Soprano Deborah Voigt's Tuesday-evening Schubert Club recital, a master-class on communicating with an audience, explored several seldom-visited pockets of the art-song repertory. There were songs in Italian by Giuseppe Verdi (which, alas, lent credence to the view that great opera composers are never great song composers) and by Ottorino Respighi (who, too long represented by his noisy orchestral music, is ripe for rediscovery). There were also songs in German by Richard Strauss, among them the whimsical "Bad Weather" and the impassioned "Spring Ceremony," all lit by Voigt's dynamo of a voice.
But what made the concert memorable was her generous sampling of songs in English, by Americans from Amy Beach (1867-1944) to Ben Moore (born 1960). The Chicago native, a fixture at the world's great opera houses, may earn her living by singing in other tongues, but she's most expressive and affecting in her own.
Voigt treats the concert hall as an extension of her living room. The mood is warm and informal -- far removed from the Elizabeth Schwarzkopf recitals of my youth, with their studied elegance and deep curtseys to the audience. Voigt (whose "mom," she told us, was in the house on Tuesday) editorializes between songs. And when the applause that greeted her first appearance seemed overlong, she quieted it with a playful gesture. Her American repertoire, in particular, flourishes in this down-home, pretense-puncturing environment.
Moore, whose work Voigt has championed, can be led astray by his taste in poetry -- his setting of Elizabeth Bishop's wonderful "I am in need of music" felt at odds with the dark melodiousness of Bishop's lines -- but his more modest pieces (on lyrics by Robert Herrick and James Joyce) had a delicious savor. Even tastier was Voigt's Leonard Bernstein set: six songs, ranging from the aggrieved insouciance of "Another Love" and the cabaret-like "It's Gotta Be Bad to Be Good" to the always-topical "So Pretty," its every syllable dagger-sharp: "I had to ask my teacher why war was making all those people die... They must die for peace, you understand."
Icing the cake were encores by Irving Berlin ("I Love a Piano," in which the singer joined the rather self-effacing Brian Zeger at the keyboard for a bit of four-hand honky-tonk) and Jerome Kern ("Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" -- the recital's precisely gauged climax). Here, finally, Voigt's music stand, at which she'd glanced discreetly through much of the evening, was put aside.
Larry Fuchsberg writes regularly about music.
