Thomas Meglioranza

Goethe and Goetta in Cincinnati

I just came home from a really nice trip to Cincinnati where I appeared on the Linton Music series in a program anchored by pianist Reiko Uchida.



Schubert lieder had been requested, and since it was late February, I thought a group of songs beginning in winter and gradually melting into spring would work well. 

I was happy for the chance to add a couple of new Deutsche numbers to my repertoire, including Der Winterabend (definitely in my top 5 Schubert) and the epic flower ballad, Viola.  Poor 13-minute-long Viola has been abused by so many commentators over the years -- most notably, by Fischer-Dieskau, who described the music as "terribly manneristic and boring", and called the 19 stanzas of poetry "a comical biology lesson" (yet in his recorded performance of this song, he somehow manages to sing as if his life depended on it). To me, the song is full of excitement, humor, and suspense, and the tragic ending never fails to leave me feeling devastated.  It's like a lieder version of a great Pixar film.



I found these snowbells in Central Park last week.
I wonder if DFD has ever seen Finding Nemo.

The program ended with four Ludwig Spohr songs, including a very spooky setting of Goethe's Erlkönig.  I'd always been a little wary of Spohr because I vividly remember hearing several performances of his music in college that made zero impression on me.  I suppose it's unavoidable that after Schubert and Beethoven, Spohr is not going to seem terribly profound, but I think when he is performed with both care (i.e., not treated like second class music and simply thrown together) and flair (especially the violin part, which is quite virtuosic but needs to sound easy), then it can be just the thing you want to hear at the end of a meaty concert.



Kids these days...not even pianos are safe from their "tags".

I checked Cincinnati chili off my list the last time I was in town.  My food discovery on this trip was goetta, which is kind of a cross between scrapple and haggis.  It's delicious.



Here's a nice review of the concert.

Milton, Handel, Morris

My first L'Allegro, a crazily beautiful combination of poetry, music and dance.



The view from the pit wasn't great.  When we weren't singing, we vocal soloists stood on our chairs so we could see better.  "Sonny Rollins" was written in chalk on our platform.



Did some light sightseeing on performance days.



Played around with my new phone in the dressing room.

More pics from the Barrel Room

Top: WWI Songs with pianist Caroline Almonte. 
Bottom: Hugo Wolf songs with the Australian String Quartet
(photo credit: Sandy Smith Photos)

Huntington Estate Music Festival

Greetings from Sydney, whence I’m flying home later this afternoon after a very busy week a the Huntington Estate Music Festival.


I promised a few audience members that I would post the WWI-era popular songs I announced from the stage at yesterday morning’s concert.  Here they are:

Keep the Home Fires Burning (Ivor Novello/Lena Guilbert Ford)

Vienna City of My Dreams (Rudolf Sieczynski/Kim Gannon)

Half Minute Songs (Carrie Jacobs Bond)

Roses of Picardy (Haydn Wood/Lt. Fred. E. Weatherly)

Sister Susie’s Sewing Shirts for Soldiers (Hermann E. Darewski/R.P. Weston)

Stay Down Here Where You Belong (Irving Berlin)

The Food Song (Some Little Bug is Going to Find You Someday) (Silvio Heim/Benjamin Hapgood Burt and Roy Atwell)

I had a such a great time in Mudgee. Best wishes to everyone I met.

Trauer-Music

I spent a couple of weeks in Oxford last winter making a one-voice-per-part recording of a newly reconstructed Bach cantata (BWV 244a) with the Taverner Consort and three other singers (Emily Van Evera, Clare Wilkinson and Charles Daniels), led by Andrew Parrott.  The CD was recently released in Europe and is now available for pre-order from Amazon in the US.

Karchin's Romulus

A recording of Louis Karchin conducting his sweet one-act comic opera, Romulus, has just been released.



You can order a CD from Amazon here, or download it from iTunes, etc.  The Philadelphia Inquirer has posted a short review here.

(Karchin and me rehearsing at the Guggehneim--photo: Gerry Goodstein)

Last night's set list

Here are the songs Reiko and I performed at Café Sabarsky last night:

Café Sabarsky Interview

An interview relating to my April 28 performance at the Café Sabarsky with pianist Reiko Uchida.

  


1. The program you have assembled for your performance draws material from European musical culture just prior to the First World War. What inspired you to focus on that particular moment in cultural history?

Concord, MA

The view from the crook of the piano at the Concord Free Public Library.  A truly great song recital space.



An Italian-themed recital program that's about as Italian as I am.



Tomato and a clam pie pit stop at Frank Pepe's in Manchester, CT.

April, sing I will

April's a busy month.

On April 28, Ms. Uchida and I return to the Cabaret@Café Sabarsky series at the Neue Galerie for an encore performance of our "Songs of the WWI Era" program, which includes songs by Irving Berlin, Anton Webern, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Charles Ives, Kurt Weill, Ivor Novello, Carrie Jacobs-Bond, Claude Debussy, among many others.  This program was named one of the Top Ten Best Classical Music Performances of the Year by the Philadelphia Inquirer when we performed it there in 2009.  (Once you recover from the shock of the $110 ticket price, it may help to bear in mind that it includes a very fine three course meal, so it's actually a pretty good value.)



On April 16, Reiko and I will be at the historical Concord Free Public Library in Concord, MA performing an old favorite eclectic Italian-themed program of ours, with songs of Schubert, Ives, Busoni, Derek Bermel, Rossini, Fauré, and Cathy Berberian.



On April 6, I'll be singing a recent piece by Louis Karchin for baritone and small orchestra (the excellent Washington Square Ensemble), and a new set of songs by Brian (pronounced "BREE-uhn") Fennelly with pianist Stephen Gosling.

On April 1, I'm at Bard College in their spectacular Fisher Center singing John Adams' The Wound-Dresser with the Longy Conservatory Orchestra conducted by Julian Pellicano.



Oh, and I can also be heard tonight (March 28) at the Guggenheim Museum in a concert celebrating composer David Del Tredici.  I'll be singing his very moving and beautiful song, Matthew Shepard, accompanied by the composer.