Seven years ago I first encountered mezzo-soprano-extraordinaire Jamie in the Celebrity Debut Series. Before she sang a note, she had won the audience at Long over with her welcoming smile, and soon enough, with the warmth and expressiveness of her voice. I have been following her many conquests since then, on and off stage. In her public life, she has been an outspoken advocate of social justice issues, body positivity, and LGBTQ+ rights. In her life on stage, she has won innumerable supporters for her iconic performance in Last Night at the Proms, for which she was named Personality of the Years by the BBC Music Magazine Awards, and since then she has been honored by just about whoever matters, including Cardiff Singer of the Year (2013). And the Saturday night’s Celebrity Series audience at Jordan Hall certainly appreciated her; they howled (quite un-Bostonian) and applauded wildly between movements.
Barton returned with violist Matthew Lipman and pianist Tamar Sonikidze. They deserved their equal billing. One expects Barton to make some sort of dramatic entrance, and she did, in a shimmering cranberry colored gown, all a-glitter. Violist Lipman, hardly a sartorial slouch, wore a black jacket with matching shimmer on the collar and lapels, with the shiniest black patent leather shoes and a megawatt smile. All evening long, he radiated joy, and his enthusiasm was contagious. Sonikidze, dressed in traditional black, shone as a sensitive musician.
They opened with only piece on earth that invariably causes me to weep, and sure enough, within a few bars of Brahms’s Two Songs for voice, viola and piano, Op 91, I was awash in tears. The viola and voice were, in a word, heavenly, but I had poignant memories of these songs played by my violist husband (with Jessye Norman at Tanglewood) and apparently, I was not ready to hear sublime viola playing quite so soon (after his death two months ago). I am not ordinarily one to praise violists—it is too close to home—but I totally enjoyed Matthew Lipman all evening long. He has a beautiful sound, excellent stage presence. He plays a 2021 Samuel Zygmuntowitz viola (the Emerson Quartet played instruments by this maker).
After the rather spectacular Brahms songs, Lipman played Brahms’s E-flat Major Viola Sonata (Op. 120, No. 2). This was the first time I had heard them back-to-back, and it worked uncannily well musically. Brahms famously disparaged these two viola pieces (originally for clarinet) to Clara Schumann. “If you would just improvise a little in f minor, and then in e-flat major, you would probably come up with my two sonatas.”
Following intermission and the audience’s unrestrained “Woo, hoos” at the sight of Barton, Clara Schumann’s Six Lieder, Op. 13 made a wonderful addition to this rather eclectic program. Barton has championed vocal works by women, and here she was committed and spellbinding, as she was in the next New England premiere of On Mars by Joel Thompson, for mezzo-soprano, viola and piano, a Celebrity Series co-commission, with a brilliantly inspired text by poet Ariana Benson.
I loved the trio’s performance, and adored the text, which I am tempted to quote in full. Thompson is a gifted composer, from Georgia like Barton, and his imaginative settings of these offbeat texts made me want to hear this piece again and again. It begins:
I was never much one for astronomy. My basic grasp of the universe and its terrifying contests satisfied my most of my life. Pluto was a planet then wasn’t, then was again. I think I didn’t go outside to witness the eclipse because I’ve spent too many moons waiting for obstacles to pass between my world and its light, for celestial corpses to align. To deem them bodies implies life and humans have long known Earth only as a ghost.
But when I see that water has been found on Mars (viola enters here) I feel a knot that my heart urges my tongue to curl into hope…
On Mars there are no guns. What good are bullets that can be batted down like balloons bleeding air? “
On Mars should enter standard repertoire. It’s got charmingly written tunes and offbeat poetry, harmonics that sound like they’re coming from Neptune; its New England premiere excite all those who heard it.