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New York Festival of Song

by Mark J. Estren
Washington Post
Monday, November 13, 2006; C07

…to enjoy the Vocal Arts Society's presentation of the New York Festival of Song on Saturday, you had to… just let the music wash over you -- as a near-capacity audience did at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater… Artistic Director Steven Blier… discussed the works in copious program notes and verbal introductions …But the music outdid the explanations. Soprano Carolyn Betty, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and tenor Jeremy Little got both the notes and the emotions right as they skipped from Pizzetti to Respighi to Dello Joio to Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

Two Busoni songs were standouts -- Little in "Wer hat das erste Lied erdacht," which is filled with sweet Italianate sentiment, and Cooke in the intense and spooky "Zigeunerlied," to words by Goethe. Betty conquered four short Luigi Dallapiccola songs on poems by Antonio Machado, while Blier, as pianist, handled the 12-tone complexities…

Program

BRAVA ITALIA!

Twentieth century Italian song, from the late Romantic era to the beginnings of Neo-Realism.

Alfredo Catalani
In riva al mare

Ottorino Respighi
L’invito alla danza

Franco Alfano 
Non nascondere il secreto

Ottorino Respighi
From Deità silvane
I Fauni
Musica in horto

Ildebrando Pizzetti
Levommi il mio pensier in parte ov’era, from Sonetti del Petrarca   
I pastori

Luigi Dallapiccola
Quattro Liriche di Antonio Machado     
La primavera ha venido
Ayer soñé que veía
Señor, ya me arrancaste lo que yo más quería
La primavera ha venido

Licinio Refice
Ombra di nube 

Ruggiero Leoncavallo
Sérénade napolitaine

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco L’infinito 

Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari
Quando ti vidi a quel canto apparire, from Quattro Rispetti, Op. 12                                             
Bella, che censessanta ne chiamate, from Quattro canti per tenore

Ferruccio Busoni
Wer hat das erste Lied erdacht?
Zigeunerlied

John Musto
Recuerdo 

Dominic Argento
From Six Elizabethan Songs    
Spring
Winter

Tom Cipullo
Dogwoods         

John Corigliano
“As summer brings a wistful breeze,” from The Ghosts of Versailles                           

Harry Warren
The Girlfriend of the Whirling Dervish