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Karneus and Gunn: Sad Songs
By Philip Anson / March 13, 2001
On the Aisle
Opera is opera, and song is song, and and never the twain shall meet. Some variation of that apercu might have occurred to the audiences at the recent New York song recital debuts of two promising young opera singers, American baritone Nathan Gunn and Swedish mezzo Katrina Karneus. Both of these thirty-something singers have strong careers in international opera houses. I have enjoyed Nathan Gunn in Gluck’s Iphigenie en Tauride at the Glimmerglass Opera and at the New York City Opera. I recall with pleasure Karneus’s fine Carmen at Paris’s Opera Comique several years ago. Yet both of these artists delivered dispiriting song recitals, albeit for different reasons.
Ms. Karneus performed on March 12, 2001, at Lincoln Center in the Great Performers Art of the Song recital series, which presents both famous and unknown singers. It has been the entry point to American fame and fortune for dozens of now-famous European artists. Based on her Carmen, I had high hopes for Ms. Karneus. Unfortunately the singer I heard on Sunday bore little resemblance to the young, plump mezzo with the plummy voice I heard in Paris. Karneus’s program of songs by Mahler, Schumann, Marx, Fauré and Sibelius revealed a tight, colorless, unpleasantly edgy voice. The songs were almost all set too high for a mezzo, which forced her to produce grating high notes. Sadly, she lacked an interesting bottom range, and her middle voice -- heard to best advantage in Schumann’s five Mary Start Songs Op. 135 -- was only of average interest. Maybe Karneus is making the transition to soprano. Maybe she was sick. She certainly seemed nervous. The roughly 100 people in the Walter Reade Theater, including her management and their friends, applauded encouragingly. But this performance was on the level of a mediocre Juilliard student recital, so I left at the intermission.
Nathan Gunn sang on March 13 at the 92nd Street Y’s Kaufmann Hall on the Upper East Side, an excellent venue for singers. Accompanied by his wife pianist Julie Jordan Gunn, this handsome, strapping young man offered a program of songs sublime (Brahms, Wolf) and banal (Scheer, Bolcom). Unfortunately he left the depths and delights of Lieder largely unexplored. Gunn has a strong, smooth, masculine baritone.The timbre is pleasant without being particularly expressive or seductive. Obviously, his lanky Gary Cooper good looks and physical stamina serve him well on the opera stage, as part of an ensemble. But as a soloist, Gunn lacks the charisma and artistry to sustain a 2-hour song recital.
Take Brahms’s religious masterpiece, the Four Serious Songs, for example. Just a week ago baritone Thomas Quasthoff delivered a heart rending performance of this cycle. Gunn’s version was bland and forgettable, as were the selected Hugo Wolf songs. One has to agree with San Francisco Chronicle critic Allan Ulrich’s review of Gunn’s March 4, 2001, recital of the same repertoire. Ulrich noted a “lack of heft in the lower register,” “no strong emotional connection,” and “a compressed range of dynamics.” He also panned Julie Gunn, who “played too loudly and inflexibly and resisted shaping where shaping was essential.”
At least the German songs were worthy of attention, unlike the tasteless American songs which came after the intermission. Gene Scheer’s Voices of World War II is Readers’ Digest music -- mawkish sentiment for Middle America (compare these to the brilliant war songs by Vaughan Williams and weep). William Bolcom’s Cabaret Songs are just as embarrassingly outdated and corny.
Gunn has lots of potential, but he needs to rethink his artistic persona if he wants to win the hearts and minds of finicky song enthusiasts. Savvier programming, sterner mastery of the core repertoire, and a professional accompanist are advisable if he wants to scale the artistic heights.
>Lincoln Center
> 92nd Street Y
Copyright by Philip Anson (Questions or comments? Philanson@aol.com).
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