The New Century Chamber Orchestra’s title for its March Bay Area concerts, “Mastery of Schubert,” is a curious one. While there is little question that the gifted soprano Melody Moore will fulfill the title’s promise, the four Schubert lieder she performs on the March 24-27 concerts, arranged for chamber orchestra by Clarice Assad, amount to no more than 15 or so minutes onstage. In a concert devoted mostly to Bach’s Violin Concert in E Major, performed by Music Director Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, and Mendelssohn’s thoroughly delightful Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20, Schubert’s songs take up precious little space.
Since Moore is equally perplexed by the title, perhaps it refers to the greatness of the songs. At the heart of her set lies Gretchen am Spinnrade (Gretchen at the spinning wheel). Schubert’s setting of this text, from Goethe’s Faust, completed when he was 17, was one of his first songs to gain fame beyond his inner circle. The whirling piano accompaniment, which mimics the motion of the wheel, doubles as a metaphor for Gretchen’s overwrought fantasy of Faust’s first kiss. The musical climax, on the word kuss (kiss), has provided more sopranos than one can part one’s lips for with the opportunity to display their expressive powers in an intensely dramatic miniature.
Moore explains the genesis of the set thusly: “My choice was that the songs tell a story and go somewhere. Nadja’s wish was that they assume the shape of a sonic arc, that not all be slow and not all be fast. Between the two of us, we came up with our choices.”
The other songs should pair quite well with Schubert’s early masterpiece. Moore begins and ends with two versions of another Goethe setting, An den Mond (To the moon), D. 259 and D. 296. Schubert, who knew from an early age that he would eventually die from syphilis, naturally gravitated to verse that includes the lines (in translation), “I hover between joy and sorrow in my solitude.”
“The two settings are wonderful together,” says Moore. “The earlier setting is rather spacious and pastoral, so we’re using it as an opener. The other’s tonality has more of a final sense to it.”
Given his sadness, it is hardly surprising that Schubert composed no fewer than 10 songs titled Sehnsucht (Longing). Moore and Salerno-Sonnenberg have chosen D. 636, Op. 39, Schubert’s second setting of a poem by Schiller that begins, “Ah, if only I could find a way out from the depths of this valley.” Song and accompaniment grow in intensity, assuming virtually operatic proportions over the course of five minutes; this Sehnsucht should prove a natural for chamber orchestra accompaniment.
“Most of Schubert’s poetry is really rather deep,” says Moore. “It’s not slight music to sing; it’s rather heavy. So I get it in terms of sentiment. I love singing the pieces, and I think they lend themselves well to an operatic singer’s way of singing. They grow and they have peaks and valleys, much like an aria would. The intimacy comes from the sentiment, from the feeling, and from your intention.”
Moore’s vocal timbre and emotional affect, which are especially suited to suffering operatic characters such as Mimi (in La bohème), Marguerite (Faust), Suor Angelica, and Manon Lescaut, seem equally suited to her selection of Schubert songs. I, for one, am as eager to hear her Schubert as her portrayal of Susan Recorla in San Francisco Opera’s world premiere next fall of Christopher Theofanidis’ 9/11–based love story, Heart of a Soldier.