Singing Saturday

Today was my day for song in NYC.  In the afternoon, I attended NY City Center Encores' production of Finian's Rainbow, and in the evening a Schubert lieder recital at Carnegie Hall by Ian Bostridge and Julian Drake.

I've come to love the City Center Encores productions.  They take musical theater pieces of the past and revive them in semi-staged performances.  The orchestra is large and on the stage, the action taking place mainly in front of the orchestra but sometimes on platforms behind or running through the orchestra.  The casts, fully professional with many leading Broadway figures, are in costume.  No fancy sets - props and hangings evoke the settings, and the lack of sets means that "scene changes" are fast.  An attempt is made to restore original orchestrations and to include numbers that may have been cut after early performances.  The cast members frequently carry black binders with their lines and music, but vary as to how often they have to glance at them.  For Finian's Rainbow, it seemed that the leads had pretty much memorized their parts for the first act, but were using their scripts more frequently in the second.  Considering that the entire thing comes together with a short period of intensive rehearsals and they do only a handful of performances clustered around one weekend, one could not expect memorization, especially since many of the shows are rarities that haven't been revived in many decades.  Others, like Finian's Rainbow, may be familiar from the dinner theater, high school and college circuits...

This afternoon's performance was splendid, the leading roles portrayed by Jim Norton (Finian), Kate Baldwin (Sharon), Cheyenne Jackson (Woody), and Jeremy Bob (Og, the leprechaun).  I thought Jeremy Bob rather stole the show with his sheer energy on-stage.  Cheyenne Jackson was a bit laid back and made less of an impression on me than he did last summer with his assumption of the lead role of Joe Hardy in Encores' production of Damn Yankees.  Rob Berman energetically led the orchestra, which seemed to me to be a shade less immaculate than I've heard in the past from Encores orchestras.  The sets and staging were fine.  The show itself has a ridiculous script, but the music of Lane and lyrics of Harburg are fun to hear, and some "old standards" grace the score.  This was certainly an Encores production worth attending.

Bostridge's Schubert is an acquired taste for many.  I first encountered this singer in his first major solo recording, the Schoene Mullerin cycle as part of the Hyperion Schubert lieder edition, which interpolated readings of the poems that Schubert didn't set by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.  I could hear the smile in Bostridge's voice in the early songs, gradually disappearing as the singer becomes more despondent, and I fell in love with that high, clear voice deployed with such intelligence and restraint.

I've come to feel that perhaps there is too much restraint...  Tonight's recital, a careful selection and ordering of songs, was bolstered by the excellent, imaginative pianist, Julian Drake, but as for Mr. Bostridge, I wanted more contrast and drama.  I thought he was in excellent voice, and in fact I am finding that he is aging into an even richer, smoother and more mellow vocal sound than he had as a young man -- but I really want a little roughness now and then.  His smooth renditions are soothing, and there is no lack of dynamic variation, but I think the musical values are being exalted over dramatic values to the extent that the songs become less interesting - especially the strophic songs after the initial verses.  From the point of view of musicianship, this was an excellent recital, all first-rate Schubert with three Schubert encores from the top of the all-time-favorites list, but I was left feeling vaguely disappointed.  Going back to the Fischer-Dieskau recordings, one understands immediately.  FD was willing to sound rough at times to make a dramatic point.  Some people accused him of shouting rather than singing at times -- but sometimes the music needs a bit of that to shake things up and bring home a dramatic point. 

I will continue to savor Bostridge's work.  His new recording of Schwanengesang on EMI, with Drake, is excellent, and I've listened to it several times on the iPod now, savoring the sheer beauty of his approach to this music, but I still find that missing element keeping it from the very top of my list...