As mandated by the powers that be, during the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, large and largish gatherings have been deemed hazardous, so the New York Festival of Song (NYFOS), like other groups, has cancelled or postponed its NYFOS and NYFOS Next evenings, but came up with a way around forfeiting its fine program with the 2020 Terrance W. Schwab Vocal Rising Stars, “The Art of Pleasure,” by live-streaming, via YouTube, the March 15 performance, sans audience, from Caramoor, in Katonah, New York. There are worse ways to appreciate an afternoon of music than staying at home, sitting in front of the computer.
From the Steinway pianos, Vocal Rising Star Mentors and NYFOS co-founders Steven Blier, NYFOS Artistic Director, and Michael Barrett, NYFOS Associate Artistic Director, joined by Shawn Chang, guided an excellent quartet of young singers, made up of soprano Elaine Daiber, mezzo-soprano Siena Licht Miller, tenor Terrence Chin-Loy, and baritone Thomas West, in this varied and scintillating program of songs from classic to contemporary.
Blier and Chang began a section called “Oceanside in Summer” with a dulcet and playful “En bateau,” from Claude Debussy’s “Petite suite.” West lent his lyric instrument to the romantic “Cançó amorosa,” by composer Xavier Montsalvatge and poet Tomàs Garcés. In pieces by Eduardo Toldrà, Daiber offered a vibrant account of “Cançó de grumet” (the cabin-boy’s song), from “A l’ombra del lledoner” (In the shade of the nettle tree), to Garcés’ poetry, and Miller, with understatement, contemplated late-spring’s awakening and fever, with a bit of foreboding, in “Maig” (May), with poem by Trinitat Catasús. Chin-Loy serenaded us with a passionate rendition of Paolo Tosti and Salvatore di Giacomo’s Neapolitan favorite “Marechiare.”
Exploring “Sleep,” and dreams, Chin-Loy spun out sweetest tone in Johannes Brahms and Ludwig Tieck’s “Ruhe, Süssliebchen” (Sleep, my sweet love), a lullaby to a beloved, from “Die schöne Magelone,” and Daiber, with consummate delicacy and feeling, assisted by Chang, limned a dream as a living thing, in Russian, in Sergei Rachmaninoff and Feodor Sologub’s “Sleep,” Opus 38, Number Five.
“Romance” found Miller and West singing a lilting “”Sérérenade napolitaine” (Neapolitan serenade), a song of love with more than a bit of spice in it, by Ruggero Leoncavallo and E. Collet, and Daiber, portraying the heroine of Franz Lehár, Paul Knepler, and Fritz Löhner’s operetta “Giuditta,” collaborating with Chin-Loy, as Ottavio, the soldier she’d run off with, who declared his love, in “Schön wie die blaue Sommernacht” (Beautiful as a blue summer night) , although, with his regiment moving on, he was going to leave her. The performers joined forces for a persuasively engaging “Calypso,” John Musto’s setting of W.H. Auden’s poem, for four singers and piano four hands.
Chang and Blier took us on “The Down-Low” with a sly, then tempestuous “Fuga y misterio,” by Astor Piazzolla, as arranged by Pablo Ziegler. In Jonathan Dove’s “Between Your Sheets,” from “Five Am’rous Sighs,” with words by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Miller sang tenderly of love to Daiber, who oozed as she responded, ardently, with Leonard Bernstein rarity “It’s Gotta Be Bad to Be Good,” a gently jazzy ode to rough love, with a striking interlude for Blier. I first learned about the Kinks’ Stonewall era “Lola” (1970), with its gay and trans implications, when I belonged to the Gay Community at Queens College, in the early ’70s—it was hard here to resist singing along with West’s insinuating “Lola,” ultimately addressed to Chin-Loy, wearing just a hint of drag.
A radiant Chin-Loy kicked off an investigation of “Guilty Pleasures” with a wry “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” a spring song by Tom Lehrer, and Daiber, as the ultimate fan, relished the magnetism of “Humphrey Bogart (king of the tough guys),” by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and aptly addressed “Play it, Sam,” the last line, to Blier. “Opera Scene,” from Gabriel Kahane’s “Craigslistlieder”—a recitative, a dark cavatina, a restless cabaletta, a recitative ending melismatically, an angular section with a touch of Berg and Schoenberg, and a Verdian finale with a falsetto cadenza—made for quite a tour-de-force for West.
“Peace,” the afternoon’s appropriate final section, consisted of Chin-Loy’s earnest “Aimons-nous,” Camille Saint-Saëns and Théodore de Banville’s plea for love and peace, replete with Nature imagery; Miller’s hushed and heartfelt “Heaven,” from “Hotel C’est L’Amour,” Michael John LaChiusa’s idyllic and pacific wish for safety; and the ensemble’s hymn-like protest against tyranny, “How Can I Keep from Singing,” with music by Robert Wadsworth Lowry to an anonymous text, augmented by a verse by Doris Penn, in David Krane’s arrangement for Pete Seeger. For a whimsical encore, the company reveled in a cheerful celebration of “Schadenfreude,” by Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx, and Jeff Whitty, from “Avenue Q.”