Mezzo-soprano
Jan DeGaetani was known primarily as a champion of new music, a singer who could be counted on to bring the highest expertise and commitment to untested new repertoire that might have been considered unsingable: cutting-edge scores by composers like
Crumb,
Boulez,
Carter,
Druckman, and
Birtwistle. In the public imagination, she was so closely tied to new music that it was easy to forget that her repertoire was broadly inclusive, ranging from Medieval and Renaissance songs through
Handel,
Mozart,
Schubert,
Berlioz,
Brahms,
Mahler, and
Ravel, as well as scores on which the ink was barely dry. In this two-disc set she focuses on more traditional repertoire, songs by
Haydn,
Beethoven,
Debussy,
Strauss,
Poulenc, and
Gershwin, plus modern works by
Crumb, Kenneth Frazelle, and Stanley Walden. Her singing in traditional repertoire is no less striking and distinctive than in the contemporary. She brought an impeccable, intelligent, intuitive musicianship to everything she approached, and sang with absolute security in pitch, which is especially impressive in some of the frighteningly jagged atonal scores, because she didn't have perfect pitch. Her voice, though not large, had a naturally burnished tone, and she was especially gifted in coloring it to bring the greatest expressive depth to the music. The two-hour album comes from a 1987 concert, an astonishing testimony to her professionalism in delivering such a large and sometimes fearsomely demanding recital -- there is no "easy" filler in the program -- in a single evening and sustaining her high standards from beginning to end. The refinement of her singing is evident throughout, but nowhere more than in the four
Beethoven songs that open the album. Her ability to effortlessly float a phrase with a warmly caressing tenderness is one of her most notable gifts, evident especially in
Poulenc's C'est ainsi que tu es and
Strauss' Morgen. Kenneth Frazelle's song cycle, Worldly Hopes, the most rigorously modernist (but still vocally lyrical) work, showcases
DeGaetani's remarkable lower register. Her playfulness is evident in
Gershwin's "Our Love Is Here to Stay" and
Poulenc's "Les gars qui vont à la Fête," and Walden's profoundly touching cycle Three Ladies takes the singer through a gamut of emotions, from whimsy to wrenchingly vivid despair. Pianist
Gilbert Kalish is every bit
DeGaetani's musical partner and equal, and they make a formidably commanding team. Another artist with both a commitment to new work and the virtuosity to master the most demanding conventional repertoire,
Kalish plays with polish, dazzle, and élan. The sound is good for a live recording with only occasional audience noises. This release is a windfall not only for fans of contemporary vocal music but for anyone who treasures intelligent bel canto singing of the highest order.