CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Kelley O'Connor
Cheryl Lin Fielding

Weill Recital Hall
Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Kelley O'Connor, Mezzo-Soprano
New York Recital Debut
Cheryl Lin Fielding, Piano

BRAHMS "Meine Liebe ist grün," Op. 63, No. 5
BRAHMS "Die Mainacht," Op. 43, No. 2
BRAHMS "Sapphische Ode," Op. 94, No. 4
BRAHMS "Von ewiger Liebe," Op. 43, No. 1
HAHN "Mai"
HAHN "Fêtes galantes"
HAHN "Infidélité"
HAHN "L’enamourée"
WOLF "Mögen alle bösen Zungen," SW 13
WOLF "Bedeckt mich mit Blumen"
WOLF "In dem Schatten meiner Locken"
WOLF "Wehe der, die mir verstrickte," SW 33
WILLIAM BOLCOM WILLIAM BOLCOM from Cabaret Songs
·· Over the Piano
·· Lady Luck
·· Blue
·· Toothbrush Time
MONTSALVATGE XAVIER MONTSALVATGE Cinco canciónes negras
·· Cuba dentro de un piano
·· Punto de Habañera
·· Chévere
·· Canción de cuña para dormir a un negrito
·· Canto negro

Encore:
WILLIAM BOLCOM "Waitin’" from Cabaret Songs

Program Notes:

By Susan Halpern

JOHANNES BRAHMS “Meine Liebe ist grün,” Op. 63, No. 5; “Die Mainacht,” Op. 43, No. 2; “Sapphische Ode,” Op. 94, No. 4; and “Von ewiger Liebe,” Op. 43, No. 1
Born May 7, 1833, in Hamburg; died April 3, 1897, in Vienna.

Brahms found models for his songs in Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Schumann and in German folk song. Although he was particular about grouping songs, he was criticized for not always being discerning in his choice of text; nevertheless, the beauty of his music overcomes any limitation the poetry might impose.

The poem Brahms chose for “Meine Liebe ist grün” was written by Felix Schumann, Brahms’s godson and the youngest child of Robert and Clara Schumann. Felix died at the age of 25 from tuberculosis, but six years before, Clara had sent Brahms several of his poems. Brahms used two, entitled Junge Liebe I and II, for Op. 63. Here, the narrator, a young man in love, exclaims that his love is as green as the lilac bush and as fair as the sun shining on it, endowing the bush with fragrance and joy. His soul rejoices in singing love songs. Brahms sent this very charming song to Clara as a Christmas Eve gift and, in a letter, told her how he was easily able to compose the piece after remembering her husband’s “Schöne Fremde,” which he quotes at the beginning of this song.

Ludwig Hölty’s text, as edited by Johann Voss, has a sense of loneliness and detachment that spoke to Brahms, who recalled his own terrible experiences playing in Hamburg waterfront brothels when he was still a boy. In “Die Mainacht,” the singer describes his alienation as he sadly wanders from bush to bush in moonlight. The piano introduction establishes the sense of lack of direction.

“Sappische Ode” borrows the form, not the subject matter, of poetry by “Sappho of Lesbos”; the lyricist, Hans von Schmidt, who gave this poem directly to Brahms, followed the poetic structure of the poetess. The song displays a vocal line with slow turns at the end of each stanza. Both singer and accompaniment keep within a soft and subtle dynamic range, reinforcing the song’s sentiment. Many musical details initially create considerable calm, and then when the lover remembers the swaying branches and the dew, the accompaniment plays staccato pulses to underline the plucking of kisses.

In “Von ewiger Liebe” (“Of Eternal Love”) Brahms creates a dialogue between lovers in a complex, highly imaginative setting. It has three discrete sections: the beginning sets the nighttime scene, the middle details the young man’s anxiety, and the last dramatizes the young lady’s reassurance of her love.

REYNALDO HAHN “Mai,” “Fêtes galantes,” “Infidélité,” and “L’énamourée”
Born August 9, 1874, in Caracas, Venezuela; died January 28, 1947, in Paris, France.

Hahn was born in Caracas to a Venezuelan mother and a German father, and moved with his family to France when he was three. As a youth, he became a darling of the salons of the Belle Epoch. In Paris in 1886, he entered the conservatory and studied with Jules Massenet, whose influence is detectible in Hahn’s early songs. (Hahn also studied with Gounod and Saint-Saëns.) Hahn made a significant mark in Parisian society with his unusual songs, which he sang to his own piano accompaniment.

Early in his career, Hahn met Sarah Bernhardt and Marcel Proust. Proust, with whom it is often contended that he had a relationship, gave Hahn a deep appreciation and understanding of poetry, which Hahn put to good use in his vocal compositions. Hahn once wrote, “The genuine beauty of singing consists in a perfect unison, an amalgam, a mysterious alloy of the singing and the speaking voice, or to put it better, the melody and the spoken word.” Proust used Hahn as the inspiration for the portrait of the musician Santeuil in his A La Recherche du Temps Perdu.

Generally, Hahn wrote his songs in the classical French tradition of the mélodie. Immediately accessible, they show his love of Mozart’s vocal style as well as his use of the lush harmonies of the late 19th-century.

The songs on tonight’s program come from Mélodies, Book 1. “Mai” (“May”) has a lush accompaniment as the piano follows the voice. Unlike many of the songs in Mélodies, its vocal line is lively and contoured.

Hahn’s settings of Verlaine poems, evocative and economic, are perfect realizations of the poet’s unique tone and mood. In the delicate “Fêtes galantes,” composed in 1892, the broken chords in the rhythmically flexible piano accompaniment evoke the playing of the mandolin.

With “Infidélité,” a poem by Gautier, the leader of the doctrine of “art for art’s sake,” Hahn creates a suppleness of melody and an atmosphere that has been described as bordering on the visual.

“L’enamourée,” a poem by Banville, Gautier’s disciple, displays Hahn’s keen suppleness of melodic expression.

HUGO WOLF From Spanisches Liederbuch: “Mögen alle bösen Zungen,” “Bedeckt mich mit Blumen,” “In dem Schatten meiner Locken,” and “Wehe der, die mir verstrickte”
Born March 13, 1860, in Windischgraz; died February 22, 1903, in Vienna.

Hugo Wolf began working on the Spanisches Liederbuch on October 28, 1889, and completed it on April 27, 1890. Published in Mainz in 1891, it was drawn from a collection of Spanish poems of the 16th and 17th centuries, translated into German by Emanuel Geibel and Paul Heyse. In it, Wolf reaches a level of compositional maturity that allows him to structure his songs from underlying ideas in the poems rather than in a response to details in them. Conveying the overarching sense of a poem, he employs more recurrent rhythmic motives and accompaniment figures than in earlier works and creates more vivid harmonies. Wolf placed 10 “geistliche” (religious) poems in the Spanisches Liederbuch; the rest consists of “weltliche” (worldly, or secular) songs, most with erotic themes. Tonight’s selections come from the “weltliche” portion.

“Mögen alle bösen Zungen,” with an anonymous text, takes serious poetic verses and transforms them into a light and delicate song alternating two lilting related strains and varying them each on repetition.

“Bedeckt mich mit Blumen,” an anonymous poem provided by Geibel, number 26 of the secular songs, is a beautiful and lush portrait of yearning. Without yielding to the sentimental, the voice and the piano follow each other in intertwined counterpoint as they spin the languid melody.

One of Wolf’s finest songs, “In dem Schatten meiner Locken” (“In the Shade of My Locks”), the second of the secular songs with an anonymous text provided by Heyse, composed November 17, 1889, is a standard of the lied repertoire. The piano begins quietly with a dancing rhythm that varies as the vocalist’s lines develop, following many moods and tempi. A light work of harmonic subtlety and melodic allure, it has an erotic theme. A woman wonders if she should wake her lover sleeping in the shade cast by her hair but vacillates and decides not to do so. The shifts in rhythm and changes of harmony mirror her indecision.

Wolf’s setting of Gil Vincente’s “Wehe der, die mich verstrickte,” composed on April 27, 1890, completes his work on the Spanisches Liederbuch. A bright and light song, it is a very brief ending for the cycle.

XAVIER MONTSALVATGE Cinco canciónes negras
Born March 11, 1912, in Gerona, Spain; died May 7, 2002, in Barcelona.

Montsalvatge always remarked that these songs, composed in 1945, were among his favorites of his own works. His most often performed song cycle, it embodies, according to the composer, “West Indian musical style, which was itself originally Spanish, exported overseas and then reimported into our country.”

The initial song, “Cuba dentro de un piano” (“Cuba on a Keyboard”), sets a poem by Rafael Alberti to a lyrical habañera, creating a nostalgic evocation of the period when “the Bay of Cadiz was paradise” and Cuba’s spell was felt in Spain. When the song blames money, intimated to have an American source, for ruining this ideal state, the accompanying harmonies turn sour. “Punto de Habañera” (“Humorous Flirtation”) sets a more cheerful Nestor Lujan poem about a young 18th-century girl, who sailors admire. Here again ironic dissonance breaks through the surface of the playful song at the end, perhaps hinting that the motives of the sailors are suspect. “Chévere,” a dark, slow song to a Nicolas Guillén poem, chronicles the adventure of a violent worker who not only “wields a flashing knife” but is “a blade himself,” slicing at his surroundings and trying, futilely, to sing. At the song’s end, Montsalvatge again introduces dissonance when the man goes “after his woman.” In “Canción de cuña para dormir a un negrito” (“Cradle Song to Put a Little Black Boy to Sleep”) with an Ildefonso Pereda Valdes text, a mother comfortingly convinces her little boy that sleep will free him. Optimistically, she predicts that his master will buy him a uniform and make him his groom if he gets enough rest. Only the piano accompaniment admits, with its unsettling harmonies, that the mother cannot offer her son a conventional lullaby. The cycle ends with “Canto negro” (“Black Song”), from another Nicolas Guillén poem, a spirited evocation of happy singing and dancing in the jungle.

WILLIAM BOLCOM From Cabaret Songs: “Lady Luck,” “Toothbrush Time,” “Blue,” and “Over the Piano”

Born May 26, 1938, in Seattle, Washington.

Bolcom, named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America, composes in a wide range of musical forms that include classical, jazz, rock, and popular idioms. Also an active performer, he has reached an especially wide audience through his contributions to the rediscovery and revival of the works of Scott Joplin and the ragtime tradition. Bolcom’s evolution of compositional style can be traced to the advice of his fellow composer, George Rochberg. As Bolcom puts it, Rochberg helped to show “alternate courses to me when I was still recovering from my experiences in the post-Webern movement.”

Bolcom’s wife and musical collaborator, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris, also has influenced his musical style. Her voice inspired the Cabaret Songs, set to the texts of the poet-lyricist Arnold Weinstein. Together, over two decades, Bolcom and Weinstein produced four successful volumes of Cabaret Songs, the first composed between late 1977 and mid-1978. Weinstein’s texts often satirically examine the underside of life, and Bolcom’s settings mirror the quirky rhyme and rhythm of the steamy verses. Of their project, Weinstein wrote: “We wrote these songs as a cabaret in themselves, no production ‘values’ to worry about. The scene is the piano, the cast is the singer.” The songs reflect the German cabaret lineage from Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht to Arnold Schoenberg. Most blend the sophisticated with the unrefined, and “Lady Luck” is a particularly good example.

From the second volume, made up of more reflective songs, comes the jazzy and direct “Toothbrush Time,” with its irregular melodic line that betrays and yet reaffirms the singer’s disenchantment.

The cycle ends with “Blue,” a simple accompanied melodic summation of its predecessors: its phrase “awf’ly smart people are often awful dumb!” has been read as an acknowledgment of the unassuming way in which both poet and composer have drawn from many parts of the artistic spectrum.

“Over the Piano,” the first song of the cabaret cycle, has a charming melodic vocal line over a rubato accompaniment, and it journeys between lyricism and parlando, telling an intriguing tale with an ironic end.

Susan Halpern contributes program notes to numerous musical organizations.

Kelley O'Connor, Mezzo-Soprano
New York Recital Debut
Possessing a voice of uncommon allure, musical sophistication far beyond her years, and intuitive and innate dramatic artistry, the Grammy Award–winning mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor has quickly emerged as one of the most compelling performers of her generation. During the 2007–08 season, the California native’s impressive calendar includes Dvořák’s Moravian Duets with Iván Fischer and the National Symphony Orchestra, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with Jiří Bĕlohlávek and the Dallas Symphony, Handel’s Messiah with Norman Mackenzie and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Haydn’s Mass in the Time of War with Bernard Labadie and the San Francisco Symphony, Stravinsky’s Les noces with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Falstaff at the Santa Fe Opera. The artist is profoundly honored to offer performances of Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs with Bernard Haitink and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and to make her New York City recital debut at Weill Recital Hall in a Carnegie Hall presentation.

Ms. O’Connor has received unanimous international critical acclaim for her numerous performances as Federico García Lorca in Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar. Ms. O’Connor created the role for the world premiere at Tanglewood under the baton of Robert Spano and subsequently has joined Miguel Harth-Bedoya for performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at Walt Disney Hall. She reprised her portrayal of Federico García Lorca in the world premiere of the revised edition of Ainadamar at the Santa Fe Opera in a new staging by Peter Sellars during the 2005 season, which also was presented at Lincoln Center. For her debut with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, in Ainadamar, she joined Robert Spano for performances and a Deutsche Grammophon recording: she rejoined Spano and Atlanta in summer 2006 for further performances of Ainadamar, including her debutsat the Ojai and Ravinia festivals. In the present season, she bows as Lorca in performances of Ainadamar at Opera Boston, the Adelaide Festival of Arts, the Barbican Centre, and with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Highlights of past seasons have included performances of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges with Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic, Mozart’s Requiem with Louis Langrée and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Brahms’s Songs for Alto, Viola, and Piano with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Chamber Music Society, Berio’s Laborintus II with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, concert performances of Hänsel und Gretel with Michael Christie and the Phoenix Symphony, Golijov’s Ainadamar Suite with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Roberto Minczuk at the Barbican Centre, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with Edward Gardner and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and a gala concert of opera arias and ensembles to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Santa Fe Opera. Ms. O’Connor enjoys a particularly warm musical collaboration with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra, with whom she has sung Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (in Cleveland and at Miami’s Carnival Center); Bernstein’s Symphony No. 1,“Jeremiah”; staged performances of Falstaff (in Cleveland and at the Lucerne Festival); and Stravinsky’s Requiem Canticles.

Recognized by Opera Now on its annual “Young Artists: Who’s Hot?” list of 2006, Ms. O’Connor has a Bachelor of Music degree from USC and received her master’s degree from UCLA while studying with Nina Hinson.

Cheryl Lin Fielding, Piano
Pianist Cheryl Lin Fielding has performed in concert halls throughout the US, Japan, and Taiwan, in such venues as Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, and the Seiji Ozawa Hall. She has been honored with the Grace B. Jackson Prize in Excellence by the Tanglewood Music Festival, three times received the distinguished Gwendolyn Koldofsky Scholarship Award in Keyboard Collaborative Arts, and has been featured on the classical radio station KUSC in Los Angeles, California.

Cheryl’s musical studies began at a young age in Taiwan, first on the piano and later on the violin. Later pursuits resulted in teaching fellowships at The Juilliard School and the USC Thornton Opera program. She was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, Music
Academy of the West, and Aspen Music Festival, and has performed with the Mark Morris Dance Group at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.

Cheryl has worked with such distinguished conductors as Christian Badea, John DeMain, Randall Behr, James Levine, Timothy Lindberg, George Mester, and Dean Williamson. She has participated in master classes with William Bolcom, Dawn Upshaw, Phyllis Curtin, Margot Garret, Marilyn Horne, Graham Johnson, Warren Jones, and Martin Katz.

Ms. Fielding is dedicated to opera education and outreach in the communities of Southern California. She has served as Assistant Music Director for the Los Angeles Opera education programs and is presently the co-founder and Music Director of NachtMusik, an ensemble committed to bringing opera experience to inner-city Los Angeles schools. Cheryl received two master’s degrees at The Juilliard School (Piano Performance and Collaborative Piano) under the tutelage of Oxana Yablonskaya and Jonathan Feldman, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Southern California (Keyboard Collaborative Arts) with Alan Smith. To enhance her capabilities as a vocal coach, Mr. Fielding also studied voice with Elizabeth Hynes during her doctoral candidacy at USC. Cheryl Lin Fielding is currently an adjunct professor at Chapman University, as well as a vocal coach and répétiteur at Opera Pacific.