Ying Fang @ Titus Family Recital/Moody
Photos by Kyle Flubacker
—Gregory Sullivan Isaacs
One of the area’s musical treasures, presented annually courtesy of The Dallas Opera, is The Robert E. And Jean Ann Titus Family Recital. Begun in 2014, the series brings A-list singers to the Metroplex and presents them in the intimate recital format. Most are opera singers, such as the veteran mezzo Frederica von Stade; others, such as Ian Bostridge, specialize in the art song format. But a singer’s usual habitat and specialization matters little in the recitals. There is nowhere to hide, such as there is when playing a character in a dramatic opera.
The young soprano Ying Fang required no such help. A native of Ningbo, China, she attended The Juilliard School and was a member of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.
Her light lyric soprano voice is gorgeous and her technique is absolute perfection. Even the softest notes are limpid, clear, precisely on pitch, and focused. She filled every inch of the Moody Performance Hall acoustical space. Fang’s voice is even from top to bottom and her impeccable control allows for the complete range of dynamics, even a perfect Messa di Voce (a gradual crescendo from very soft to forte, and a matching diminuendo back to the original soft).
Her program was typical of voice recitals everywhere: songs in different languages and different eras by a wide selection of well-known composers, ending with something more personal.
She opened with J. S. Bach’s Zerfliesse, Mein Herze from his St. John Passion, and ended with a set of songs by different Chinese composers (Yuanren Zhang, Rui Zhang, Yi Zhou, Zaiyi Lu, and Qing Liu). In between, we heard songs by Franz Schubert, Richard Strauss, Claude Debussy, Ernest Chausson, Dominick Argento, and Reynaldo Hahn (little known except by singers). Only a set of Italian songs was missing.
Fang’s vocals were extraordinarily beautiful, though one sensed a lack of actual involvement in telling the stories. Songs have words. They convey a story, paint a picture, or create a feeling. In essence, they are little opera scenes. A recital is not an opera stage and the drama and emotion in the text needs to be minimized—but it has to be there, albeit subtly expressed.
Also, the program, while filled with lovely works, offered little variation in tempi and mood. A clever song or one in a lickety-split tempo would have been welcome.
Pianist Craig Terry was a last minute substitution for Fang’s regular collaborative pianist, Ken Noda. He was brought in from the Chicago Opera , so he is used to singers. Thus, he was a supportive, precise, and flexible partner. He undoubtedly was familiar with her repertoire, except for maybe the Chinese song group, and turned in an impeccable performance. The only reservation was his use of excessively slowing the ritards in the tags at the end of some of the songs.
However, who can complain about an afternoon of vocal perfection?
