Review
"Soprano Jennifer Aylmer, baritone Randall Scarlata, and pianist Laura Ward in a program "Tin Pan Alley at the Gardner" delighted, fascinated, informed, and touched our hearts. Perhaps most surprising of all, the three transported many of us back to another time, uniquely American, to alternating states of the sublime to the ridiculous, this in a few blinks of the eye. All were absolutely top-notch. Sunday, October 3 was the threesome's third journey to the museum. Take note: they are coming back next Sunday, same place and time-1:30. If you are looking for enlightenment-that's not too strong a word- and an indescribably uplifting time, you will not want to miss next week's follow-up concert.
Fast-moving sets of five songs each were performed: "The Birth of Tin Pan Alley"; "Modern Life," which focused on the telephone in Hello My Baby (1899), another travel invention in Come Josephine in My Flying Machine (1910) and yet another in The Enchanted Train (1923); and the final set, "Home Sweet Home." I knew about ten of the twenty songs on the program, so, for me, their song selection could not have been better, presenting both the familiar and unfamiliar. Singers and pianist come with mounds upon mounds of experience. The threesome was as expert as entertaining, singing and talking through the twenty songs and a little bit of their history. For their first set, "The World of Song," they began with I Feel a Song Coming On (1935), music by Jimmy McHugh, lyrics by Dorothy Fields. Both Aylmer and Scarlata used this one as a warm-up, and then carried on with some facts about Tin Pan Alley, the kind of which you may have forgotten but always want to hear again, when and where it all started and how the place got to be called by that name. Aylmer and Scarlata also pointed out that Isabella Stewart Gardner, herself, having taken a liking to American popular song, enjoyed the early songs, ones she might well have heard in her very own Boston palace.
When composer James L. Molloy died, it was a fact that a copy of Love's Old Sweet Song (1884) could be found in every household in Great Britain. If you cannot remember this song by its title, you will certainly recognize the unforgettable melody the instant it begins. Randall Scarlata showed his love for this gem with the clearest of diction and the finest of phrasing. Another song from this set written by Noel Coward, his Mrs. Worthington (1933), drew chuckles from around the room. All three performers put just the right bounce in the rhythm. Sometimes their word delivery verged on speech: "Don't put your daughter on the stage" they chanted. I was assured that Mrs. Aylmer, soprano Jennifer's mother who was in the audience, was no stage mother like Mrs. Worthington. Counterpointed melodies in Play a Simple Melody (1914), another of Irving Berlin's hits, and a subtle, most beautiful modulation in Jerome Kern's The Land Where the Good Songs Go (1917), caused one to consider an artfulness these American popular composers brought to their songs. Singers Aylmer and Scarlata reminded us of Stephen Foster's leaving the minstrel song to explore expression in the sphere of art song. His parlor songs best known to most of us were heard in enchanted renderings of Beautiful Dreamer (1862) and Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair (1854) first sung by baritone, Scarlata and soprano Aylmer, respectively, then in duet, combining the two melodies. It might have been the most moving moment of the afternoon. Stephen Foster called his wife Jeanie though her real name was Jane. He dedicated his song to her.
You could feel and savor this love expressed in Foster's songs through the singing of Jennifer Aylmer and Randall Scarlata and in the piano accompaniment from Laura Ward. The three lifted all of the American treasures on the entertaining yet instructive program to heights they belonged."
Review
"Scarlata addressed the audience. Among other things he mentioned his interest in performing lieder for the first time in the round, and that he would enjoy experimenting theatrically with the unusual space of the Gardner Museum's Calderwood Hall. He also discussed the structural peculiarities of Schwanengesang. Unlike Winterreise and Die Schöne Müllerin, Schubert's earlier song cycles, the lyrics of Schwanengesang were taken from the works of three different poets. Much, indeed, of what we know as Schwanengesang (including the title) was the invention of the publisher as he attempted to put together enough unrelated material after Schubert died to cash in on the popularity of the earlier song cycles. Thus, the cycle includes seven poems of Rellstab's, six of Heine's, and one by Seidl (the final song, "Die Taubenpost" was rumored to have been the last song Schubert composed). There is some evidence that Schubert may have intended to make a full cycle out of the works of Heine, but, if so, he seems never to have completed it (these being his only settings of that poet).
Scarlata's smooth voice and impeccable enunciation paired well with Hochman's delicacy. The resonant low notes of "In der Ferne" were very satisfyingly sung. The appropriately un-nerving colors of "Der Doppelganger" made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. And Scarlata did indeed project in the round, as he promised, moving and rotating with the dramatic turns of the music so that no audience member remained neglected for long. Combining this solution to the distribution of the audience with his expressivity, he successfully reached the prodigious height of the hall and of Schubert's Art."