Wigmore Hall, London
29 March 2007
A RECITAL of SPANISH SONG
Joyce DiDonato (mezzo)
Julius Drake (piano)
Georges Bizet:
Ouvre ton coeur
Douce mer
Pastorale
Chanson d’avril
Adieux de l’hôtesse arabe
Gioachino Rossini:
Giovanna d’Arco
Interval
Enrique Granados:
Elegia eterna
La maja dolorosa I
La maja dolorosa II
La maja dolorosa III
No lloréis ojuelos
Manuel de Falla:
7 canciones populares españolas
Xavier Montsalvage:
Cuba dentro de un piano
Punto de Habanera
Canto negro
What the critics say
The Daily Telegraph, April 3, 2007
Astonishing power of the mezzo who thrills at all altitudes
Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato is a pert American blonde with a wide smile and a guileless air of enjoyment in what she does. When a song goes well, she has the pleased air of a golfer who’s just hit a hole in one. And yet this bubbly creature can assume a statuesque demeanor and touch the depths.
The first group of songs were by Bizet…we heard a swaying barcarolle, a naïve little pastorale, and a long, sensuous rendition of Farewell of the Arabian Hostess. It’s a charming image, which softens the harsh realities of France’s 19th-century imperial ambitions; which is why we’re supposed to be suspicious of this sort of song nowadays. But between them, Bizet and DiDonato got round my scruples. A purely human delicacy seemed to emerge. By now it was clear that DiDonato’s voice has a natural openness and sincerity, which makes even a dubious sentiment seem true.
Her trump card is her lower register, which gathers a vibrant conviction and penetrating power as the vocal line descends. Alongside that is her thrilling agility, which allowed her to toss of the vocal trumpet-calls of Rossini’s Joan of Arc with infections bravura.
After the interval, she showed there was more yet to that voice. She struck a note of tragic gravity in Granados’s La Maja Dolorosa – again that thrilling descent to the depths, but this time from starting from and altitude and with an astonishing power not yet heard …how pungent she made those Spanish words sound!
Neil Fisher, The Times, 2 April 2007
They’d been flirting for a while now, but this was the night that things really got serious between Joyce DiDonato and the Wigmore Hall audience. “Open your heart,” she commanded in the opening Spanish serenade by Bizet, while assuming a Carmenesque pose on the platform, and the response was instant capitulation. So seduced were some that they almost forgot their Wigmore vows about not clapping between song collections.
But then it is a remarkable package that DiDonato offers: a mezzo cast in milk chocolate, but so smooth and agile that it can reach up to a diamond-bright soprano as well as sink to a rich, chesty alto. And then there is the instinctive charisma: she is always engaging, always sparking off her accompanist (here Julius Drake), and always intelligently shaping the verse and text.
Erica Jeal,The Guardian, Wednesday 4 April 2007
4 stars
Joyce DiDonato’s acclaim this side of the Atlantic has been less of a rise, more of an explosion. Barely 18 months since the Kansas mezzo’s UK stage debut, in the Royal Opera’s Barber of Seville, this recital was so oversubscribed it was virtually impossible for anyone outside the Wigmore’s rarefied Friends group to get a ticket. And the audience would not let her go without hearing one of her calling-card Rossini arias, in this case Una voce poco fa.
A showstopper in every way, this encore came as an exclamation mark at the end of a more smoothly punctuated main programme; indeed, the repertoire in the first half was a touch subdued.
DiDonato began with five songs by Bizet – whose Ouvre ton coeur shows the young composer who would eventually write Carmen already dabbling in Spanish sounds – with pianist Julius Drake supplying strumming guitar rhythms. The relentlessly even word-setting in some of the later songs formed a greater challenge to DiDonato’s expressive imagination, but in Farewell of the Arabian Hostess, she reeled us in with long, slow crescendos and compelling introspection.
Rossini’s Joan of Arc saw DiDonato on more familiar ground, stylishly negotiated. But this monologue, essentially a slow and a fast aria linked together, takes a while to catch fire, and here, especially, Drake could have been more extrovert.
However, the entirely Iberian second half raised the temperature. Perhaps it’s only natural that DiDonato, so well schooled in Rossinian decoration, should be able to wrap her weighty yet gleaming voice deftly around those little Spanish twists. Everything seemed natural and heartfelt as she captured, with Drake, the mournful passion of Granados’ three Maja Dolorosa songs, brought a touch of chesty cantaora sound to De Falla’s spirited Polo, and finally threw off Montsalvatge’s Canto Negro like the star she is rapidly becoming.