Sebastian Rothwyn
Music 11
Professor Oliver Markson
May 14, 2011
On a Sunday Afternoon
Three of my classmates and I, attended "On a Sunday Afternoon" at the Bruno Walter Auditorium of Lincoln Center in New York. The featured performers were: Wendy Brown, mezzo-soprano; William Lewis, piano; and Christian Chapp Realmuto, flute.
Wendy Brown, current member of the Metropolitan Opera's Extra Chorus since 2002, and William Lewis co-founder of Opera Oggi since 2007, opened with Robert and Clara Schumann's Widmung. The Schumann couple's composition really set the tone for the beginning of the performance. Although it was entirely in German, translations were provided, but in the voice and piano you could feel the mood even if you didn't read the words. It was the sort of music that plucked at the heart, which was, no doubt, the writers' intention. Even without the vocals, the piano's dynamic measures resonated beautifully in the both the ear and the body.
Brown and Lewis performed three more pieces together in this set and the theme was quite clear: Love, beauty and togetherness. There three were the embodiment of the accompaniment of the piano to Brown’s recitative for these pieces. The other three pieces included Mein schoner Stern, Liebst du um Schonheit, and lastly, Er ist gekommen. In my opinion, the most beautiful of the three was Liebst du um Schonheit, because vocally and instrumentally, it contained the richest variations with a subtlety that still made it very touching.
Both voice and piano blended in similar fashion to the theme being represented. However, this simple blend gained some color when Christian Chapp Realmuto took the stage. He is a young man, only seventeen years old, and he moved as awkwardly as any seventeen year old did. He took the stage and his flute pulled the sheet music and backing off the stand. As amusing as it was to everyone seated, he did not let this deter or unnerve him. His expression didn’t change at all. He simply picked up the sheet music, aligned the stand and began his set.
The music played by Realmuto began very soft and sweet but one minute into the piece, the mood changed to a somber tone, then shortly went back to happy. The one thing that stuck out the most was his amazing breath control. Then seemingly out of nowhere, the pianist, William Lewis, began to sing with the flute, then they split and the flute stopped, he sang, then it joined him again, almost as if the flute and the vocals were accompanying one another at different moments almost like a Fugue, with the piano being the third instrument. Most of what followed was oratorio and when he finished the vocals, the flute was the only instrument that played, echoing the beginning of the piece.
Lewis remarked that he didn’t know where the piece came from. It was at this point that Lewis began to speak to the audience more about every musical piece that followed. He began to tell a story about a battle that happened in 1847 and the piece that followed was a tragic tale of the soldiers who were wounded and found their one inspiration at their weakest moment from the Maid of Monterey.
The Maid of Monterey was played in minor. Lewis sang a narrative tale which spoke of the look of the corpses on the battlefield, the Maid’s anguish being greater than others, and her efforts as caretaker trying to help the dying. The dying soldiers blessed her for her help and she “Drove death’s pang away”. The song would go back to the beginning, at the end, and they would praise the Maid of Monterey, in the same as their lives ended as they began, with their mother or caretaker.
Lewis then told another tale of a fourteen year old boy who wrote his first song back then and only made his debut at eighty seven years old. The musician, Lee Hoiby, died the Monday before this performance. Lewis shed a tear on stage. The song was about a fourteen year old boy thinking about the future echoing “Some day I’ll know”. As everyone listened to the entire arrangement, knowing the story, everyone felt the same tragedy and the expression on everyone’s face was the same.
After this sad tale and sad song, Lewis picked up the pace a bit with a humorous song from the nineteen fifties about heeding the wisdom of Aesop, the fable teller. He explained that this was an American song that was one of the almost forgotten. It was a bit like Swing music that you could bop to. It told a story of Aesop’s in the cryptic fable manner using example but at the end it told the story in plain English. After this there was a short intermission.
When they came back from intermission, they skipped one of the songs and started instead with A Piper. This piece was played as if the flute was played by a piped piper skipping along the road with the piano accompanying him. The vocalist, Brown, narrated the story about this piper entertaining people along the street. It was lively and transported the mind to a place of innocence and grace for expressions of joy.
The next song was a strange but entertaining piece as well. It was a lullaby from the isle of Mann: A mixture of traditional and another song, some Irish, Celtic and Gaelic. It was about giving without restrictions and symbolism was used to describe his feelings as they related to an apple, a house and a palace. The apple with no core, the house with no door and the palace with no key.
The traveling doctor shop was a very amusing composition about people who are self medicating which is as poignant then as it is today. It is about a woman who takes pills for everything and carried so many medications that she was considered the travelling doctor shop. The music was a mocking accompaniment of the story being told and Lewis invited everyone to sing along when he gave the hint. It was very funny.
The next two songs were almost part one and two of the same theme although they were written independently. The first was A Flow in a Field of Stone, written by an Irish American drummer. It talks about a woman called Mary who lies in a grave and someone changes her flowers regularly. Very sad. It makes the singer which about love eternal and wishes he could feel love beyond this life. It truly made me feel like I should be kinder and move loving to those I hold dear. The next song was a follow up to this and Lewis’ voice was a beautiful instrument used to navigate and sail across the notes like a finely played instrument.
After these beautiful pieces I was a bit disappointed that the next piece by Sondheim was not nearly as beautiful to me. Although it was technically good, with everything in its place, I didn’t feel it. Maybe I was already on a certain high from being moved by everything that came before but I expected more from the name Sondheim and it did not deliver. The lyrics were deeply written and possibly moving but the melody wasn’t powerful enough for me. As good as the pianist and vocalist were, they could not save this piece for me.
Barab’s piece was very intriguing to me because the music spoke beneath the vocals. The story was about being busy in everyday activities to transitioning to being free to do something. She wondered “where the boys are” and I suspected that her “eating” had nothing to do with food, especially as her “heart fluttered” as a result. Then she is “used” and has no one to take her out and even though she was satisfied early, she still “must live”. The entire composition was very mature in subject matter and I found it refreshing.
The piece, This Moment, captured moments, like the vocals did, and spoke of all kinds of feelings in fleeting moment. From heartache to joy to sorrow to emptiness and the entire composition felt as such.
Forever Young started as accapela speaking of best wishes to listeners for all of their goals beyond imagining. The piano came in poco a poco then when it became full; it went back to vocals only, with best wishes for good life and good qualities. The piano would play mezzo piano back and forth between vocals only and accompaniment. The voice would then provide the strength on top of the serenity of the piano with the words “May you be Strong for what’s to come.”
The entire presentation ended even more beautifully than it began and I feel blessed to have experienced it. I even spoke with the performers at the end and sometime in June may start doing their photography.
Music 11
Professor Oliver Markson
May 14, 2011
On a Sunday Afternoon
Three of my classmates and I, attended "On a Sunday Afternoon" at the Bruno Walter Auditorium of Lincoln Center in New York. The featured performers were: Wendy Brown, mezzo-soprano; William Lewis, piano; and Christian Chapp Realmuto, flute.
Wendy Brown, current member of the Metropolitan Opera's Extra Chorus since 2002, and William Lewis co-founder of Opera Oggi since 2007, opened with Robert and Clara Schumann's Widmung. The Schumann couple's composition really set the tone for the beginning of the performance. Although it was entirely in German, translations were provided, but in the voice and piano you could feel the mood even if you didn't read the words. It was the sort of music that plucked at the heart, which was, no doubt, the writers' intention. Even without the vocals, the piano's dynamic measures resonated beautifully in the both the ear and the body.
Brown and Lewis performed three more pieces together in this set and the theme was quite clear: Love, beauty and togetherness. There three were the embodiment of the accompaniment of the piano to Brown’s recitative for these pieces. The other three pieces included Mein schoner Stern, Liebst du um Schonheit, and lastly, Er ist gekommen. In my opinion, the most beautiful of the three was Liebst du um Schonheit, because vocally and instrumentally, it contained the richest variations with a subtlety that still made it very touching.
Both voice and piano blended in similar fashion to the theme being represented. However, this simple blend gained some color when Christian Chapp Realmuto took the stage. He is a young man, only seventeen years old, and he moved as awkwardly as any seventeen year old did. He took the stage and his flute pulled the sheet music and backing off the stand. As amusing as it was to everyone seated, he did not let this deter or unnerve him. His expression didn’t change at all. He simply picked up the sheet music, aligned the stand and began his set.
The music played by Realmuto began very soft and sweet but one minute into the piece, the mood changed to a somber tone, then shortly went back to happy. The one thing that stuck out the most was his amazing breath control. Then seemingly out of nowhere, the pianist, William Lewis, began to sing with the flute, then they split and the flute stopped, he sang, then it joined him again, almost as if the flute and the vocals were accompanying one another at different moments almost like a Fugue, with the piano being the third instrument. Most of what followed was oratorio and when he finished the vocals, the flute was the only instrument that played, echoing the beginning of the piece.
Lewis remarked that he didn’t know where the piece came from. It was at this point that Lewis began to speak to the audience more about every musical piece that followed. He began to tell a story about a battle that happened in 1847 and the piece that followed was a tragic tale of the soldiers who were wounded and found their one inspiration at their weakest moment from the Maid of Monterey.
The Maid of Monterey was played in minor. Lewis sang a narrative tale which spoke of the look of the corpses on the battlefield, the Maid’s anguish being greater than others, and her efforts as caretaker trying to help the dying. The dying soldiers blessed her for her help and she “Drove death’s pang away”. The song would go back to the beginning, at the end, and they would praise the Maid of Monterey, in the same as their lives ended as they began, with their mother or caretaker.
Lewis then told another tale of a fourteen year old boy who wrote his first song back then and only made his debut at eighty seven years old. The musician, Lee Hoiby, died the Monday before this performance. Lewis shed a tear on stage. The song was about a fourteen year old boy thinking about the future echoing “Some day I’ll know”. As everyone listened to the entire arrangement, knowing the story, everyone felt the same tragedy and the expression on everyone’s face was the same.
After this sad tale and sad song, Lewis picked up the pace a bit with a humorous song from the nineteen fifties about heeding the wisdom of Aesop, the fable teller. He explained that this was an American song that was one of the almost forgotten. It was a bit like Swing music that you could bop to. It told a story of Aesop’s in the cryptic fable manner using example but at the end it told the story in plain English. After this there was a short intermission.
When they came back from intermission, they skipped one of the songs and started instead with A Piper. This piece was played as if the flute was played by a piped piper skipping along the road with the piano accompanying him. The vocalist, Brown, narrated the story about this piper entertaining people along the street. It was lively and transported the mind to a place of innocence and grace for expressions of joy.
The next song was a strange but entertaining piece as well. It was a lullaby from the isle of Mann: A mixture of traditional and another song, some Irish, Celtic and Gaelic. It was about giving without restrictions and symbolism was used to describe his feelings as they related to an apple, a house and a palace. The apple with no core, the house with no door and the palace with no key.
The traveling doctor shop was a very amusing composition about people who are self medicating which is as poignant then as it is today. It is about a woman who takes pills for everything and carried so many medications that she was considered the travelling doctor shop. The music was a mocking accompaniment of the story being told and Lewis invited everyone to sing along when he gave the hint. It was very funny.
The next two songs were almost part one and two of the same theme although they were written independently. The first was A Flow in a Field of Stone, written by an Irish American drummer. It talks about a woman called Mary who lies in a grave and someone changes her flowers regularly. Very sad. It makes the singer which about love eternal and wishes he could feel love beyond this life. It truly made me feel like I should be kinder and move loving to those I hold dear. The next song was a follow up to this and Lewis’ voice was a beautiful instrument used to navigate and sail across the notes like a finely played instrument.
After these beautiful pieces I was a bit disappointed that the next piece by Sondheim was not nearly as beautiful to me. Although it was technically good, with everything in its place, I didn’t feel it. Maybe I was already on a certain high from being moved by everything that came before but I expected more from the name Sondheim and it did not deliver. The lyrics were deeply written and possibly moving but the melody wasn’t powerful enough for me. As good as the pianist and vocalist were, they could not save this piece for me.
Barab’s piece was very intriguing to me because the music spoke beneath the vocals. The story was about being busy in everyday activities to transitioning to being free to do something. She wondered “where the boys are” and I suspected that her “eating” had nothing to do with food, especially as her “heart fluttered” as a result. Then she is “used” and has no one to take her out and even though she was satisfied early, she still “must live”. The entire composition was very mature in subject matter and I found it refreshing.
The piece, This Moment, captured moments, like the vocals did, and spoke of all kinds of feelings in fleeting moment. From heartache to joy to sorrow to emptiness and the entire composition felt as such.
Forever Young started as accapela speaking of best wishes to listeners for all of their goals beyond imagining. The piano came in poco a poco then when it became full; it went back to vocals only, with best wishes for good life and good qualities. The piano would play mezzo piano back and forth between vocals only and accompaniment. The voice would then provide the strength on top of the serenity of the piano with the words “May you be Strong for what’s to come.”
The entire presentation ended even more beautifully than it began and I feel blessed to have experienced it. I even spoke with the performers at the end and sometime in June may start doing their photography.
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