Lyric Fest's "Mahler Resurrected'

Gustav Mahler is the only first-rank composer who confined his output to two radically different categories: art songs and huge sprawling symphonies. The Lyric Fest song series opened its season with a portrait of a major composer assembled by performers who spend a significant portion of their careers mastering his work.

Like Lyric Fest's other "Biography in Music" offerings, the program interspersed songs with readings from letters and other biographical materials. The first half concentrated on Mahler's artistic development and his career as an opera and orchestra conductor. He was essentially a kind man, according to a soprano who sang with him, but his search for perfection turned him into a tyrant.

The narrative didn't dig into Mahler's private life until the redoubtable Alma Schindler entered the story at the beginning of the second half. Her marriage to Mahler paired an idealistic 41-year-old self-absorbed artist with a worldly, 23-year-old "celebrated beauty" with a penchant for hooking up with talented men. A long letter in which Mahler lectured her on her proper role as his wife provided a touch of melancholy comedy.

Running long, just like Mahler

Lyric Fest presents one of these biographical programs each season. Some of the others have essentially been art song concerts enriched by biographical material. This one can best be described as a biography illustrated by samples of the composer's work. At times the biographical readings threatened to overwhelm the musical content.

The program didn't skimp on musical content, however. The five vocalists sang 21 selections, including two pieces from Mahler's symphonic works. Lyric Fest's organizers— Mesdames DuPlantis, Marrazzo and Ward— added the extra spoken material by letting the program run longer than usual, much like a Mahler symphony.

The afternoon opened with two songs that captured the qualities that distinguish Mahler from his predecessors and link him to our own sensibilities. "Spring Morning" sets a conventional text from the 19th Century German lieder tradition, but Mahler's score communicates feelings that are more complex than a mere romantic response to nature. "Revenge" is a jolly death's head march— a martial tune that adds ironic overtones to a text that ends with "bones in rank and file."

A naÓ¯ve boy's view of Heaven

The rest of the songs ranged through all of Mahler's moods. Soprano Randi Marrazzo took on the Fourth Symphony solo that depicts a naive boy's view of Heaven and brought it to a flowing conclusion. Suzanne DuPlantis presented a moving, beautifully colored reading of a piece from Mahler's Songs on the Death of Children— a work he composed three years before his own daughter died of scarlet fever. Guest mezzo Margarita Raley delivered a passionate, full-voiced portrait of a troubled soul at midnight.

Guest soprano Kendra Colton followed a final description of Mahler's death with a touching, valedictory performance of "I Am Lost to the World," a song that ends, "I am alone in my heaven, in my love and in my song."

Someone to watch

The only male in the lineup, baritone Christopher Bolduc, deserves special mention. He's still in his third year at the Academy of Vocal Arts, and he completed all his assignments— including the revenge bit and a jibe at music critics— with verve, understanding and an impressive, unstrained voice. He's clearly someone to watch.

Actors Ellen Tobie and Jim Bergman brought their professional skills to the narration, and Laura Ward handled all the accompaniments with a full command of Mahler's musical complexity. In the excerpt from the Fourth Symphony, she was, in effect, substituting for Mahler's mammoth orchestra.

The program ended with a surprise touch. Early in the 20th Century, Mahler had played some of his songs on a player piano— a device that recorded the player's key strokes on punched tape. The rolls have survived and the sound of the robot piano has been recorded on a CD. And so, thanks to two different eras of technology, we finished the afternoon listening to the composer himself.