LORALEE SONGER, MEZZO-SOPRANO; PERRY MEARS, PIANO
WEILL RECITAL HALL AT CARNEGIE HALL, NEW YORK, NY
OCTOBER 19, 2019
This recital by mezzo-soprano Loralee Songer featured individual songs and song cycles by six living female composers, set to texts by nine female poets. The styles of the songs varied from pop to somewhat dissonant 20th century norms. The skillful accompanist was Perry Mears. The printed program had one unusual feature, in that after each song title its duration was written. I can therefore state that there was thirty minutes of music on the first half and twenty-eight minutes after intermission.
The program began with two short songs, music by Lucy Simon and text by Marsha Norman, from their 1989 adaptation of Frances Hodgsen Burnett’s The Secret Garden. If I describe these songs as pop music, I am not using “pop” as a pejorative term. For me it describes music that is, amongst other things, undemanding and uncomplicated. Although it certainly was attention grabbing, I wonder why Ms. Songer chose to make her first sounds a scooping cry and not regular pitches. I listened to other renditions of If I Had a Fine White Horse and all singers began with recognizable pitches. As the audience applauded after the song’s conclusion, I worried that there would be applause after every song. Although I have nothing against an audience showing their enthusiastic appreciation, I would suggest that in future recitals Ms. Songer include in the printed program a request that the audience withhold their applause until the end of each set.
The performers then left the stage, something that is often done after the first set to allow latecomers to be seated. What I found unusual was that the performers left the stage between all of the (mostly short) sets. They returned to perform Lori Laitman’s setting of three poems by Emily Dickinson. The accompaniments of these works were slightly more dissonant than those of the previous set. Ms. Songer has a very bright voice which doesn’t sound very mezzo-like, and when she did sing in the lower register, it was quite weak.
Libby Larsen, whose music we heard next, was the only one of the six composers on the program whose name I recognized. Her song cycle, Love After 1950, was written in 2000 for the mezzo-soprano Susan Mentzer. I wondered what “after 1950” meant. Could it have referred to the year of Ms. Larsen’s birth? It was the first of two cycles on this program whose texts dealt with woman’s difficulties in the “battlefield of love.” The music of each of the six songs was written in a different musical style including blues, cocktail piano, honky-tonk, and tango. Yes, I know that’s only five styles – Ms. Larsen’s website didn’t give a musical style for the last song.
The first half ended with One Perfect Rose, a short three-minute song with music by Emma Lou Diemer and words by Dorothy Parker. This was one of the works on the recital which had, as the program notes stated, a simple yet varied accompaniment that allows the words to shine. However, many of the other works had very complicated accompaniments, which pianist Perry Mears played with clarity and ease.
The second half began with the U.S. premiere of Godiva, music by Juliana Hall, text by Caitlin Vincent. While the first half of tonight’s recital was performed by memory, this and the following work were performed on book. For the first time in the evening I had trouble understanding the words. This was anomalous in that Ms. Songer’s diction during the first half was clarity personified, made obvious by the audience’s laughter at the comical portions of the text.
The recital concluded with the world premiere of tonight’s longest work, Little Black Book, with music by Susan LaBarr and text by Caitlin Vincent, which is described in the program notes as one that “highlights the struggle to find love in the digital age.” Directly below the work’s title in the program proper was printed “a song cycle that fails the Bechdel Test.” As the program notes did not explain anything about the Bechdel Test, I went to the internet and found on Wikipedia: “The Bechdel Test is a measure of the representation of women in fiction. It asks whether a work features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man.” I also found that it is most often used in analyzing the portrayal of women in movies. And yes, as the program notes stated that these songs dealt with both Ms. Songer’s and Ms. Vincent’s romantic histories, the terms of the Bechdel test were certainly not met. The audience found many of the six songs very funny.
Throughout the concert, Ms. Songer sang with commitment, fine diction, and stylistic awareness. The audience agreed and, at the recital’s conclusion, showered Ms. Songer and Mr. Mears with tumultuous applause and the vociferous “woo-woo” sound which seems to have replaced “bravo” with contemporary audiences.
