We began successful the satellite that was—in the humid ambiance of fin-de-siècle Vienna, from which Zemlinsky, Schreker, and Schoenberg emerged. In a programme note, Blier wrote that the “Fugitives” conception was inspired by Zemlinsky’s “Meeraugen,” oregon “Sea Eyes,” which tells of a “person staring into the roiling abyss of the ocean.” You had the feeling, arsenic the evening went on, that the crushing realities of twentieth-century history—war, revolution, inflation, the Depression, Fascism—made specified refined aestheticism untenable and forced composers onto different paths. But NYFOS imposes nary stylistic ideologies, and if, successful 1939, Ullmann felt compelled to dive backmost into Straussian precocious Romanticism, Blier sees thing contradictory successful the gesture.
When a recital ranges from “Meeraugen” to Kurt Weill’s “Buddy connected the Nightshift,” by mode of Krása’s atonal Five Lieder and Hanns Eisler’s Brecht mounting “The Landscape of Exile,” singers of utmost versatility are required. The duo connected manus for “Fugitives”—the mezzo Kate Lindsey, a seasoned of the series, and the baritone Gregory Feldmann, a caller addition—met the challenge. The pianist and vocal manager Bénédicte Jourdois, NYFOS’s subordinate creator director, assisted with the accompaniments and with the signifier patter, of which determination is ever a just amount. Blier is simply a beardown personality, arsenic his entertainingly candid publication reveals, but helium is simply a genial host, and besides a knowledgeable one. If helium dominates the party, you don’t privation to leave.
Feldmann, a comparatively caller Juilliard graduate, showed his Lieder-singing chops successful the Viennese fare, his code robust, his diction crisp. He could person brought a sharper borderline to governmental songs by Eisler and Weill—the latter’s “Caesar’s Death” needs much of a snarl to marque its anti-Fascist allegory clear—but helium shifted effortlessly into Broadway belting successful “Love Song,” from Weill’s “Love Life.” Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s “My mistress’ eyes are thing similar the sun,” a radiant opus by a composer who did truthful good successful Hollywood that classical snobs wrote him off, benefitted from a plush timbre. Feldmann learned each this esoteric repertory successful conscionable a week (after Justin Austin dropped retired connected relationship of illness), making his accomplishment somewhat heroic.
Lindsey came connected the philharmonic country arsenic a sweet-voiced Mozart mezzo and has grown into a fearless singing actor. Although her German diction lacked bite, particularly successful the cabaret-style material, she has an inherent quality to inhabit and task a song. Daringly, she took connected Hollaender’s “Black Market,” which was written for the mighty Dietrich: it comes from Billy Wilder’s 1948 movie “A Foreign Affair,” an acidulous governmental drama acceptable successful occupied Germany. Lindsey didn’t impersonate the original—as Blier pointed out, she really sang the notes, alternatively than a Dietrich-like approximation of them—but she did propulsion successful a fewer smokily accented phrasings. More important, she and Blier unneurotic caught the unscrupulous sophistication of the scenario, for which Hollaender supplied some words and music:
Powdered beverage for bikes.
Souls for Lucky Strikes.
Got immoderate broken-down ideals? Like wedding rings?
Sh-h-h! Tiptoe. Trade your things.
During his American period, Hollaender worked with specified lyricists arsenic Leo Robin and Frank Loesser, but arsenic a wordsmith helium equalled immoderate of them, and implicit clip helium mastered English good capable that helium could replicate the mordant virtuosity of his German numbers. (“Get the Men retired of the Reichstag” and “The Jews Are to Blame for Everything” are 2 classics.) NYFOS did a work by celebrating this often overlooked songwriting genius, whose wit was arsenic lethal arsenic his melodies were lithe.
Fiercest of each was Lindsey’s rendition of Weill’s “Wie lange noch?” (“How overmuch longer?”), which was written successful 1944 and broadcast into Germany for psychological-warfare purposes. The tune comes from Weill’s French-language torch opus “Je ne t’aime pas.” The émigré satirist Walter Mehring inserted a caller substance that retains a torchy vibe—this is ostensibly a ailment against a lying lover—but implicitly urges absorption against Hitler: “I believed you, I had gone huffy / From each your talk, your vows.” The rubric operation alludes to Cicero’s denunciation of a would-be dictator: “How overmuch longer, O Catiline, volition you maltreatment our patience?” The airing of the opus had nary evident effect: the madness went connected until Hitler was dead. ♦
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