A new recording and two artistic presences — a special dialogue and an unusual program, with Florence as a background voice, but with two thirds of the lyrics sung in German... All the nuances of medium/low male voice declamato in this vocal technique that brings singing much closer to acting, speaking, breathing; an excellent piano performance. Two interpreters, one of whom is the composer of almost half of the music; they are different in age, background, training: the outcome is deep understanding, a unique concept of collaboration through exchange of cultural and personal experience, much time spent working together, and a wide measure of sympathetic love.
Loeffelholz-Lieder e altre rare melodie [Loeffelholz-Lieder and other rare art songs]
Leonardo Wolovsky, baritone; Gregorio Nardi, piano
Works by Roberto Lupi, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Gregorio Nardi, Jacques Ibert, Alban Berg, Paolo Rio Nardi, Charles Ives, Piero Luigi Zangelmi, Arnold Schönberg
2002 Phoenix Classics - 00616
TT 79:03
Nine composers, lyrics in four languages, and six with Provençal and Early French, the languages of the Cinque canti trovadorici by Roberto Lupi, setting to music texts by five different troubadours and trouvères. This is a program that features a superior curiosity, ranging in so many directions, that they would be hard to summarize here. The journeys of these two interpreters' fervid imagination extend from Florence to Jewish culture, to minor "domestic" German poetry (although meaningful and full of textual references and cross-references), to French chansons transplanted into Spanish subject matter, from a brief apparition of Berg (however widely refracted through many quotations and allusions in other music on the program) and a piece by Schönberg at his early stage, to a college song by Charles Ives (the only American composer of the recording, however presented in a tribute to German Lied)... In this artistic effort, interconnections and references among the pieces by several composers, and between the program and the performers, create a complex but interestingly natural system of relationships. Florence, the city where both Leonardo Wolovsky and Gregorio Nardi live, and where the work was accomplished, is widely depicted in the music selection, as a much loved space, but always as a window wide open on the world of exchange and participation.
The program has been thought of as a personal tribute to the American-born baritone Leonardo Wolovsky, even though it ultimately conveys much more than that. Born in the United States in 1923, after his studies at Oberlin College he first visited Italy as a soldier during the Second World War. And to Italy he returned in the aftermath of the war, to take up residence in Florence. In that city, among his best friends were the composer Roberto Lupi and the pianist and teacher Paolo Rio Nardi; to both of them homage is rendered in this recording. Wolovsky in his long career has sung with the most prestigious partners (Maria Callas, Di Stefano, Eva Marton) and under a large number of eminent conductors (among whom Koussevitzky, Knappersbusch, Matacic, Solti), and with accompanying pianists such as Gieseking, his performances ranging from Mozart to Wagner, from French opera to contemporary roles, from early music to American repertory. He has launched in more than one career, until the challenge of this cd that, instead of a farewell, sounds very much like a new beginning for intensity of phrasing, for nobility of interpretation, for great attention to detail, for uninhibited intelligence in using to the best results the controversial—especially for a singer—blessings of advanced age.
Gregorio Nardi, represented in this compact disc as a pianist and moreover as a composer of almost half of the recorded music, was born in Florence in 1964, the grandson and pupil of the pianists and teachers Rio Nardi and Gregoria Gobbi, and studied many years with Wilhelm Kempff. His quality and trend as a soloist, researcher and critic, is that of a truly explorative nature coexisting with such a pianistic instinct, that in his programs surprise is always at hand. They include Liszt as well as contemporary music, "minor" repertory and the best-known piano masterpieces. Active for many years as researcher of Robert Schumann's early unpublished piano music manuscripts, this remarkable interpreter has so far produced—among several other recordings—his first two impressively original compact discs devoted to Schumann unknown compositions, striking for both intelligence and sensitivity, for profound knowledge of the material and for beauty of sound; they are part of a larger project.
Remarks on individual pieces on the program are here in order. The performance unfolds beginning with Cinque canti trovadorici (1947) by Roberto Lupi (Milano 1908 - Dornach 1971) and the recreation of the spirit of monodic "early music", so popular in Italian music between the Thirties and the Forties of last century. Only a subtle balance of taste and distance can produce real involvement in this sort of music nowadays. The composer, active as a teacher and conductor, transcribed early Italian music from Ars Nova to the 18th century. Cinque canti trovadorici, written during the period Lupi was teacher of composition at the Florence Conservatory, is at least in the same measure composition as much as it is transcription and arrangement/adaptation of early musical material. Wolovsky sang under Lupi himself the Cinque canti trovadorici, inscribed to the pianist Gregoria Gobbi, the wife of Rio Nardi. The interpretation catches the spirit of evocation of an idealized past. In 20th-century Italian music history, Roberto Lupi holds an isolated and at the same time interactive position, and this performance so vividly catches the spirit of both such identities.
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (Firenze 1895 - Los Angeles 1968) follows with the "traditional" Jewish Three sephardic songs (1958). The interpreters transform into color, expression and folk-dance emphasis the awkward metrics of the exceedingly plain English lyrics, as if the music had been conceived keeping another language in mind, or as if this were a mere translation from another and more significant text (yet, especially in his many American years, the composer set to music a wide amount of English poetry); while the piano reveals that the original destination of the instrumental part had been for the harp. In Leonardo Wolovsky's special accents (as "your secret chamber", in Three sephardic songs, n. 3), the text is overcome in invisible theatre. Among the "correspondences" here, the most remarkable is perhaps the exchange of roles between the Jewish Florentine composer who lived as a refugee in the United States, and the Jewish American singer who chose Florence as his new homeland.
The next step of the connection to Florence and to personal relationships with the interpreters is Paolo Rio Nardi (Bologna 1899 - Firenze 1984). Nardi and Castelnuovo-Tedesco studied in the same composition class taught by Ildebrando Pizzetti at the Florence Conservatory. To that time (1917) the two melodies on the program, Piccoli grandi orizzonti and Navigando, date back. They are fresh little bozzetti, delicate sketches, both unpublished and dedicated to Rio Nardi's future wife, the pianist Gregoria Gobbi, and both set to music impressionistic quatrains with AABB rhymes by Mario Chini, resulting from a translation/rewriting of evocative haiku: the two interpreters' shared memories make this softly atmospheric music, filled with reminiscences, so meaningful to a larger "family" than it literally belongs to.
Piero Luigi Zangelmi's (Torino 1927) Die Brücke (1994) is, according to a chronological order, the first of the poems by Ingeborg Freifrau Loeffelholz von Colberg in this program to have been set to music, and is in musical language well connected to the last piece on the program, Arnold Schönberg's Abschied Op. 1 No. 2, that follows in the cd. Die Brücke may not be among the more convincing of the group of Loeffelholz-Lieder, also for the not always persuasive correspondence between musical accent and intonation of the German text. But the value of the presence of this piece is mainly in the tribute to a composer who holds as important the musical culture of the past three generations, an uncomfortable, unpopular choice in present times; that interest and respect he has passed on to the younger generations of his students. Zangelmi was for many years (from 1971 to 1986) teacher of composition at the Florence Conservatory, where he kept the position previously covered by Roberto Lupi and, among his many pupils, had Gregorio Nardi. Therefore, the network of correspondences may not be too convincing internally to the piece, but still this Lied has much to express.
Ich grolle nicht by Charles Ives (Danbury, CT 1874 - New York 1954) dates back (1897-1899) to the composer's Yale years and was published in the volume of 114 Songs under the section Four German Songs. Ives sets to music lyrics by Heinrich Heine (as Schumann did in Dichterliebe, 1840), provocatively adding a footnote that defies any criticism, for attempting to put music to texts of songs, which are masterpieces of great composers". It could not pass unnoticed that this performance of Ich grolle nicht is fifty percent of the time longer than any other of the very few recordings of the piece. The significant augmentation becomes, in the heavy and intense voice treatment, a matter of life and death, a sort of supreme struggle with every note and every syllable. A comparison with other interpretations shows their more superficial approach, their distance from the world of the American academic late-Romantic Liederistic world, towards a forced assimilation with the dimension of Song. In the most recent recording (The complete Songs of Charles Ives, vol. 2, Albany Music, 1995) of Mary Ann Hart (mezzo-soprano) and Dennis Helmrich (piano), even the Wagnerian chromaticism of the forte section, prior to the piano and ppp conclusion, setting to music the crucial words "Und sah die Nacht in in deines Herzens Raume / und sah die Schlang', die dir am Herzen frisst" -- even that is neglected. The only other recording for male voice of this Song/Lied is that by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Michael Ponti (DG 463 514-2), who just impeccably assimilate this Lied to a "regular" German one, without any distance; which is not enough after all, to show how Charles Ives was able in his early years to compose a beautifully accomplished Lied according to the best rules! This rendering of Ich grolle nicht is in the spirit an aging Charles Ives himself could have demonstratively sung an old Lied of his, as he did record many fragments of piano music and did some singing, too — with the same feeling of extreme participation and urgency to convey an extreme message.
In this program, also the one minute of Alban Berg's Nun ich der Reisen StĠrksten überwand (Lied Op. 2 Nr. 3, 1909) apparently unrelated to the rest of the pieces, between two of the Loeffelholz-Lieder, where Berg is quoted and alluded to, acquires its firm position inside the performance structure.
The compact disc comes to a conclusion with Arnold Schönberg's Abschied Op. 1 Nr. 2 (1898), a beginning composer for an effective ending - a real farewell - of the program. The Lied shows clear absorption of Wagner and Brahms, of late-Romantic influences. The impetuous vocal eloquence and the splendid piano solo brief interlude of the Lied, mostly performed here in labyrinthic slowed-down tempo as well, offer another example, after Ich grolle nicht, of how the experience of the singer's advanced age can affect the perspective of what for the composer had been an early piece. Abschied is one of the peaks of interpretation of the whole recording, a titanic envoy.
Unmentioned so far, are part of the cd also four out of the five Chansons de Don Quichotte (1931) by Jacques Ibert (1890-1962), the only French composer included in the program. The literary character of Don Quichotte is very familiar to both the composer and the singer. For Ibert, the wandering knight was an imaginary companion, especially during the Thirties, at the convergence of his musical interest in exoticism and his literary knowledge; and to him he gave voice on several occasions: chansons (1931), ballet-opera (Le chevalier errant, 1935), a film soundtrack (for Pabst's Don Quichotte, shot in France in 1933 with Chaljapin impersonating the protagonist), up to the radio-opera Évocation de Cervantès (1947). Wolovsky's repertory of Don Quichottes is wide, too, including composers such as Massenet (Don Quichotte, 1901), Ravel (the 3 chansons Don Quichotte á Dulcinée, 1932) and Frazzi (Don Chisciotte, 1952). The role is perfectly suitable to such a mature voice, and in this recording the baritone achieves most touching results, particularly in the last of the four pieces, Chanson de la mort de Don Quichotte (lyrics by Alexandre Arnoux).
But this is not the exact sequence inside the program, subtler and more complex instead, with pauses and fragmentation in the chronological and spacial unfolding. In this perspective, special attention is to be devoted to the still unpublished eight Loeffelholz-Lieder, lyrics by Ingeborg Freifrau Loeffelholz von Colberg (1908-1983) set to music by Gregorio Nardi, here introduced in their world première recording. They are dense compositions, meant to emphasize the gifts of Wolovsky's voice, also in a theatrical quality of correspondence between words and music. The baritone's voice opens up in a profusion of colors and dynamics, in the awareness of so many inner links. The Lieder do not constitute a cycle, or are at least deliberately treated not as such in the recording, where they are presented interspersed among the other pieces. Rather, a sort of open set, obeying to a development that springs forth from the juxtaposition with music by other authors. Commission, genesis and composition of the Lieder make an interesting story. It was the German noblewoman's son, Bernhard von Loeffelholz, one of Leonardo Wolovsky's closest friends, who introduced the two performers to his mother's poems, furthering their being set to music. The eight Loeffelholz-Lieder were composed in a wide timespan, between 1995 (Vergessene Kunst) and 2000 (Helle Nacht). Musically, each of them shows different characteristics, independently of the rest.
Gregorio Nardi emerges here as a well accomplished composer, offering incoming and outgoing presence or reminiscence of music in the style, absorbing and reflecting musical worlds and ages in a rich exchange. The Loeffelholz-Lieder shed further light on Gregorio Nardi's interesting concept of quotation, which is already so eloquently illustrated in his intense activity as a pianist and in his artistic choices. Here it appears to be a tribute to a world musically heterogeneous, culturally and emotionally gravitating around the main pole of the Austro-German culture, that gives substance to the poetry. The concept of multifaceted musical homage expands in numerous directions, from Lutheran chorales to late-Romantic and early-20th-century Lieder, last but not least that of noble Hausmusik, meeting the Loeffelholz family "Hausgedicht" (born of and for friendship or love, for almost "private" use).
Vergessene Kunst, the first of the Loeffelholz-Lieder according to a chronological order of composition, although has a rich pianistic texture in which the vocal line is immersed, and is defined by a vivid sense of theatre, still seems to be the most bound to the teacher Zangelmi, whose piece significantly follows in the program. But all the other Lieder are free in structure and densely allusive (a particularly interesting example being Li Tai Pe - Li Tai Po), even more so, musically, than the lyrics are verbally. They all have special traits: Der Reiter holds a dimension of ironical participation between sacred and profane in the complex texture, full of quotations, allusions and references; Heimwärts is highly reminiscent of the many trends of late-Romantic musical culture; whereas Zur Geburt von Heidi presents surprising tenderness in which fragments of late-Romantic melodies float, whose sweetness is reshaped from within the same musical tradition by Ives's Ich grolle nicht, that follows in the program; in Zur Geburt von Bernhard, the patron and friend deservedly gets the longest composition of the recording, about ten minutes of declamato and references, significantly followed by the piece by Berg and by Gregorio Nardi's Helle Nacht. It is in the sequence within the series and with other authors' pieces, that the Loeffelholz-Lieder seem to offer their best qualities and open unsuspected horizons of allusions and exchanges.
The expectation is that we can have in the future more compositions by Gregorio Nardi, alongside with his well known and beautiful playing. He ought to produce musical theatre, too, for which art he seems so gifted. And Leonardo Wolovsky always sings "acting theatrically", even in a studio recording. The mutual understanding between the two artists could not be more perfect.
The creation of this program takes unusual talent for correspondences and coincidences, for all that is relation and not isolation, whereas distance and detachment may stand out as the common sentiment of the lyrics and human situations explored. In addition, it reveals how it is possible to say something new in music without necessarily explore very modernistic avant-garde territories, keeping on the comfortable shores of the already heard. It reflects the multitude of Leonardo Wolovsky's artistic experiences, as well as Gregorio Nardi's inventive, unique combinations of pieces in his programs.
This is a compact disc worthy of being distributed and known internationally, as an example of collaboration and mutual enrichment between generations of artists and musical heritages, beyond the prejudice about aging as an artist, a singer in particular. Such prejudice is defied by Leonardo Wolovsky, who still has much to communicate and teach on the artistic professional level.
Aloma Bardi
for "VocalImages", 2 August 2002
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