The standing ovation came before a note of music had been sung. The Marilyn Horne Foundation’s annual gala recital is supposed to focus on song, but it also focuses on Marilyn Horne. Looking radiant in gold lace, apparently undaunted by a year’s struggle with cancer, she played host to Friday evening’s event at Zankel Hall, a night after giving a master class there, with every bit of her star flair. And at her first entrance the audience stood, with applause and shouts of “Brava,” to greet her.
Strange to say, the main attractions of the Horne Foundation’s four-day event (now in its 13th year), of which the gala was the culmination, do the least singing. This year master classes led by Ms. Horne, Barbara Cook and Evelyn Lear rather overshadowed two duo recitals by young singers.
Customarily the gala also features a guest artist in a cameo star turn. This year it was Marcello Giordani, who offered three Italian songs that had little to do with the program’s title, “Gypsy in My Soul.” For a man acknowledged as one of today’s leading tenors, three songs are a walk in the park, and Mr. Giordani tossed them off, with plenty of high notes. One is often aware, listening to him, of his hectic schedule; he seems to be in too much of a hurry to caress any one note fully, though you, and he, know that he could if he wanted to.
The bulk of the program was left to four able beneficiaries of the foundation: Leonardo Capalbo, a tenor; Sasha Cooke, a mezzo; Erica Strauss, a soprano; and Andrew Garland, a baritone. The tricky thing about these recitals is that they spotlight young artists performing music that may be new to them. Certainly Mr. Capalbo, who has a nice baritonal heft, didn’t sound completely at home in “Tres Poemas” by Joaquín Turina: he sang strongly but also often flat. Ms. Cooke, who has a smooth, grounded mezzo, and Ms. Strauss, who seems a little overeager to establish the strength of a good-size voice that needed a little more filling out, alternated in Dvorak’s “Ciganske Melodie” (“Gypsy Songs”).
The sandy-voiced Mr. Garland got to deliver the evening’s world premiere: two of three songs by Gabriela Lena Frank, settings of the Nicaraguan poet Pablo Antonio Cuadra. (The third song was composed during the workshop for composers and singers led by John Harbison andDawn Upshaw at Carnegie in 2004.) The three songs were effective though a little similar in their dramaturgy: in each, a thick piano part welled around the voice, then pulled back to leave him singing softly, a capella, or even speaking at climactic moments, after which the piano commented with plucked chords like the strumming of a guitar. Donna Loewy was the competent accompanist.
The other accompanists were Jonathan Kelly; the sparkling Vlad Iftinca; Jerome Tan; and a star in his field, Warren Jones. After the four singers had concluded the evening with a batch of rather messy Brahms “Zigeunerlieder” quartets, Mr. Jones buoyed them in a rendition of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” that was happily puppylike in its enthusiasm.
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