Vocal Resistance at the New York Festival of Song

"We began in the world that was-in the humid atmosphere of fin-de-siècle Vienna, from which Zemlinsky, Schreker, and Schoenberg emerged. In a program note, Blier wrote that the "Fugitives" concept was inspired by Zemlinsky's "Meeraugen," or "Sea Eyes," which tells of a "person staring into the roiling abyss of the ocean." You had the feeling, as the evening went on, that the crushing realities of twentieth-century history-war, revolution, inflation, the Depression, Fascism-made such refined aestheticism untenable and forced composers onto other paths."

"When a recital ranges from "Meeraugen" to Kurt Weill's "Buddy on the Nightshift," by way of Krása's atonal Five Lieder and Hanns Eisler's Brecht setting "The Landscape of Exile," singers of extreme versatility are required. The duo on hand for "Fugitives"-the mezzo Kate Lindsey, a veteran of the series, and the baritone Gregory Feldmann, a new addition-met the challenge. The pianist and vocal coach Bénédicte Jourdois, NYFOS 's associate artistic director, assisted with the accompaniments and with the stage patter."

"Feldmann, a relatively recent Juilliard graduate, showed his Lieder-singing chops in the Viennese fare, his tone robust, his diction crisp. He could have brought a sharper edge to political songs by Eisler and Weill-the latter's "Caesar's Death" needs more of a snarl to make its anti-Fascist allegory clear-but he shifted effortlessly into Broadway belting in "Love Song," from Weill's "Lo"

The program opened in fin-de-siècle Vienna with Zemlinsky, Schreker, and Schoenberg and invoked Zemlinsky's "Meeraugen," a vision of a person staring into a roiling ocean abyss. The performance suggested that twentieth-century upheavals—war, revolution, inflation, the Depression, Fascism—rendered late Romantic aestheticism untenable and redirected many composers. NYFOS presented the repertoire without enforcing a single stylistic ideology, accepting composers' returns to earlier idioms as valid. The recital spanned atonal Krása and politically charged Weill and Eisler songs, requiring singers of extreme versatility. Kate Lindsey, Gregory Feldmann, and pianist Bénédicte Jourdois met those demands, with Feldmann praised for tone and diction but urged to sharpen political edges.

Read at The New Yorker