"Angels Hide Their Faces"
Bach: Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut, BWV 199
Purcell:
"Music for a While"
"I Attempt from Love's Sickness to Fly in Vain"
"Ah! How Sweet It Is to Love"
"Lord, What Is Man"
"Hark! How All Things"
"If Music Be the Food of Love"
The Blessed Virgin's Expostulation
An Evening Hymn
Dawn Upshaw (soprano)
Myron Lutzke (cello)
Arthur Haas (harpsichord, organ)
Kristina Bennion Feeny (violin)
Linda Quan (violin)
Lois Martin (viola)
John Feeney (bass)
Peggy Pearson (oboe)
Nonesuch
Soprano Dawn Upshaw's disc "Angels Hide Their Faces," consisting of nine selections by Purcell and Bach's solo cantata BWV 199, is brilliant in concept and execution. As with her 1994 recital of Lieder with texts by Goethe, Upshaw has taken pains in selecting the works and sequencing them artfully. Again, her purpose is to contrast dissimilar musical approaches to similar texts - in this case, to demonstrate the wide stylistic range encompassed beneath the umbrella of Baroque "affect." Purcell's texts, notably "Lord, What Is Man" and The Blessed Virgin's Expostulation, are full of rapid emotional changes to which the composer responds athletically, making heavy demands on the singer's emotional scope and vocal technique. Upshaw handles it all effortlessly. The Bach cantata describes a spiritual progression from guilt to repentance to joy; its spiritual center and turning point, the sublime aria "Tief gebückt" ("Deeply bowed"), is alone worth the price of the disc.
Rather like Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Upshaw is an artist of unquestionably fine voice and exquisite refinement, but one whose performances inevitably strike some listeners as too calculated. Yet only a singer with superb technical and intellectual equipment can hope to do justice to highly wrought scores like these. Upshaw manages the melismatic passages with aplomb; her creamy-sweet voice sounds particularly bright and well-supported in its upper-middle register. This release is successful in all respects, with great performances, beautiful packaging, and booklet notes of rare wit by composer John Harbison.
© andante Corp. July 2001. All rights reserved.
