Soprano Stephanie Pfundt and collaborative pianist Pierre-Nicolas Colombat offered beautiful but seldom-heard sets of songs by Edvard Grieg and Lili Boulanger as well as improvisations in a classical style on poems from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass at Longy’s Recital Hall N1 on Sunday. From their printed biographies as well as the handout, one could easily see these young musicians’ eagerness to take programming, performance, and indeed all forms of music dissemination in new directions.

A surprise at the beginning: two solo piano works, not listed on the program, played by Colombat’s one-time student Justin Cambridge. Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No. 1 offered flavorful Eastern European harmonies and enough dynamic variety to avoid numbing repetition. In June, from Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons, Cambridge took care to subtly highlight the melody while balancing the other voices but ultimately defeated his purpose by muddying the texture with frequent over-pedaling. These solo pieces also suffered from a less than ideally tuned piano.

While even Grieg’s best-known song cycle Haugtussa (Mountain Maid) is infrequently heard, he also composed many other undeservedly neglected songs. Undoubtedly, many singers shun those with Norwegian texts, but numerous others set original German poems, such as the Six Songs, Op. 48, heard here. The artists made Gruss (Greeting) sparkle with the bell-like motif in the piano and the singer’s breathless (so to speak) eagerness to send her greeting to a loved one. Dereinst, Gedanke mein (One day, my thoughts) made a stark contrast as the composer sensitively depicted the poet’s anticipation for the end of life to relieve love’s anguish. Pfundt and Colombat conveyed somberness and serenity, admirably sustaining the lengthy phrases in a much slower tempo. The rustic, folksy naïveté of Der Lauf der Welt (The Way of the World) charmed listeners, as Pfundt coyly implied that the lovers can avoid the drama and angst of love if they simply don’t discuss it but let matters take their course. Grieg organizes Die verschwiegene Nachtigall (The Secretive Nightingale) around the call of the nightingale, heard in both the piano and voice. Pfundt confided happily in us about her secret trysts with her lover by the heath and in the meadow, where no one will observe them but the nightingale—who will not say a word. She and Colombat evoked the bird at close range as well as in the distance. The most powerfully emotional song of the set is Zur Rosenzeit (At the Time of Roses), using the particularly somber key of B-flat minor to describe the heartbreak of unrequited love in the outer, identical stanzas. In the inner pair of stanzas, however, the narrator recalls an earlier, more hopeful time. The performers made vivid the increasing optimism, building tempo and dynamics to a climax briefly in the major before the painful descent back to despair. While the first five songs sounded quite close to the Lieder style of Schumann and Strauss, the final song had a more Nordic flavor. As the poet speaks of a beautiful dream—love in the warm springtime in a lovely forest setting, the dream ultimately becomes reality. Grieg’s setting gradually gathers excitement with a long accelerando and rising vocal line. Pfundt built to a climax on a high penultimate note, and Colombat delivered a brilliant sequence of concluding chords.

Improvisations in a classical style by a singer and pianist are a refreshing innovation—at least in my experience, wherein this has always been the province of a solo instrumentalist, usually a keyboard player. Our performers used the opening and closing poems of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (“I celebrate myself, and sing myself . . .” and “I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun . . .”). Pfundt recited the first poem twice before singing it while Colombat improvised throughout in an expansive musical landscape with trills perhaps depicting birdsong. The soprano subtly highlighted some of Whitman’s favored verbs: celebrate, sing, loaf. In the final poem Colombat again illustrated an outdoor scene, and Pfundt sang without recitations. Whitman here unconventionally celebrates the end of his life as a passage back to the earth (“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love”). Pfundt again showed alertness to key words, notably placing a melisma on “eddies”. While the artists did not overtly share melodies or rhythmic patterns, they clearly listened to each other, making for a satisfying collaboration.

Lili Boulanger’s cycle of 13 songs Clairières dans le ciel (Clearings in the Sky) is her masterpiece in this genre and surely among the greatest song cycles in any language. Though I’ve owned three recordings of it for some 25 years, I had never heard it in live performance before. In setting the poetry of Francis Jammes, Boulanger created music generally more introspective than dramatic, though it does not lack for powerful climaxes. The cycle poses unusual challenges for tenor or soprano. Lili’s elder sister, the great pedagogue Nadia Boulanger, remarked that when sung by a soprano it should be transposed down a whole step; in practice, this is very rarely done despite sopranos singing the cycle more frequently than tenors. Finding the ideal voice type is difficult, in any case. The cycle’s high tessitura requires a lyric tenor or soprano whose control and endurance allow him or her to avoid vocal fatigue, float many soft high notes, but also summon a certain amount of power for a number of dramatic moments over 30+ minutes of music. Pfundt’s voice type is closer to spinto (i.e., rather more powerful) than lyric but with judicious pacing could serve well.

The lush opening song Elle était descendue au bas de la prairie (She had reached the low-lying meadow) illustrates a meadow blooming with water-loving plants and the unnamed female love-object (hereafter “she/her”) rising up from the water. Pfundt and Colombat both employed a liquid legato, beautiful tone, and touches of rubato to ravishing effect. In this song and many others, the soprano floated soft high pitches exquisitely. In Parfois, je suis triste (Sometimes, I am sad) we experienced sudden mood changes of the poet from sad to overjoyed when he thinks of “her”—and back again. Colombat’s orchestral sonorities enhanced these shifts as did Pfundt’s modulations of tone. Un poète disait (A poet said) was also characterized by the vocal line’s  legato, though one wishes it had not come at the price of indistinct enunciation. After the iridescent beauty of the previous songs, the opening of Au pied de mon lit “(At the foot of my bed) struck us for its chastity and austere effect (the poem does refer to a religious carving of a Black Virgin), rising to a dramatic middle section, and finally ending peacefully.

Si tout ceci n’est qu’un pauvre rêve (If all this is but a poor dream) brings the first real darkening of the mood. Colombat made effective use of the rich bass tones of the piano, blurring the harmonies impressionistically; after the emotional high point, Pfundt made a poignant diminuendo at “I do not know if I shall heal.” Due to an editing error, our programs did not include text or translation for the seventh song, Nous nous aimerons tant que nous tairons nos mots (We will love each other so much that we won’t speak), a regrettable omission since this poem lightens the mood again. At the song’s end the performers gave us perhaps the most beautiful and intimate love music of the cycle. The exquisite piano harmonies in much of Deux ancolies (Two columbines) should alternate by half-measures (as indicated by the composer), but unfortunately on this occasion they mingled due to impressionist-style pedaling. Pfundt handled the vocal line with delicacy, particularly the ending: “[the wind] mingled their blue hearts.” In Par ce que j’ai souffert (Through what I’ve suffered) singer and pianist handed the melody back and forth deftly and sensitively. The song’s multiple extreme dynamic changes would potentially be vocally fatiguing for any singer, but our soprano negotiated them smoothly.

The penultimate song, Je garde une médaille d’elle (I keep a medallion of her), lasts all of two minutes but packs a powerful emotional punch: after beginning austerely it rises to three successive climaxes. Pfundt, perhaps caught up in the emotional intensity and possibly the high tessitura, did not sufficiently pace herself and could not suppress a cough after the closing phrase. The final and by far the longest song, Demain fera un an (It will be a year tomorrow), feels epic by comparison to the rest of the cycle, starting with confirmation of what the previous song indirectly stated: “she” died almost a year ago. The poet takes us on a grief-stricken reprise of the year, again building to multiple climaxes. Initially, our singer continued to experience some vocal fatigue (a few discreet coughs), but the substantial vocal pauses and piano interludes allowed her to get her second wind. The composer quotes several of her earlier songs, and both musicians expertly recreated their moods. The piano part also reaches new peaks of complexity in various accompaniments and interludes; Colombat met these demands admirably with a variety of colors. A luscious and literal repetition of the beginning of the opening song (“She had reached the low-lying meadow”) seemed to indicate a moment of consolation, but reality swiftly returned (“I have nothing more to sustain me, nothing more”). Pfundt finished repeating the same two pitches and words numbly (Boulanger’s marking in the score is éteint or “extinct”), and Colombat played stark open fifths on the piano, a reminder (if any were needed) that Lili Boulanger chose her poems from Francis Jammes’ larger collection entitled Tristesses (Sadnesses). These artists need a bit more experience with Clairières dans le ciel to fully realize it, and singers should also memorize song sets like the Grieg and the Boulanger. Nevertheless, I commend them for taking on the latter, a rarely heard, demanding work. If its challenges mostly elude the average concertgoer, its ubiquitous riches delight all.

Geoffrey Wieting holds Bachelor’s degrees in organ and Latin from Oberlin College and a Master’s degree in collaborative piano from New England Conservatory. He is Organist of First Parish Church of Weston as well as a freelance organist, collaborative pianist and vocal coach. He sings with the Back Bay Chorale and serves on the Board of Directors of the Old West Organ Society.