Karita Mattila (soprano)
Martin Katz
(piano)
Wednesday 14 August 2002
Seiji Ozawa Hall,
Tanglewood,
Lenox, Massachusetts, USA
Presented under the
auspices of the Tanglewood Music
Festival
Schubert:
"Non t'accostar all'urna," D. 688,
No. 1
"Da quel sembiante appresi," D. 688, No. 3
"Mio ben ricordati," D.
688, No. 4
Vedi quanto adoro, D.
510
Mahler:
Frühlingsmorgen
Erinnerung
Hans und
Grethe
Strauss:
"Meinem Kinde," Op. 37, No. 3
"O susser Mai!" Op.
32, No. 4
"Morgen!" Op. 27, No. 4
"Cäcelie," Op. 27, No.
2
Duparc:
L'Invitation au voyage
Chanson
triste
Phidyle
Sibelius:
"Norden," Op. 90 No. 1
"Varen flyktar
hastigt," Op. 13, No. 4
"Demanten pa marssnon," Op. 36, No. 6
"Flickan kom
ifran sin alsklings mote," Op. 37, No. 5
"En slanda," Op. 17, No. 5
"Var
det en drom?" Op. 37, No. 4
Some
listeners have long suspected that Karita Mattila is too good to be true. Opera
roles that, in the throats of most sopranos, induce audible vocal labor and make
big vibratos even bigger get grateful treatment from her distinctively clean,
high-gloss singing. She pays attention to delivering words; she's an adventurous
actress; she's even prettier in person than in her publicity
photos.
There's no reason why all of this shouldn't have shown up comfortably in this recital at Tanglewood's Ozawa Hall — but it didn't, at least that night. Her problem, a curious (and rare) one, is that she works too hard, partly because she can afford to. This is one of the most vocally healthy opera singers on the planet, and she probably doesn't need to pace herself the way others must.
The intelligently arranged program began with a set of Italian-language Schubert songs, followed by seldom-heard Mahler, a smattering of Duparc and some Sibelius in Swedish. Nothing basic was amiss: the voice was in fine shape and she looked glamorous in summer concert gowns so tailored to her attractive figure that you could analyze her diaphragm technique. (She sews those gowns herself, by the way.) Yet some fundamental matters went conspicuously unaddressed. Unlike some of her colleagues who give song recitals more often, Mattila doesn't always tap into the texts' communicative power and energy. She almost seems not to trust the text, concentrating instead on amplifying the general emotional state it inhabits — a sound approach to a clunky opera libretto, but less so for the finely wrought poems often set in art songs.
In Mattila's defense, the Italian songs by Schubert works she selected don't show the composer at his most textually inspired, and the Mahler Lieder (one of which has a text of dubious quality by the composer himself) are early, artistically embryonic efforts. However, Strauss was represented by his finest efforts in this medium, and Mattila's style of vocal heavy lifting suggested that she was pulling the songs along, rather than allowing their gentle power to push her. Throughout the first half, Mattila's more dramatic moments — which were no more extravagant than those of more seasoned recitalists — seemed overwrought and oddly grafted onto the music. As impressive as her voice is in full cry, she overwhelmed the material with a vocal hard sell that it doesn't need. The contrast with pianist Katz's effortlessly incandescent coloration wasn't very flattering.
The second half — starting with three Duparc songs — pointed more toward the considerable future possibilities of Mattila recitals. As the great Anna Russell famously observed, the French art song is meant not to be sung but "to be whispered." Mattila's cultivated dramatic sense wouldn't allow anything so potentially soporific, so in her hands the songs had greater emotional incident than they often do. In other words, a little overwrought emotionalism isn't a bad thing here, especially since Mattila seemed to commune with the Duparc song texts on a more intimate level than with the Mahler and Strauss.
In the final Sibelius set, all the elements of Mattila's art came together with text and music. The songs aren't first-class Sibelius; frankly speaking, they were a notch below what came before in musical quality. Because Mattila sang them with a genuine inner conviction that didn't induce her to over-sing, I left the recital wanting her to explore Sibelius' song output comprehensively.
The encores included a surprisingly idiomatic rendition of the My
Fair Lady chestnut, "I Could Have Danced All Night."
Again, Karita Mattila was almost too good to be true.
