Susan Graham: Carnegie Hall

Susan Graham has firmly established herself as one of our leading mezzos in opera and recital. Her voice, infinitely varied, perfectly focused, and produced, has the mellow glow of burnished bronze, but at the top she narrows her vibrato to give it a brighter, more intense quality. This live recording of her Carnegie Hall concert last April combines total vocal control with the spontaneity and excitement of a performance--complete with audience reactions--and displays her stylistic versatility, her charm, expressiveness, and communicative projection to brilliant advantage. The program features two German song cycles and several groups from her signature French repertoire. Brahms' "Gypsy Songs," one of his numerous Hungarian-influenced compositions, use texts derived from Hungarian folksongs and deal essentially with love and yearning. Graham captures all their changing moods, from melancholy to exuberance, making the last one soar ecstatically, but sometimes loses their simplicity in mannerisms and over-inflection. Alban Berg's "Seven Early Songs" on texts by various poets, written long before he became an atonalist, are super-romantic, amorous, dramatic; only the two final ones harbor hints of his future style. They are sung with rapturous inwardness. Four songs by Debussy on his own descriptive, pensive verses are calm, dreamy, mellow, caressing; four by Poulenc on poems of Apollinaire are satirical parodies; one is a bravura patter-song. Two songs by André Messager and one by Moises Simons, taken from their operettas, are basically cabaret songs and grand fun; they give Graham a fine opportunity to show the lighter side of her artistry. The encores include a serious song by Reynaldo Hahn, a humorous one by Debussy, Mahler's "Liebst du um Schönheit," a love song he wrote for his wife, and the first performance of a song written for Susan Graham by Ben Moore: a hilarious spoof on the fate of a mezzo condemned to sing trouser roles--with quotes from them--when she longs to be a "Sexy Lady." --Edith Eisler