Darryl Cooper has been serving as Assistant Music Director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Opera Program since 2003. He is probably best known for the piano accompaniment he provides for the Opera Scenes recitals given at the end of each semester, but coaching is also an important part of his work. Last night he gave a Faculty Artist Series recital at the Conservatory; and, consistent with his "day job," his role was that of accompanist for mezzo-soprano Clara O'Brien, currently Assistant Professor of Voice at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro.
Cooper selected an interesting opportunity to feature his own efforts. The second half of his program was devoted entirely to the Poème de l'Amour et de la Mer the Opus 19 of Ernest Chausson. The Wikipedia description of this work as a song cycle is not particularly accurate. The composition is more of a three-movement suite, whose outer movements set two poems by Chausson's friend Maurice Bouchor, "La fleur des eaux" (the flower of the waters) and "La mort de l'amour" (the death of love), respectively. The work is scored for full orchestra (two of each wind instrument, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, harp, and strings); and the song settings are separated by an orchestra-only interlude. This interlude was Cooper's only solo turn, but it also provided opportunity to feature another talent from his operatic duties, which is to provide an effective translation of orchestral sonorities within the limitations of the piano keyboard.
This challenge was particularly important for the Chausson selection. The two poems he selected are rich in descriptive text, and Chausson's orchestral sonorities are always playing off those descriptions. In this context the interlude provides a critical transition between the sensuous longing of the first poem and the crushing despair of the second. To capture this transition with piano alone is no mean feat; but Cooper achieved it, as well as always finding the right way to establish the supporting sonorities for the Bouchor texts.
For the first half of the program, the piano was restricted to playing the role of piano but in three contrasting settings of songs by Franz Schubert, Hans Pfitzner, and Claude Debussy. As is almost always the case, the Schubert settings gave as much attention to the piano as to the vocal line. This particular selection, "Suleika I" (D. 720), the fourth of the D. 877 collection of Wilhelm Meister songs, "Rastlose Liebe" (D. 138), and "Blondel zu Marien" (D. 626), almost seemed structured as a mini-sonata with vocal obbligato, leaving one to hope for an opportunity to hear Cooper take on Schubert's solo piano repertoire. Pfitzner was represented by his three Opus 3 songs, composed in 1888 and 1889. By way of context, this is the same period during which Richard Strauss composed "Death and Transfiguration" and Gustav Mahler composed his four "Wayfarer" songs. In this framework Pfitzner shows much greater discontent with tonal traditions than either of these contemporary works and would prefer to dwell on the sort of ambiguity that Richard Wagner had disclosed in the first chord of Tristan und Isolde. Thus, he serves more as a bridge to the deeper exploration of such ambiguity that Arnold Schoenberg would undertake ten years later, beginning with his "Verklärte Nacht" sextet (although, in fairness, I have not be able to turn up an account of Schoenberg's awareness of Pfitzner's work). Cooper was thoroughly at home in this realm of tonal ambiguity, providing not only clarity of line in his own performance but the best of support for O'Brien's delivery of the vocal lines.
Debussy was represented by his first effort in setting texts from Les Chanson de Bilitis, a collection of erotic poetry by Pierre Louÿs. The poems "La flûte de Pan", "La Chevelure" and "Le Tombeau des Naïades" were set as songs for female voice and piano in 1897. In 1901 Debussy returned to the collection and composed a work for chamber ensemble to accompany a recitation of twelve of the poems. Debussy's instrumentation enhanced the erotic qualities of the later setting, but his earlier approach to the texts is still quite effective. As was the case with Schubert, Cooper was dealing with a composer clearly comfortable with the piano; and he provided a clear execution of Debussy's pianist sensibilities.
I have tended to focus on Cooper since this was essentially "his" recital. This is not to play down O'Brien's role, however. In the course of the evening, she had to take on a broad variety of styles and moods associated with those styles; and she brought a clarity of execution to each setting that drew the listener into both text and music in equal measure. This recital may have been conceived from "the accompanist's point of view;" but the soloist was far from secondary.
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