If you were going to design an art-song singer from the ground up, you would probably end up with someone very close to Erika Baikoff. The soprano debuts at Music@Menlo in a “Carte Blanche” concert on Aug. 4 and in the mainstage program “Vocal Exchange” on Aug. 7, singing mainly French art songs for both.
Success in art-song repertoire demands an acute sensitivity to language and poetry. Baikoff, the daughter of Russian American immigrants, spoke Russian at home, which explains her native pronunciation in repertory like Sergei Rachmaninoff songs.
“Funny thing,” Baikoff says, “my parents, every time I would say one word of English at home, would have me read a page of Shakespeare in Russian. I’m not sure why we went with Shakespeare, but it’s much easier in Russian because [the translation uses] the Russian that we currently speak today.
“Because of that, I’ve always had a big love for languages — not just basic ordering in a cafe but truly being able to converse and understand the literature. Also, Russian literature ends up using a lot of French as well [because the Russian aristocracy spoke it] — there’s pages of French in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, so growing up with that also exposed me to French culture.”
Baikoff went on to earn a degree in French studies at Princeton University before setting off to study singing in London at the Guildhall School of Music. That progression wasn’t planned, and Baikoff wasn’t sure in her undergraduate years if she would pursue a career as a vocalist. She had studied dance quite seriously and also violin. As she recounts it, “I never had many singer friends, mostly pianists. And I just loved making music with them. It’s not very fun for them to play orchestral reductions, and so we spent a lot of time, just for fun, reading through songs together.
“As I was studying all this French poetry,” she continues, “I also started exploring the musical expressions of these poems. I was really fortunate to start working with [voice teacher] Lorraine Nubar in New York, who was very good friends with Dalton Baldwin, one of the best lieder accompanists in the world. [Baldwin] was married to [baritone] Gérard Souzay, who, of course, did a lot of French repertoire. So I spent my summer studying French art song and even got the university to pay for it, claiming that it was part of my thesis research.”
At Guildhall, Baikoff studied with Rudolf Piernay, who “influenced my love of art song. He loves German lieder, and we worked on one new song every other day. He was very demanding, but his knowledge of the repertoire and German diction is above anyone else, and he inspired attention to detail. I also had the great pleasure of working with [pianist] Graham Johnson, who was also teaching at Guildhall. He’s the leader of lieder. You can’t pass up an opportunity like that.
“And now that I’m working professionally, I have a recital with Julius Drake coming up in August. I just did a recital with Malcolm Martineau in Spain. And so all of these professors who I have admired so greatly have suddenly become my colleagues, which is really special.”
Within this charmed career, Baikoff, now 30, has won the 2019 International Helmut Deutsch Lied Competition, the 10th Concours International de Chant-Piano Nadia et Lili Boulanger, and — just last year — a George London Award. She was also a Lindemann Young Artist at the Metropolitan Opera and before that a member of the Opéra National de Lyon Studio, as well as the Atelier Lyrique at the Verbier Festival, so clearly an opera career beckons. And Baikoff does like opera but prefers digging into poetry and art songs.
With that preference, it’s not surprising that she was tapped by Artistic Directors Wu Han and David Finckel, first for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and now for Menlo. Wu Han is stepping in as the pianist for the Aug. 4 concert (replacing an ailing Ken Noda). Even before the first rehearsal, the singer reports that her new partner naturally had some great ideas about song selection; Baikoff doesn’t want the program to be only French.
With her Wigmore Hall recital debut coming up, as well as other important chamber music dates on her calendar, it’s far more likely that you’ll hear this engaging artist on the concert stage than in the opera house, at least if Baikoff has her way. Menlo audiences once again have a golden opportunity to hear an artist who is making a big stir before her dance card is filled. Take advantage of it.
