MAHLER: 5 Rückert-Lieder. HANDEL: Arias from Ariodante and Theodora. LIEBERSON: 5 Rilke Songs (excerpts). "Triraksha's aria" from Ashoka's Dream. TRAD.: Deep River. BRAHMS: Unbewegte laue Luft.
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (mezzo), Roger Vignoles (piano).
Recorded Live at Wigmore Hall, London, 30 November 1998.
Wigmore Hall WHLive0013 (F) (DDD) TT: 59:22
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Just about perfect. In this recital recorded live by BBC 3, the late mezzo Lorraine Hunt Lieberson lets you know why so many listeners miss her.

I would have loved to have actually sat in a real seat with her on stage. I count among the treasures of my concert-going life a couple of recitals by Janet Baker. Lieberson operates at the same level, although her voice, fine as it is, hasn't the spooky beauty of Baker's. Nevertheless, her musical intelligence and her ability to communicate equals her predecessor's. I got hooked on Lieberson when I heard her Bach with Craig Smith and the forces of Boston's Emmanuel Church (available on Nonesuch 79692). Smith and his band of heroes (full complement of singers and instrumentalists) do a Bach cantata every week as part of the service. This I have seen live, twice, and I still have trouble believing it -- not that a bunch of professionals couldn't bull their way through a Bach cantata after a week's rehearsal, but that it should be some of the best Bach singing I've ever heard in my life. You don't even have to buy a ticket. Before she went on to a stellar career, Lieberson sang with those guys regularly. I'm sure she was a great musician before, but -- let's face it -- Bach sharpens you.

Elgar used to plead for "singers with brains." A mere voice for him didn't cut it. He preferred a musical intelligence that got behind the notes to the emotional message. Lieberson, amazingly, started out as a professional, working, freelance violist. When her instrument got stolen, she turned to singing professionally. My own theory about her musicianship has to do with her experience as a chamber player. She seems preternaturally alert to her accompaniment, and she reacts to it, giving the listener the impression that the music has just been thought up, like jazz. When you have that and a singer with a technique so magnificent that she not only can do anything, she can think of great things to do that would have escaped all but a rare few, you've got Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.

The program opens with the Rückert songs of Mahler. Again, Lieberson competes with Baker, accompanied by Barbirolli, yet (currently available on EMI 66996). The latter stands among the finest Mahler performances ever, both for the singer and the accompaniment. It's too much to expect pianist Roger Vignoles to perfectly mimic the Mahler orchestra, but he certainly creates a terrific metaphor for it. His control over the dynamics of imitative voices is superb. Lieberson glows -- rapturous in "Liebst du um Schönheit," warm and lovely in "Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder," soaring from deep funk to high ecstasy in "Um Mitternacht." Furthermore, it's not a cookie-cutter account. Clichés of song interpretation -- the plummy scoop and swoop, the sudden pianissimo -- she has banished. You know she's thought hard about these poems. She presents you again and again with surprising details within a musical line so flexible, you feel as if you make simultaneous discoveries with her as she sings.

The Handel recalls Hunt's stage success in both Ariodante and Theodora. It's difficult to get to the dramatic truth of Baroque opera and oratorio -- so remote from our concepts of realism -- but within those conventions, Handel counts as one of the great dramatists. In the Ariodante excerpt, he sets a frazzled, psychologically confused state, more complex than the usual abandoned lover. In the Theodora aria, he portrays great faith and inner strength. The Theodora text is a bit of pious claptrap, taken by itself, but Lieberson turns the aria into a triumph. By the way, she has recorded the complete operas: Ariodante with Nicholas McGegan on Harmonia Mundi 907146, Theodora with William Christie on Kultur Video DVD 2099, a Glyndebourne production directed by Peter Sellars.

Lorraine Hunt met composer Peter Lieberson during the production of the premiere of Lieberson's opera Ashoka's Dream. Shortly thereafter, she became Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. Peter Lieberson, in contrast to most composers influenced by dodecaphony, knew how to write for the voice, and married to such a spectacular singer, became even melodious. "Triraksha's Aria," from Ashoka's Dream, suffers a bit, divorced from its context in the complete work. It doesn't work as an aria on its own, underscored by the fact that the mezzo delivers a brief plot summary to the audience before she sings. The Rilke songs come off far better. Although certainly contemporary in idiom, they have the sound of classic German Lied. In their close following of textual rhythm and meaning, they remind me of Strauss and Wolf. Momentary consonances take on the burdens of epiphany at corresponding moments in the poems themselves. Rilke has always been one of my favorite poets, and Peter Lieberson joins those few composers who, like Hindemith, have set him with real understanding. His wife sings with so much heart and with such beauty, I, like Linda Richman, got farklemt.

The recital closes with two encores: Harry T. Burleigh's classic arrangement of "Deep River" and Brahms's "Unbewegte laue Luft." Lieberson loved the spiritual and worked it into many of her appearances (including, memorably, a gala performance of Fledermaus). It almost became a manifesto: what an American singer could sing without self-consciousness or affectation. Her ability to sing in English -- a rare asset even in native-born classical singers -- without resorting to operatic orotundity or to a grotesque, unintentional parody of pop makes the performance. As in Mozart, considerable art from both the singer and the arranger has gone into producing an effect of pure simplicity.

For some reason, compared to Schubert and Mahler, Brahms's songs -- excepting the four serious ones -- aren't much done. A shame, really. Many treasures await the adventurous singer. Lieberson chooses not the relatively popular "Von waldbekränzter Höhe," but the quite-rare "Unbewegte laue Luft" ("motionless, mild air"). The poem begins as a picture of nocturnal stillness, then moves to a het-up ending, as the speaker anticipates a tryst with the beloved. It takes something to get from one mood to the other with conviction, but Lieberson and Vignoles pull it off. From an atmosphere where the slightest movement makes a huge impact, we wind up in a glorious paean to Romantic love (sex, actually, but never mind that now), and Lieberson sounds both alert in the nocturne and ready to burst from anticipation at the end.

Again, I should mention Vignoles. He has often partnered with singers I didn't care for but has always made them better than they really were. Like the legendary Gerald Moore, he doesn't fall into a generic accompaniment. His lines bristle with detail, based on the meaning of the texts. With a musician of Lieberson's caliber, he blossoms, playing at a whole 'nother, higher level. An outstanding feature of this recital is the way Lieberson and Vignoles listen to each other, so that, despite whatever pre-planning went into their preparation, they remain alive to the surprise of performance. An outstanding disc.

S.G.S. (October 2007)