Song recital by Jette reflects intelligence

By Richard Storm for The Register-Guard.

Excellent singing requires great intelligence. Yes, there must be a good natural voice and careful training. But it is intelligence, the ability to understand the music and communicate it to the audience, that is the key to great performance and is easily as important as the voice itself.

Intelligence was amply present in Maria Jette's song recital at Beall Hall on Saturday evening. Jette is a favorite of festival audiences, and it is easy to understand why.

She is charming, creates a lovely stage picture and communicates the music with an attractively relaxed intensity. She is scrupulous in her attention to detail, is particularly adept in German pronunciation, and is truly musical. That she does not possess a large or particularly rich voice did not often stand in the way of the music, so carefully had she prepared her performance.

Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, famous Felix's precocious sister, is sadly neglected in today's concert halls. It is difficult to comprehend this neglect (on the risky assumption that gender prejudice is no longer dominant in the performing arts), given the enormous talent and disciplined skill she demonstrated in her enormous and varied output.

The five songs chosen for this concert, set to texts by such iconic poets as Goethe and Heine, are beautifully crafted and superbly melodic. Jette warmed up during this sequence, moving away from the rather effortful and discontinuous sound produced in the first to a richer and better-connected line in the last.

In the songs by Ludwig Spohr for soprano, clarinet and piano which followed, vocal production was much smoother, with effortless connections between the lower and upper ranges and richer color.

Spohr, whose prodigious output in all musical genres was phenomenal, is another neglected master. The melodic content of these songs is so graceful as to seem inevitable, a hallmark of fine music, and this performance captured that grace very well indeed.

Jette's concept of the music was beautifully realized in her warm vocalism, in Michael Anderson's sensitive clarinet line, and in Sonja Thompson's remarkable contribution at piano.

Chamber music of this kind requires selfless collaboration, suppression of ego and, of course, intelligence, displayed here in welcome abundance. Music-making at this level is by no means a given, even in a festival of this quality.

Johann Simon Mayr also wrote in every conceivable form during his long career, which stretched from the mid-18th to the mid-19th centuries. Another example of unmerited neglect, three Italian songs by Mayr were discovered by Jette and were given only their second airing in the United States during this recital.

They are florid, operatic and intensely dramatic. The long introduction to the third song, "Luci mie belle," demands and received the utmost in sensitivity at the piano; the vocal line which follows is an extended aria on the subject of - guess what? - unrequited love. Despite an occasional shortage of breath, Jette sang it very well indeed.

The Six Elizabethan Songs by contemporary composer Dominick Argento are difficult and amusing takes on those classic British concerns: love and death, sex and the weather. Employing a subtly archaic musical vocabulary, Argento has created a modern atmosphere in his setting of these convoluted verses.

Jette coped well with their musical challenges, although discontinuity between registers resurfaced from time to time. Most successful was "Dirge," a wistful reflection on "Come away, come away, death," in which floated pianissimo passages were ravishing.

Ask any singer: English is the hardest language in which to sing. Jette, while not entirely immune to the pitfalls created by the way our vowels and consonants are placed, met the challenge well.

A Schubert showpiece, "The Shepherd on the Rock," closed the program and once more invited the sensitive participation of clarinetist Anderson. Although well-prepared and carefully presented, this was not the most felicitous choice Jette could have made, as it requires vocal heft and richness that is not hers to command.

But the encore, a charming tribute to Thomas Quasthoff, the artist whose disposition was the reason for this program, was at once amusing, touching and intelligent.

Richard Storm is a classical music reviewer for the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune.