Words by:
Lily Begg
ANAM Marketing Intern
Sara Macliver | Image credit: Rhydian Lewis
Renowned Australian soprano Sara Macliver took some time out of her busy performing schedule to chat with me about her upcoming concert with the ANAM pianists.
A Poet’s Love is a program of Sara’s own creation. ‘I’m not sure why I chose so many new things… I really made this program so much harder for myself than I needed to!’ She laughs.
Amongst the familiar Mozart, Schumann, and Strauss are some lesser known names. Sara always tries to include a female composer in her programs – in this case, French sisters Lili and Nadia Boulanger. “I hope the audience has a new appreciation for the Boulanger sisters… their music is quite new to me, but it’s exquisitely beautiful.”
Art songs demonstrate a particularly special marriage of music and words. Every utterance is carefully melded to a musical phrase, every exclamation intensified by a pang in the harmony. Nestled in the program is the quintessential example of this delicate partnership: Schumann’s song cycle, Dichterliebe, on text by Heinrich Heine. Through Schumann’s writing, lieder became a vessel of musical conversation and storytelling between the pianist and vocalist, elevating the pianist’s status beyond that of mere accompanist.
Sara is excited to share the vocal repertoire’s unique artistic challenges with the ANAM pianists. Singers are the only musicians for whom text is native territory, which means an important part of the collaborative process between Sara and the pianists will be exploring how the text can impact musical expression.
“Tonal colour is often informed by harmonic shifts – they’re the biggest driving factor. Then when you add text in, there’s that dimension as well. So the text along with the harmonic shifts inform the tonal colour. There might be a word that requires more pathos, and so a slightly darker colour, for example.”
ANAM pianist Reuben Johnson is in the early days of working on Mozart’s Alma grande e nobil core. Alma grande is an orchestral reduction, so not only will Reuben need to understand its text but, he will need to study its orchestration. Knowing which instrument plays which line will shape his use of articulation, dynamics, and phrasing.
Reuben has already begun to approach his preparation through the lens of a vocalist. “I think in some fundamental way, every instrument tries to imitate the voice. It’s the natural instrument we all have. So I think our ideas about phrasing and phrase structure come, in some way, from how we do things naturally when we speak and when we sing.”
Breathing is also important. “We sometimes forget about it – as button-pushers.”
ANAM pianists are heavily involved in chamber music, but the opportunity to work with a vocalist is rare. It is part of what makes coming to ANAM so special for Sara.
“I see my role particularly working with the pianists as coming from quite a pedagogical perspective. Even though I know this is a duet for the two of us, my focus is very much on the pianists getting as much out of it as they possibly can.
I think is kind of nice for the audience to know that that's part of the purpose, as well as us making music together.”
In the end it’s about storytelling. Few genres capture the experience of love, loss, and joy quite so intimately as the centuries-old art song tradition. This concert will be a celebration of the special magic that can be woven between voice and piano.