Song Festival Starts Strong

By Cecelia Porter
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, April 13, 2007; C11

Baritone Wolfgang Holzmair's recital on Wednesday at the Austrian Embassy provided an extraordinary and memorable launch for the embassy's 10-concert Song Festival.... co-sponsored by the Vocal Arts Society... 44 songs from Hugo Wolf's riveting "Spanisches Liederbuch" ("Spanish Songbook")...

Holzmair was joined by an Austrian compatriot, mezzo Hermine Haselboeck, and two Americans -- soprano Susanna Phillips and pianist Russell Ryan... the songs created a sense of powerfully continuous drama, though not one as cohesive as a Schubert lieder cycle or an opera plot. And Holzmair injected subtle contrast by inserting Wolf's set of sacred songs into the midst of the secular ones.

I have heard Holzmair many times over the last decade. If anything, his voice has gained even more in its intensity and sense of compelling magnitude. He tailors these qualities to suit every detail of the texts throughout the broad range of dynamics and emotional colors ... Phillips was a perfect foil for Holzmair's style, lending an effective stage presence to her rich mezzo sound, at once gleaming and refined. Haselboeck's voice has carrying power along with charm and a delicate assortment of sweet timbres.

Another hero of the evening, Ryan is a veteran accompanist, dashing up and down the keyboard for all Wolf's busy forays into the depths of passion or the throes of wild abandon. Ryan's playing added a full measure of that orchestral dimension that the composer calls for in his complex mix of harmony, melody, texture and poetic meaning.