The thirty people who attended Wednesday evening's concert in Paine Hall by John Wiseman, baritone, and Michel Singher, piano, heard by far the best of the three Harvard-Radcliffe Music Club recitals this year. Wiseman, an apprentice artist with the Santa Fe Opera Company this past summer, sustained a splendid resonance from a Handel lyric through the complete cycle of nine songs by Faure.
Mr. Wisman never seemed to need to breathe. He differentiated clearly between pitches, and articulated so carefully that even listeners for whom French and German are second languages could understand him. He changed dramatic moods with grace, especially his transition from Hugo Wolf's ditty, "Insatiable Love" to Wolf's melodramatic "Farewell."
Michel Singher '62 complemented Mr. Wiseman throughout. His performance of the Faure accompaniment was in itself a creditable piece of pianism, even if, at times, he tried to drown Mr. Wiseman out.
Though Mr. Wiseman can use the defense that much modern music is anti-lyrical (whatever that means), a performance by a musician such as himself of music a little more au courant than Faure would have been most welcome.
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