New York Classical Review

The Brooklyn Art Song Society is the leading presenter of art song in New York City, and the reason is they have a great roster of artists and programs that coverage an enormous range of the music with discerning taste. The latest testament to this came via BASS’ “Cycles” series Sunday afternoon at Roulette, with superb performances of two late romantic song cycles that, other than their era of composition, could not be more different: Arnold Schoenberg’s Das Buch der hängenden Gärten, Op. 15, and Janačék’s  Zápisník zmizelého, known in English as Diary of One Who Disappeared.

Both pieces have to do with love, in two extreme forms. Schoenberg’s Op. 15 sets symbolist poetry from Stefan Georg, writing that spoke to the composer when his wife briefly left him to pursue a relationship with his friend, painter Richard Gerstl. The Diary is a narrative from a series of stories published anonymously in a Czech newspaper about a boy in a village who falls in love with a gipsy girl and, eventually, follows her into the woods and disappears. As with Georg and Schoenberg, this was an intriguing fit with Janačék’s frequent unrequited, fantastical yearning for younger, unobtainable women.

Mezzo-soprano Kate Maroney sang Das Buch, with pianist Michael Brofman accompanying her. The two showed they had deep command of the music. The piece begins with the piano, and Brofman played every note with a balance of deliberateness and flow. For one who finds the symbolist emotional world a bit alien, this was an engrossing way to fall into a performance that was musically luxurious and psychologically intriguing.

Maroney sang with a lighter sound than one usually hears in the music, and against Brofman’s deliberateness she had an. almost conversational ease. Her expression was understated but specific, the feeling of a question mark at the end of “Hain in diesen Paradiesen,” hollowed timbre in “Angst und Hoffen”—a device she used again for a subtle derangement in “Als wir hinter.” Even the usually extroverted finale was on the quiet, searching side.

A subtle but noticeable and effective touch was a slight emphasis on the tonal phrases in the music. Das Buch comes from the period when Schoenberg was writing music that was often, but not strictly, atonal (and that was not yet systematized), and this piece has key moments of tonality in both the vocal and piano parts. This balanced the deepest expressionist moments of the music and fit into a performance that had the kind of quiet that drew in the listener.

Tenor Dylan Morrongiello sang Diary accompanied by pianist Brent Funderburk. He was joined by mezzo-soprano Katherine Lerner, who sang for the gipsy girl’s brief appearance in the middle of the piece, and a trio of sopranos Maia Sumanaweera and Katherine Lerner-Lee, and Maroney, were the vocal ensemble for this stretch, singing cooly luminous harmonies from the balcony stage left.

Morrongiello was fabulous. His robust sound was lovely, and he had the emotional energy Janačék demands, moving from a quasi-crazed fervor to an angelic repose. The music also requires fine diction and articulation—the composer’s phrases and rhythms come straight out of the qualities of Czech language—and the tenor was clear and excellent throughout. Everything was direct, the sound of a man grabbing one’s lapels to say something urgent, then turning away in an inner reverie.

This meant Morrongiello was spitting out the words, then crooning them in the opening song, then caressing the gorgeous melody that rises out of “Hajsi, vy sivi volci.” Diary is more than a song cycle, more than a narrative monologue, it’s a compact music drama, with characters. Lerner had a seductive richness that was not just a counter to the tenor, but set each singer as a character.

The accompaniment is like an opera score, a character in itself with a solo interlude in the middle. Funderburk had the same assurance in the music’s volatility as Morrongiello, not just changing moods but jumping up and down from lead voice to accompaniment. The two together produced an astonishing change of mood near the end, in “Mám já panenku,” then Morrongiello pushed at the very limits of his voice give the listener the amazing sound of a protagonist throwing themself headlong into fate.

Mezzo-soprano Erin Wagner sings Olivier Messiaen’s Harawi, 5 p.m., February 1. brooklynartsongsociety.org