A Powerful Young Voice Slays the MTA
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Imagine if, rather than Siegfried, it was Brunnhilde that was sent to slay the dragon and you will have some idea of the atmosphere surrounding the debut recital of Jennifer Check Tuesday evening. Ms. Check, a former member of the Metropolitan Opera’s Young Artist Development Program, won a contest given by the Young Concert Artists organization, the prize for which partially consisted of the opportunity to give a concert at Zankel Hall. But the promoters of this event might have filled more seats had they labeled the evening “Jennifer Versus the MTA!”
Not two notes into Robert Schumann’s “Frauenliebe und -leben,” the subway roared by at full volume. Several patrons, most likely newbies at this venue, first turned their heads, then shook them. To her credit, Ms. Check handled the situation with aplomb and did not react visibly. But she must have been rattled, as this opening set was the weakest of the evening.
If Bernstein’s “What a Movie!” from “Trouble in Tahiti” is the most popular audition piece for sopranos, this Schumann cycle has to be the most oft-performed in recital. Relatively safe in tessitura, it is only a mildly challenging workout, but one of highly charged emotional content. Ms. Check, though, seems to have concentrated her prodigious talents on learning how to sing, and has left acting for a future round of instruction.
What Ms. Check has in abundance is a powerful voice: The rumblings in the wall were no match for her when she got going. Of course, there are also many quiet passages, and these were unnecessarily haunted by noises. The texts of the songs were printed on sheaves of stapled, thin paper; the rattling created by a crowd eager to follow along reminded me less of Carnegie Hall than of Yankee Stadium (where Ms. Check could probably sing “God Bless America” quite successfully, even without a microphone). As a work in progress, this was a good performance, although noticeably flat on occasion.
After intermission, things improved exponentially. Ms. Check’s best rendition of the night was the Benjamin Britten realization of Purcell’s “The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation.” Her stentorian cries of “Gabriel!” seemed to reach the firmament itself. Sometimes, her voice was so large as to positively dwarf the room. There is tremendous raw material here.
Next came Richard Strauss’s “Ruhe, meine Seele.” This is a great fit musically with the “Four Last Songs” and sounds delightfully apropos when inserted into the posthumous cycle. On this occasion, Ms. Check sang it as a stand-alone and was quite impressive in her rounding of tone, but far from the empathetic mark that is the true center of the work. The same can be stated about the well-known “Caecilie”: This was solid but unexciting music making, matched by the yeoman-like but uninspiring piano accompaniment of Laura Ward.
Ms. Check ended the program with a trio of American songs by unknown – at least to me – composers who somehow managed to resist the 20th century’s penchant for knotty atonality. The first, a shimmy by John Woods Duke titled “I Can’t Be Talkin’ of Love,” was delivered with a great deal of abandon and panache – somewhat of a surprise, considering what came before.
When I was Ms. Check’s age, I was enamored of the work of novelist James Purdy. So it felt particularly nostalgic to hear the Richard Hundley song “Come Ready and See Me,” with words by his fellow Ohioan. Again, Ms. Check was emotionally invested in this song, and even achieved an affecting level of poignancy. Maybe cabaret is her calling and she will follow the path of Sylvia MacNair later in life.
The evening concluded with a novelty song by Lori Laitman titled “Dreaming.” The piece ends with the line “dreaming of a great, first-rate review.” With a lot of hard work and a little soulsearching, it may very well materialize in time.