Chestnut Singers and Fine Art Piano

When I reviewed the Chestnut Street Singers for the first time two years ago, I felt they should appeal to the same kind of audiences that the Lyric Fest art song series has attracted. Their latest concert displayed all the virtues that prompted that conclusion, but it would have benefited from an extra dose of the variety that keeps Lyric Fest programs hopping.

Taken individually, the selections on the Chestnut Street program were all good pieces, guaranteed to please anyone who enjoys hearing first-class voices interacting with precision and artistic understanding as they perform works by composers like Poulenc and Schumann. But taken together, the selections tended to be low-keyed, melancholy and too similar stylistically.

A tendency to emphasize the women's voices increased the stylistic duplication. Much as I enjoy hearing altos and sopranos, a few pieces that emphasized tenors and basses would have provided a welcome change.

Fit for Obama

The major exceptions to the general uniformity were an arrangement of "Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child" and David Ludwig's setting of the Emma Lazarus sonnet inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.

"Sometimes" featured a moving solo by Melinda Steffy, whose beautiful, lonely contralto floated over a murmuring chorus. Ludwig gave the Emma Lazarus verse a straightforward musical setting that let her words speak for themselves— an approach that makes it an ideal ceremonial piece for occasions like President Obama's second inauguration, where it opened the official church service that morning.

"'Spanish,' but Russian

By contrast, another new group, the Fine Arts Piano Company, managed to produce a reasonably varied program even though it limited its program to the songs and chamber music of a single composer: Dmitri Shostakovich.

Mezzo-soprano Tatyana Halitskaya sang two groups of songs that spanned the full range of Shostakovich's musical personality. The Suite of Six Poems by Marina Tsevetaeva sets texts by an early Soviet dissident who killed herself in 1941. These ranged from passionate declarations to an exceptionally tender love song, and Halitskaya passed from role to role with the ease of a good dramatic actor.

Six Spanish Songs is an unpolitical charmer that reflects a fascination with Spain that seems to be just as widespread in Russia as it is in the U.S. The songs included serenades and Spanish dances, but they're sung in Russian, and much of their charm stems from their irrepressible Russianness. If you didn't know they're supposed to be Spanish, you would assume many of them were traditional Russian folk songs.

His friend's wife

The program's third Shostakovich songfest, Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok, was written for the great Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. Shostakovich subsequently added piano and violin to the instrumental forces, and every song is accompanied by a different instrument or combination of instruments.

The accompaniments contain unique Shostakovich touches, like the sweet rhythms and odd violin harmonies in the third song. The vocal lines are full of surprises and flow with the liquid sensuousness of Russian syllables. They were written by someone who knew how to make his friend's wife sound good, and soprano Tatyana Halitskaya took full advantage of the opportunity.

Chaos of war

The evening ended with a masterpiece of 20th-Century music: Shostakovich's powerful, highly emotional Second Piano Trio.

It's considered one of the most difficult works a cellist can tackle because of Shostakovich's use of harmonics— the pure, ultra-high notes in the opening section. That thin, distant melody pushes the cello to its limits, and cellist Micahl Schmidt treated it with the mastery she usually displays when she makes one of her infrequent Philadelphia appearances.

I felt the second movement allegro failed to capture the irony that adds depth to its excitement. But my reservations faded when the trio plunged into the last movement.

I've been reading The Guns at Last Light, Rick Atkinson's account of the European campaign in World War II. Shostakovich finished this trio in 1944, and the last movement played like a musical analog of the chaos and fury depicted in Atkinson's book.

The Chestnut Street Singers have now finished their third season and published the schedule for their fourth. The Fine Arts Piano Company, to judge from its website, seems to be a younger organization. Anyone who thinks the Classical music tradition is dying should look at the solid, enthusiastic audiences applauding musical events in Philadelphia venues like the Ethical Society and First Unitarian Church. The larger, more visible organizations may need some special help right now, but the unicorn continues to flourish and regenerate in the outlying zones of its habitat.