In Wolf Trap's 'Vienna Woods,' a Tour of German Song

Steven Blier Creates Another Fascinating, Fun Program

At a time when there is so much focus on creative programming as a Holy Grail in classical music, it's bewildering that Steven Blier does not get more respect.

Blier, the accompanist, arranger and artistic director of song recitals at Wolf Trap for the past 15 years (as well as his New York Festival of Song), has come in for a lot of praise for his engaging, offbeat programs and the witty spoken commentary in which he frames them. But in a field that tends to view singing as the illiterate stepsister of serious music, Blier is often tarred with the brush of the lightweight. His programs defy traditional genre and highbrow taste by placing Broadway show tunes, little-known bonbons by Mompou or Montsalvatge, and Schubert lieder on an equal footing. They also tend to be organized around a theme rather than the conventional groupings by chronology or composer.

The problem? For some people, they are simply too much fun.

"Tales From the Vienna Woods," a reprise of his first-ever program for Wolf Trap in 1994, presented at the Barns on Saturday night, is a typical example. It offered songs, in German, about the woods (the "Vienna" of the title is, of course, a play on Wolf Trap's location). And although it focused on some of the big names of the German canon, it for the most part avoided greatest hits in favor of less well known songs by Schumann and Strauss, interspersed with a smattering of Berg, Busoni and Carl Loewe -- whom Blier described as the Barry Manilow of his day before providing evidence with the sunny-sweet ballad "Tom der Reimer," in which the piano embosses the text, illustrating the ringing of silver bells or the singing of a bird, with the aesthetic of a Hallmark greeting card.

So not all the music was great. So what? The program still felt fresh. It was also a platform for some considerable vocal talent.

Opera singers can have mixed feelings about the song recital, which thrusts them in front of the public without the comforting intermediary of a character and costume to hide behind. The four featured artists from the Wolf Trap Opera Company seemed relieved when they were able to ham it up as, for instance, a would-be lover and the object of his questionable affections in Brahms's classic "Vergebliches Staendchen" ("Futile Serenade"). Liam Bonner, a baritone, and Marjorie Owens, a soprano, had a lot of fun with the comic shtick. Yet both of them sang a lot better when they simply stood and delivered.

Owens, who starred in the company's "King for a Day" in June and will be Ariadne next month, is subject to extra scrutiny because of the sheer magnificent power of her voice: It seems impossible that we will not all be listening to her for years to come. Strauss's "Waldseligkeit" ("Forest Contentment") had the still radiance of trees in the woods, and the closing line, "Yours, yours alone," sent chills down my back.

But because she is so good, the areas in which she needs work are all the more apparent. Her lower register is not as strong as it could be. A stage animal and a born coquette, she needs to explore her serious side; Wolf's rich and otherworldly "Nachtzauber" ("Night Magic," which Blier described as "Wolf taking Moerike's poetry and putting it on the analyst's couch") was vocally competent but interpretatively adrift. And Owens needs work on her German, which got mushy and unintelligible in quick passages. None of this is meant to tarnish her ability as an artist; anyone interested in singing should get tickets to "Ariadne auf Naxos" (Aug. 15-19 at the Barns) immediately.

The other singers were no slouches either. Bonner, whose smooth baritone has warmth and a secure top, is also still honing his talent. He veered from the slightly wooden, in Wolf's "Fussreise" ("A Walk") to the tongue-in-cheek, as a rakish soldier in Mahler's "Scheiden und Meiden" ("Parting and Absence"), but outdid himself when he settled down and aimed for more subtlety in Schumann's "Im Walde" ("In the Woods"). Beau Gibson, a tenor, was less sure; his voice sounded thin at times, particularly in songs he did not know well. But he seemed more comfortable in "Tom der Reimer" and especially as the offstage Erlkoenig in Loewe's setting of the Goethe ballad (better known in the version by Schubert).

Anne-Carolyn Bird, whose soprano voice is intensely sweet and light, unwittingly illustrated the benefits of a strong lower register in her first song, Mahler's familiar "Ich ging mit Lust durch einen gruenen Wald" ("I walked happily through the green wood"). In repeated phrases that carried her from the depths to the heights of her voice, the darkness of her low notes reflected a sheen of color up to the jewellike enamel tones of her top ones -- a shimmer she did not fully recapture in her subsequent songs, in part because she oversang in Berg's "Die Nachtigall."

Blier is such an engaging host that it tends to overshadow his accompaniment, but his playing, despite a few glitches at the end, was consistently supportive, with the same drive to communicate that motivates his programming. And although the evening smacked of the elegiac, Blier, who has muscular dystrophy, made sure everyone knew it was not intended as a farewell, informing the audience that next year's programs were already in his head -- which drew a round of applause.