There is no avoiding,
it seems, the hordes of vocal anthologies which are being pushed
into the catalogue these days by the record labels, accompanied
by heavy marketing push behind their flagship artists. Hot on
the heels of Teddy Tahu Rhodes's imperious-sounding
The Voice
(ABC Classics 476 227-2) comes a new ABC Classics collection
from the Chinese-born soprano Shu-Cheen Yu and the Queensland
Orchestra under Brett Kelly, more modestly entitled
Serenade.
And why not. Australian
audiences may remember Miss Yu from the Mahler's 8th in
celebration of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, or the Sydney
Symphony's concert performances of Wagner's
Der Ring des
Nibelungen
as the Woodbird, a role which she is reprising in the 2004
Adelaide
Ring
Cycle. This album presents a mixed bag of operatic and religious
works, ranging from over-performed favourites like Musetta's
Waltz from
La Bohème,
Rach's
Vocalise
and the Largo from
Serse,
to fashionably less-known works like Cherubini's
Ave Maria,
the "Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen" from Bach's Cantata No.51
and "Ruhe sanft" from Mozart's unfinished opera
Zaïde.
The truth is that the
majority of these pieces are dazzling showpieces for solo
virtuosity, provided that their not-inconsiderable demands can
be met by those who dare.The trick, of course, is not in making
it look convoluted and difficult, but to make it look as easy as
pie. It is obvious that Yu has given this album a bit of
thought, and this well-chosen, if admittedly eclectic, program
has many things to please an admirer of the soprano voice. While
it would be too easy (not to mention somewhat rude) to associate
Yu with fauna of an orinthological variety on first glance at
the track listing, she amply proves in the listening that she is
indeed no mindless canary but in fact, coolly clinical in her
approach.
There is, for instance,
a pervasive air of reverence and expectancy in her rendition of
Strauss's
Wiegenlied
and you-know-who's
Vocalise.
Yu also appropriates Handel's
Ombra mai fu
for her own here, taking and giving a great deal of pleasure in
an aria about, of all things, a tree: the complete words to this
can be broadly translated as "Never was made a plant, more dear
and loving or gentle." You know that a soloist is onto a good
thing if he or she can take a shopping list (to borrow a leaf
from Rossini) and make it sound like the best thing since...
well, you fill in your own "best thing" here.
(Yu, right)
The accompaniment from
Brett Kelly and the Queensland Orchestra is generally secure and
adequate, although we don't always get a real "lift" from the
occasionally stilted tempi, like in the Cherubini, which is
lacking a sense of occasion. On the other hand, the sectional
contributions, such as Richard Madden's descant trumpet in the
Bach cantata or the peckish woodwinds in Strauss's
Ständchen
or Bishop's
Lo! here the gentle
lark
display an impressive degree of control which adds to Yu's
swooping tessitura in these pieces.
There may also be
momentary glimpses of struggle in some of her scalar runs, but
these are more than overcome by her sense of sheer conviction
and assured technique. It might very well be that the odd hints
of strain have crept in simply because the recording is so
operating-table clean and the various timbres separated with
such aqueous transparency that simply leaves the singer
front-and-center, and nowhere to hide.
But no matter. Miss Yu
is no shrinking violet, and nowhere more than in her
heart-on-sleeve approach to Mozart's soprano party piece, the
Exsultate, jubilate,
is her characteristic quicksilver vibrato to be savoured. She
illuminates every phrase of the Latin text in the outer
movements with polyvalent vivacity and recedes in the inner
Recitative
and
Largo
sections with mellow contemplation. This is a smashing way to
round off this parade of soprano showboats, richly satisfying
and definitely worth exploring.
