Masterful working of rare songs

It seemed perfectly apt on Saturday, what with robins singing in seemingly every tree, that the penultimate program of the Musical Masterworks season would be dedicated to song.

But these were songs more rarely heard than the robin's: Beethoven's settings of German, Irish and Scottish folk songs, a magical reworking by Charles Ives of his "The Housatonic at Stockbridge," the first volume of Aaron Copland's "Old American Songs," the best-known of which is "Simple Gifts" and, not least, a five-minute song cycle by Robert Schumann.

To get right to the point, they were masterfully performed (a pun, alas, yes) by baritone Randall Scarlata, with various configurations of able accompaniment by pianist Andrew Armstrong, violinist Jennifer Frautschi and cellist and Artistic Director Edward Arron.

The emphasis in the sentence above is on the word "performed," as Scarlata, with a voice of wonderful range, did not just sing these songs, he acted them.

So, for example, when he sang Copland's "The Dodger," he became, consecutively, the candidate, the preacher and the lover, each with a shift of phrasing and a few emphatic gestures.

But first, there were the Beethoven settings, commissioned by a Scotsman, which grew over the course of a decade to 179 songs, most in languages Beethoven didn't speak, Arron explained. Which, of course, makes Beethoven's straight-to-the-spirit-of-it setting of "The Pulse of an Irishman," for example, all the more remarkable.

When the Scotsman, George Thomson, suggested that Beethoven make the songs easier to perform, as they were intended for folks to play in their parlors, Beethoven got a bit sniffy, Arron said.

"I'm not accustomed to retouching my compositions," Beethoven said. "I'm sorry that you are the loser," and then he made a rather disparaging remark about the lack of facility on the part of Thomson's intended performers.

The Beethoven songs were performed by the full ensemble, which brought a happy jocularity to such songs as "Horch auf mein Liebchen" (Listen up, my love) and "O Sweet Were the Hours," with its rousing chorus of "Wine! Wine! Wine! Come bring me wine to cheer me..."

The Ives piece, simply performed by voice and piano, was a haunting reduction of the movement from his orchestral suite with lyrics by Robert Underwood Johnson. In the river's depths were dark minor chords, an underlying dissonance to the high, flowing notes above.

The Schumann song cycle, "Der arme Peter" (The poor Peter), was composed of three short songs that tell the story of Peter's heartbreak upon the marriage of his love to another man. They were three of more than 150 songs Schumann composed when he fell in love with Clara Wieck.

Clara Wieck, of course, would ultimately become Clara Schumann, and was herself a gifted pianist and composer.

The ensemble performed her "Three Romances for Violin and Piano, Opus 22," demonstrating that the only thing missing from these soaringly beautiful pieces was words.

The last performance of the night was of Robert Schumann's Piano Trio in d minor, Opus 63, certainly to be placed somewhere near the apex of German romanticism.

The piece is dominated by a deep lament, bordering, in this romantic's estimation, on the lugubrious.

This was through no fault of the performers, who brought fire to their dispatch, but simply because, even for this romantic, sometimes Schumann can be a bit much.

Musical Masterworks, which performs at the First Congregational Church at the intersection of Ferry Road and Lyme Street in Old Lyme, will repeat this program today at 3 p.m.

k.robinson@theday.com