It seems almost unfair, an embarrassment of riches, that Deborah Voigt
has a voice that makes her a diva. She has personality - charisma, even
- and a wonderful comic ability, so that she could get along on the
strength of those abilities alone.  Tonight, at her recital in Davies
Hall, at times those fine extra-musical attributes came handy.

The program and the spectacular gowns at the San Francisco Symphony
concert duplicated precisely Voigt's Carnegie Hall debut nine days ago.
It would have been welcome if she "localized" her program just a bit,
perhaps by singing something to remind the audience of her great successes
here.

Curiously, her "return to home," to the city where she started her career
20 years ago, in the Merola Program, wasn't quite as riotous as reports
of the New York recital made that event sound.  A warm reception here,
yes, but no five-minute ovation at the beginning of the concert, a hall
only two-thirds filled, and with some significant exceptions, a rather
tempered audience acknowledgment.

The reason must have been the uneven performance.  Unlike her self-effacing,
virtually "invisible" accompanist, Brian Zeger, who played in a rock-solid,
near-perfect, utterly consistent manner from the first note to the last,
Voigt was on and off, although as the evening progressed, she sang better
and better, until a memorable finale.

The opening set of four Schubert songs was the low point of the recital.
It's something of a mystery how somebody who can make contact with the
listeners so easily and well (such as in her winning admonition to the
audience not to applaud before the end of the set) would fail to communicate
in these songs.  They all sounded alike, regardless of their great variety
of subjects and moods - "Auflosung" ("Dissolution"),"Ganymede," "Litany"
and "Der Zwerg" ("The Gnome").  More surprisingly, there were some minor
vocal problems (a wavering in the voice in "hinnen schieden" and "Seelen
ruhn"), the middle voice rather weak, high notes not nearly as sparkling
as Voigt can make them as a matter of course.

The three Richard Strauss songs that followed were more of the "real
Voigt," voice and interpretation both coming alive, especially in "Ich
trage meine Minne" and "Nichts." Two Tchaikovsky songs followed, "Was
I Not a Little Blade of Grass" quite impressive (with sparkling Russian
diction), but "Whether Day Dawns" disappointing as Voigt failed to convey
the song's ecstasy.

After intermission, it was a different concert.  Seven songs by Ives,
four by Ben Moore, three by William Bolcom, and Steven Sondheim's "Loosing
My Mind" (from "Follies") and "I Never Do Anything Twice" (from the film,
"The Seven Percent Solution") all sparkled brightly, impressed mightily
with one of the finest English dictions in all music, creating gales of
laughter, big applause, and at the end (perhaps to help along the expected
encores), standing ovations.

The encores also came from the Carnegie Hall recital, one by one:
Strauss' "Fruhlingsfeier," "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" from "Showboat,"
Moore's hilarous "Wagner Roles," including a show-stopping reference to
the "little black dress" which made too many headlines recently when a
director decided that Voigt's size is more important than the fact that
she was born to sing the title role of Strauss' "Ariadne."

Unevenness, however, struck even during the enthusiastically-received
encores, with a few "Hojotoho" cries from "Die Walkure" going just a
tad flat.

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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