May 12, 2001

   MUSIC REVIEW
   Lorraine Hunt Lieberson: Vulnerable, but With Force
   By ANNE MIDGETTE / NYTimes

   Lorraine Hunt Lieberson is a singing artist, a rare breed.  She
   not only sings beautifully but her luminous interpretations truly
   communicate as well, without contrivance.

   An upper note in a mother's lament, "Vieni, o figlio" from Handel's
   "Ottone," demonstrates absolute, quiet vulnerability.  In Schumann's
   "Ich kann's nicht fassen" from the cycle "Frauenlieben und-leben,"
   a similar climax rings out resoundingly with glowing force.  At her
   recital on Sunday afternoon at Alice Tully Hall, even this oft-visited
   cycle took on real significance.

   The program's dramaturgy was also carefully thought out.  Each of
   the three groupings - two Handel arias, three songs and an aria from
   the opera "Ashoka's Dream" by the mezzo-soprano's husband, Peter
   Lieberson, and finally the Schumann - presented a contrast between
   romantic love and maternal love.

   After the Schumann cycle's culmination in death, all three encores
   stayed on concept.

   Mr. Lieberson's Rilke songs, three of a cycle of five written for
   his wife, were a highlight.  Although the poetry is not conventionally
   romantic, they certainly sound like love songs, not least because
   Ms. Hunt Lieberson's voice opened up in a new richness of warmth
   and color from the first notes of "O ihr Zartlichen."

   She is a born lieder singer, and Mr. Lieberson has created some
   contemporary German lieder.  Respecting the words' profundity,
   intricacy and natural rhythm, his music here is also tinged with a
   German Romantic tonality, shades of Strauss and Wagner, particularly
   in the opening invocation of "Atmen, du unsichtbares Gedicht!" and
   its concluding fourths.  Judith Gordon, the accompanist, played with
   a lissome touch: sometimes slightly cloying, more often gently
   supple.

Janos Gereben/SF, CA
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