he found a new mode of expression. It was a stunning performance of great breadth.

The fourth member of the stellar cast, percussionist Colin Currie, appeared alone on stage after intermission with a marimba in front of the concert grand piano. Realismos mágicos by Norwegian composer Rolf Wallin (b. 1957) added variety to the evening. The other pieces were bold while this one was poetic and subtle. It is structured around evocations of eleven short stories by Gabriel García Márquez (the titles were given in the program), the foremost exponent of Latin-American magical realism. The composer reports that these “stories of striking and unpredictable wit left him with a resonance of great emotional depth.” The pieces spring out of the poetry of the titles themselves. Percussionist Currie has written that the eleven movements range from five seconds to three-and-a-half minutes (fifteen minutes total time) and are supple, malleable and by turns graceful and vehement.

Brittle sounds are heard to open Eyes of the Blue Dog with flashes of sound clusters. Frequent mallet changes mark the pause between stories. In other movements low rumbling chords gave a halo effect, spinning musical passages with strikes so fast that it gave a legato line. In others the mallets create the sound of hovering wings (A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings) or flowing water (Light is Like Water). All of this is pleasantly evocative. You can get a better idea by listening to Currie play Realismos mágicos on Youtube.

The grand finale was a transcription by Victor Derevianko of Dmitri Shostakovich's (1906-1975) Symphony No. 15 for Piano Trio and Percussion with Douglas Perkins and Michael Werner rounding out the percussion. This was Shostakovich's last symphony and was scored for a comparatively small orchestra with clear and transparent structure. Having extra percussion in this arrangement was vital to give a full sense of the orchestral version. The puzzle is why the composer used so many quotations. There are five snatches of Rossini's William Tell Overture (The Lone Ranger theme) in the first movement. Over its 40-45 minute span he quotes from his own works and from three of Wagner's: the Fate motive from The Ring, Siegfried's funeral music and the opening three notes of the Tristan prelude. We later learned that pianist Inon Barnatan studied with Derevianko in Tel Aviv.

Listening to a CD of the original symphony after this live performance let me see how spare and clear many sections are and how they lend themselves to a single instrument or the trio. It often reminded me of the chamber sections of Mahler symphonies. When it's time for great climaxes and grand statements the three percussionists on their wide-array of instruments fill in nicely.

A quotation from the Shostakovich CD written by Andrew Huth seems a fitting close: “The symphony ends with neither triumph nor despair, but with a clear and steady, unsentimental gaze at a reality which at least allows us to create our own moments of beauty.” Their performance was indeed awe inspiring.