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Nicole Cabell (Devon Cass)
Please see:
http://operabuff-sandiego.typepad.com/my-blog/2014/02/opera-buff-san-diego-nicole-cabell-in-recital-with-symphony-musicians.html
John Malveaux
http://operabuff-sandiego.typepad.com/my-blog/2014/02/opera-buff-san-diego-nicole-cabell-in-recital-with-symphony-musicians.html
John Malveaux
San Diego Opera Buff
On February 4, soprano Nicole Cabell appeared in recital at the
Auditorium of the TSRI (The Scripps Research Institute, formerly The
Neurosciences Institute) along with members of the San Diego Symphony,
who not only accompanied the soprano, but also played instrumental works
as well. This program was part of an ongoing series of chamber music
evenings featuring members of the Symphony. Having seen Nicole Cabell
in San Francisco Opera’s I capuleti ed i montecchi, also having heard of her excellent reputation, we eagerly attended.
The program consisted almost exclusively of French music, the one
exception being an early work by Mikhail Glinka. All the vocal music
was French, a repertory of which I am not particularly familiar.
All-in-all, I can say it was a beautiful evening of listening.
First up was Maurice Ravel’s beautiful setting of five Greek songs, (Cinq Melodies Popolaires Grecques)
accompanied by harp, instead of piano, played by the Symphony’s Julie
Smith Phillips. These songs themselves were beautiful, but perhaps due
to insufficient warm-up, Nicole Cabell’s voice seemed to possess a bit
of a hard edge. However, during the subsequent Quatre Poemes Hindous, by
Maurice Delage, the voice improved, and this work, which included ten
instrumental accompanists, was fascinating, incorporating, as it did,
exotic, seemingly Indian sounding music.
The first part of the program concluded with Ravel’s 1905 Introduction and Allegro for
several instruments, but featuring the harp, which was the instrumental
highlight of the evening. Listening to this, I knew I had heard it
somewhere before, but did not know where. It sounded like
quintessential Ravel. Harpist Julie Smith Phillips took a well-deserved
and well-applauded solo bow.
Mikhail Glinka’s early 1832 work, Trio Pathetique in D minor
for clarinet, bassoon and piano, written while he was studying in
Italy, successfully opened the second half of the evening, but then was
followed by the evening’s vocal highlight. Ernest Chausson’s Chanson Perpetuelle,
the title referring to the subject matter of the text-being loved and
then abandoned. Accompanied by a piano and string quartet, Cabell was
simply outstanding in this work, capturing perfectly the agonized mood
of this piece.
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