Barton, Lipman, and Sanikidze explore space within old and new music

January 26, 2025 at 2:03 pm

By Lani Lee

Mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton. File photo: James M. Ireland

Musical expression requires the space between notes and phrases to tell a cohesive story and move the music forward. In their successful Celebrity Series recital on Saturday, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, violist Matthew Lipman, and pianist Tamar Sanikidze masterfully manipulated each moment and its silences. Though Barton commented on this unusual instrumentation, the composers understood that the viola’s warm timbre can complement the luscious mezzo-soprano voice. Each score came alive in this performance, feeding the space, sonority, and rhythmic integrity necessary to appreciate each work.

Brahms is tricky to perform given his almost anachronistic approach to text setting and composition, but his music flourishes when provided with freely moving phrasing and organic expression. This reading of the Two Songs for Voice, Viola, and Piano, Op. 91, balanced that exact kind of romantic yet almost baroque sensibility in a satisfying recital opening.

The first song, “Gestillte Sehnsucht,” written more than two decades later than the second, is dense with rich imagery and Brahms’s characteristic long, legato lines. This performance adjusted the tempo to a stately, slow pace that settled into majestic, glorious sounds filling the hall. Lipman’s masterful bow control made his sound float gently over Barton’s resonant vocal production while Sanikidze’s well-voiced piano registers fleshed out the ensemble.

“Geistliches Wiegenlied” was appropriately cradle-like, with minor development sections seamlessly tied together rather than intensely contrasting. Sanikidze played the thicker triplet figures in these moments in a rich yet unmuddled way in Jordan Hall’s acoustic, allowing Lipman’s passionate color and Barton’s fuller lower notes to cut through. Barton’s impeccable dynamic control in her higher register, with the repeated “Es schlummert mein Kind” lines, allowed for expressive differences, holding the listeners through the storytelling.

Lipman possesses a wealth of colors in his tone, skillfully woven throughout the music, particularly evident in Brahms’ last chamber work, the Viola Sonata No. 2. The opening melody of the first movement soared in heavenly tenderness before melting into the body of the piece. Lipman and Sanikidze fine-tuned a passionate intensity in the opening theme of the second movement, saving the emotional grab until its recapitulation. The middle section conjured refreshing raindrops with warm piano textures, though its following recapitulation was minutely frazzled, possibly due to audience noise that drew unfortunate attention. The gentler third movement highlighted the best parts of the ensemble, Brahms’s interesting rhythmic contrasts done justice and back-and-forth calls connected playfully yet gracefully.

Sanikidze’s sensitive playing shone most working with Barton’s vocal artistry, providing shape so that texts were clear and expressed in detail. Clara Schumann’s collection of Six Lieder, Op. 13, offered Barton’s warm personality a canvas, each Lied coloring the same vowels differently depending on context. Phrases pulled and pushed forward, beautifully controlled dynamic contrasts and spaces supporting the drama in the vivid poetry. Sanikidze played gentler passages with perfect dewdrops of sound, the tenderness spreading throughout her phrasing, especially in moments such as the end of “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge.”

Barton delivered most in her native English in the spectacular “On Mars” by Joel Thompson, co-commissioned by Celebrity Series through Music Accord. The sensitivity and musicality were unmatched by all three musicians, the score able to bring out the most technically and dramatically intense aspects of every instrument.

Ariana Benson’s poetry provided a cohesive storytelling of space exploration and its implications. Composer Joel Thompson varied textures and instrumentation, engaging the listener with each change in mood. An initial exclamatory piano figure expanded into hollow voicing, outlining the fragmented vocal line, almost comical at times. Pointy pizzicati and crunchy piano clusters suggested the uncertain future on Mars. Thompson’s setting was moving, exceedingly true to its poem, capturing the dreamlike, scattered essence of its character in diverse musical textures, instrumentation, voicings, and harmonies.

As Thompson did in his Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, crisp consonants created the expressivity necessary for the expansive poetry. Barton’s musical choices contrasted sharply from the German fare, with softer consonants creating an intimate setting, though at times harder to understand, and leaner vibrato creating an otherworldliness that suited this piece.

The writing when all three came together could sometimes sound too busy, but the ending made the most of this instrumentation by utilizing contemporary harmonic language and techniques. One could even hear the silence as the audience held their breaths at the finale: the silvery silkenness of Sanikidze’s piano, the purity of sound from Barton’s upper register, and Lipman’s shimmery open harmonics combined powerfully together.

The single encore was lighter fare, an arrangement of the classic song “Over the Rainbow” with all three musicians sharing their individual melodic strengths and comfortable ensemble unity one last time in a familiar, uplifting tune.

Pianist Seong-Jin Cho plays an all-Ravel program 3 p.m. February 2 at Symphony Hall. celebrityseries.org

Posted in Performances


Leave a Comment