Reviewed by: David M. Rice
Reviewed: 7 July, 2025
Venue: Tanglewood, Massachusetts
Sunday evening’s concert in Studio E spotlighted six Vocal Fellows, the first four of whom were ably accompanied on piano by an Instrumental Fellow. Closing the program, three Fellows – two vocalists and a percussionist – were joined by a guest artist on guitar in a work by George Crumb.
The concert began with Charles Tomlinson Griffes’s ‘Three Poems of Fiona MacLeod’, sung by Soprano Sarah Davis, accompanied by pianist Haniel Anugerah. Davis has a lovely voice powerful enough to fill an opera house, yet supple and gentle in softer passages. Anugerah was a marvelous partner, the interplay between the two at its best in the third song, ‘The Rose of the Night’, in which they captured its mystical aura – Davis’s by her clear articulation of the text and fitting gestures, matched by Anugerah’s atmospheric playing.
Next, baritone Lucas Zuehl sang Jacques Ibert’s ‘Chanson de Don Quichotte’, with Zhaoyuan Qin at the piano. This was a marvelous rendition of three episodes from the life of the fictional Don, as well as a commentary on his death. Zuehl sang with beautiful tone through a rather wide range and conveyed the appropriate emotion for each song. Qin’s accompaniments likewise reflected the mood of each text. The penultimate song, ‘Chanson du Duc,’ showed off Zuehl’s skills as a storyteller, and the mournful ‘Chanson de la mort de Don Quichotte’ sung to his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, captured feelings of sorrow, tempered by faith in the afterlife.
Mezzo-soprano Ilanna Starr also excelled as a storyteller in Ruth Crawford Seeger’s ‘Five Songs to Poems by Carl Sandburg.’ In ‘Home Thoughts’ she made effective use of vibrato to enhance the beauty of her lovely voice. Hikaru Kanki’s excellent piano accompaniments were gracefully delicate in ‘White Moon’ and delightfully jaunty in ‘Sunsets’ with Starr’s vocal line a cross between song and speech.
In Margaret Bonds’s ‘Songs of the Seasons’, tenor Benjamin Truncale brought out the contrasting moods that mark the changing of the seasons each year. His voice has a thrilling quality, and in ‘Poème d’Automne’ Craig Daffron Jordan’s ornamented accompaniment added a slightly jazzy touch to the singer’s long-held notes and leaping intervals. After the short but sweet ‘Winter Moon’, the two collaborated marvelously’ in ‘Young Love in Spring,’ begun with Jordan’s cheerful introduction and marked by three textual variations on the exclamation “Spring has come,” with which Truncale made us feel the joyfulness of that season. Finally, in ‘Summer Storm’, Jordan’s piano sensationally emulated the thunder, lightning and rain that the text associates with “the wonder of being in love”.
Last on the program was a quite spectacular performance of George Crumb’s The Ghosts of Alhambra’ (Spanish Songbook I) in which baritones Will Kiim and John Arlievsky alternately sang poems by Federico Garcia Lorca, accompanied by percussionist Fellow Lucas Vogelman and guest artist Jordan Dodson on guitar. Both singers impressively carried out the composer’s sometimes unusual instructions that required them at times to speak, whisper, shout or play percussion instruments themselves. Vogelman was terrific as he played one after another of the dazzling array of instruments arrayed around him: vibraphone, cymbals, castanets, bells, bass and snare drums to name just a few! The guitar, as well as being part of the ensemble, was even the subject of Lorca’s poetry in Las Seis Cuerdas (The Six Strings).