ARTS&LIFE
THE VANC:OUVER SUN, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 2005
* C7
Musical heavyweights pool strengths at recital OVERNIGHT REVIEW Dawn Upshaw and Richard Goode In concert for Vancouver Recital Society Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, April 12
BY DAVID GORDON DUKE American superstars Richard Goode and Dawn Upshaw have cult status for their respective legions of fans. In their joint program for the VRS they managed to pool their particular reper toire strengths to create an unorthodox but' enchanting recital deux. Goode has made a focused commitment to the Viennese classics throughout his career. Upshaw, on the other hand, is known for her broad, adventurous reper toire - she sings everything from Dow land to Saariaho and Golijov.
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Goode opened the program with one of Haydn's last piano sonatas, his playing lucid, playful, and above all intelligent. Without any undue fuss or extravagance, he was able to match Haydn's refin.ed writ ing with gestures that made the overall structure of the three seemingly disparate movements clear and satisfying. To complete the first half of the pro gram, he was joined by Upshaw in Schu mann's twelve Liederkreis songs. This turned out to be a miraculous partner ship. Upshaw's preternatural clarity illu minated Schumann's inner world of ·intense emotion, while at the keyboard Goode supported and intensified her every gesture, often summing up the con tent of each fleeting miniature in won derfully nuanced postludes. Theirs was a reading founded on a deep shared under standing of the oh-so-Romantic poetry of Eichendorff and Schumann. The second portion of the program
A'fAGLANCE
Upshaw and Goode are the best of musi cal friends, making it a true duo-recital. e x p l o r e d the unlikely c o n n e c t i o n between Debussy and the inspired Russ ian d ilettante Modest Mussorgsky. Debussy's three songs that comprise Fetes Galantes II are in an entirely different world to the Schumann cycle: the subtle, sophisticated yearnings of a modern sen sibility. Upshaw was cool, smoky, even sultry for a few moments. Goode concentrated on Debussy's exquisite autumn-winter colours and textures, which modulated perfectly into a Debussy prelude before
! . · N:lirlt?t:;::,:� :.:·�· The favourite Mondnacht (Moonlight) from Schumann's Liederkre1: utt�rl transcendent . !•t:.:th3if:: Two hours; one intermission returning us to the more gallant world of the theatrical L'isle joyeuse. The final work on the program was the five youthful vignettes that make up Mu s s o r g sky's The Nu rsery. Mus sorgsky's songs were fa r more extro verted than Debussy's, but the connec tions were clear enough. To tie the program back together, Schubert's Im Fruhling, as a first encore, took an enthusiastic crowd back to the evening's Viennese beginnings. David Gordon Duke is a Vancouver writer.
Soprano Dawn Upshaw paired with Richard Goode at the Chan Centre.