PERFORMANCE REVIEW: W. A. Mozart, F. Schubert, F. Mendelssohn, G. Fauré, C. Debussy, M. Ravel, & J. Kosma — Dans un bois solitaire (Anna Reinhold, mezzo-soprano; Jory Vinikour, piano; 28 Chairs, Asheville, North Carolina, 29 May 2024)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756 – 1791), FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797 – 1828), FELIX MENDENSSOHN (1809 – 1847), GABRIEL FAURÉ (1845 – 1924), CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862 – 1918), MAURICE RAVEL (1875 – 1937), and JOSEPH KOSMA (1905 – 1969): Dans un bois solitaire: an Evening of German Lieder and French chansons — Anna Reinhold, mezzo-soprano; Jory Vinikour, piano [28 Chairs, Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Asheville, Asheville, North Carolina, USA; Wednesday, 29 May 2024]

Though the concept of the Liederabend evokes the years in the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century during which Franz Schubert and his friends enchanted their fellow denizens of Habsburg Vienna with informal performances of the composer’s songs, it is likely that people have gathered to hear musicians communicate through singing since it was first discerned that melodies, harmonies, and rhythms elucidate the meanings of words with universal immediacy that speech often lacks. The most eloquent orator could not meld music and words as mesmerizingly and memorably as Anna Reinhold and Jory Vinikour interwove them in the inaugural presentation of their recital programme Dans un bois solitaire, presented in the beautiful space and bright acoustic of Asheville’s Unitarian Universalist Congregation in advance of performances in Virginia and New York. Voice and piano intertwined as though wielded by a single artist, baring the soul of song.

Founded by Asheville native Jessica Honigberg with the mission of enriching communities with ‘beautiful little concerts,’ 28 Chairs brought Dans un bois solitaire to the Blue Ridge, an apt setting for the programme’s emphasis on parallels between human emotions and natural landscapes and phenomena. Presently based principally in the District of Columbia, future 28 Cha​irs seasons will be centered in Asheville, furthering the organization’s commitment to introducing appreciative audiences to world-class artists and performances. Neither a more welcoming location than Asheville’s UUC nor a more attentive company of listeners than those who assembled therein could have witnessed the birth of an enchanting programme and an uncommonly fruitful artistic partnership.

Composed during Mozart’s time in Mannheim in 1777 and 1778 and dedicated to the soprano Elisabeth Auguste Wendling, daughter of the celebrated flautist for whom Mozart composed several of his best-known works for flute, the ariette ‘Dans un bois solitaire et sombre’ (K. 308/295b) is a setting of an atmospheric text by Antoine Houdar de La Motte upon which Mozart lavished the full panoply of his resources as a musical dramatist. Complementing the unwavering energy and rhythmic vitality of Vinikour’s playing, his approach to the music alert to its propulsive treatment of the words, Reinhold transformed the piece's vocal line into an emotional journey of operatic intensity, establishing the piece as an ancestor of Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung. Similar dramatic focus through the voice provided the frame in which the mezzo-soprano animated ‘Als Luise die Briefe ihres ungetreuen Liebhabers verbrannte’ (K. 520), a Lied dating from May 1787 that was fraudulently circulated after Mozart’s death as the work of another composer. As Mozart’s widow Constanze did in 1799, Reinhold and Vinikour reclaimed the song for the Mozart canon, their performance illuminating the genius of its construction.

Products of a period of inspired industriousness typical of Mozart’s time in Vienna in the summer of 1787, ‘An Chloë’ (K. 524) and ‘Abendempfindung’ (K.523) date from the period during which much of the composer’s energy was devoted to completing and preparing the score of Don Giovanni. It can be argued that shadows of Donna Anna, Donna Elvira, and Zerlina can be perceived in these Lieder. Vinikour’s experience with playing continuo in performances of Mozart’s operas lent his playing of these Lieder special distinction, the modern instrument seeming to assume the sonic palette of a period fortepiano. The texts of both songs were delivered by Reinhold with suavity and evanescent ambiguity, the amalgamation of wit and wistfulness drawn from rather than imposed upon the music. Infrequent lapses in intonational purity in the middle of the voice, here and in other selections, were offset by consistent, flawless placement of tones at the top of the stave.

As the Mozart songs in the recital indicated, the German Lied did not originate with Franz Schubert, but few musicisns or musicologists would be likely to contradict the assertion that it was Schubert’s work that elevated Lieder from humble beginnings to often being esteemed as the greatest tests of singers’ artistry. Setting a poem by his friend Franz von Schober, Schubert produced one of the enduring masterworks of the song repertory with his 1817 Lied ‘An die Musik’ (D.547). It is logical to expect a composer to endeavour to give of his best when writing a paean to music, but, their great promise notwithstanding, a performance of ‘An die Musik’ of the radiant serenity achieved by Reinhold and Vinikour is ever a thing of spontaneity that cannot be foretold. 'Die Forelle' (D.550) is unquestionably also one of Schubert's most popular Lieder. That popularity sometimes engenders complacency, deceiving performers with a false impression that the song will succeed even when badly done. In the performance in this recital, Schubert’s splendid riparian piano writing and Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart’s words were articulated with extraordinary verve and inviolable musicality.

Vinikour played the first of two solo pieces, the opening Andante con moto Lied of Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 19b Lieder ohne Worte, with poetic fervor ideally suited to the music’s Romantic zeal. Deftly navigating Mendelssohn’s dense but diaphonous writing, Vinikour devoted particular delicacy to his renderings of the Lied’s integral echo-like repetitions of simple descending figurations, touchingly suggesting pensive hesitation or resigned regret. The richness of Mendelssohn’s harmonic language, presaging Schumann, Brahms, and Mahler, was fully realized, but the Classical poise of the Lied's melodic line was always apparent. Exhibiting intuitive handling of the instrument that is not present in the pianism of some harpsichordists, Vinikour neither abused nor neglected the pedals, employing sostenuto sparingly but with finely-judged interpretive impact.

Even among native speakers, French diction of the clarity and responsiveness to verbal and emotional nuances of text demonstrated in Reinhold’s singing of the Fauré, Debussy, and Ravel chansons included in Dans un bois solitaire is uncommon. The expressive efficacy of Reinhold’s interpretations was therefore no less exhilarating than her musicianship, both in the French selections and in the Mozart and Schubert settings of German texts. The text of the opening song in the set of three published as Fauré’s Opus 23, ‘Les berceaux,’ can seem vaguely chauvinistic to Twenty-First-Century listeners, but the expressive honesty with which Reinhold sang the melodic line imparted the abiding humanity of Fauré’s handling of the words. The very different ‘Mandoline’ from the Opus 58 Cinq mélodies de Venise was sung with equal attention to the subtleties of its text and musical details, the voice floating atop Vinikour’s gossamer pianism.

First performed in 1900 by soprano Blanche Marot, with the composer at the piano, Claude Debussy’s Trois chansons de Bilitis (L.90) simmer with the latent eroticism of their words, the sensual subtexts of which are limned in music of chameleonic shades. The prevailing mood of each song rises from the writing for piano, executed in this performance with imaginative elasticity of approach. Vinikour’s rhythmic drive gave Reinhold a strong pulse over which she breathed life into ‘La flûte de Pan.’ The collaborative synchronicity of their performance of ‘La chevelure’ highlighted the sly sybaritism of Debussy’s coupling of music and text. An understated but pervasive starkness palpitated in ‘Le tombeau des naïades,’ Reinhold projecting an arresting vocal hollowness that evinced the song’s bleak sepulchral setting.

Vinikour’s second solo selection was the Sarabande from Claude Debussy’s suite Pour le piano, completed in 1901 and later orchestrated by Maurice Ravel. Observing Debussy’s instruction that the piece be played ‘avec une élégance grave et lente’ with unwavering fidelity, Vinikour reminded the Asheville audirnce of his renowned prowess in French Baroque music. The modernism of Debussy’s musical language in this Sarabande contains accents learned from Lully, the Couperins, and Rameau, composers whose works feature prominently in Vinikour’s repertoire as a harpsichordist. In his hands, this was an authentic sarabande but one with no pretense of ‘period’ quaintness.

As their title suggests, Maurice Ravel’s Cinq mélodies populaires grecques are arrangements of folk songs from the island of Chios, for which Ravel matched the traditional melodies with original piano accompaniments. Ravel’s Basque heritage perhaps heightened his propensity for musical exoticism, and the inventiveness of his settings intimates that these Greek songs appealed to his harmonic curiosity. Reinhold and Vinikour suffused their account of ‘Chanson de la mariée’ with an air of amorous discovery, the lascivious undertones of the words treated with sly humor. An attitude of solemnity permeated ‘Là-bas, vers l’église,’ Vinikour’s playing adopting hymn-like sobriety. The sequence of ‘Quel galant m’est comparable,’ ‘Chanson des cueilleuses de lentisques,’ and ‘Tout gai!’ was a musical journey upon which Reinhold and Vinikour guided the audience through a kaleidoscopic array of emotions, each of which was differentiated by the singer’s vocal inflections. Like Debussy, Ravel gleaned much about musical form from his Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century forebears, and every ‘antique’ element gained novelty from Vinikour’s expertise.

Made famous by the actress Juliette Gréco, Joseph Kosma’s and Jacques Prévert’s standard ‘Et puis après’ exuberantly codified the artistic credo exemplified by Reinhold, Vinikour, 28 Chairs, and Dans un bois solitaire. ‘Nous sommes comme nous sommes,’ their encore declared with irreproachable musical integrity and genuine mirth, ‘et nous sommes maîtres de la chanson—dans un bois solitaire, ou dans les plus célèbres salles de récital du monde!’