Today is a study day in silence, says soprano Claron McFadden via Skype.Yesterday she sang her entire program in a row, without piano, a cappella.Today her voice can recover, while her brain works. She doesn’t sing a note.But at the end of the conversation, when a child bursts into the interviewer’shouse impersonating a chicken for obscure reasons, McFadden can’t containherself and bursts into an exuberant cackling. Without a doubt the bestchicken imitation of 2022.
You’re either a voice artist or you’re not – and McFadden (1961) is.
‘Vox humana’ is the title of the recital she will give on Thursday at theMuziekgebouw in Amsterdam, together with master pianist Alexander Melnikov. In2019 they already played it at Wigmore Hall in London – five stars, judged_The Independent_. It is a colorful programme, with large song cycles bySergei Prokofiev, Oliver Knussen and George Crumb, interspersed with voicesolos and stunt vocals. Aria from John Cage, for example, a body piece fromMcFadden. But also the infamous written-out orgasm Sonata erotica by ErwinSchulhoff. “I let the voice be heard in all its guises,” she laughs.
Music makes a room vibrate and those vibrations rise, you should not just> drop them
Quiet day
McFadden has just returned to Amsterdam, where she has lived for almost fortyyears, after performances in Brussels and Bologna. Leaving aside the chatter,today is a day of silence: „It is important to build up stamina before I startrehearsing with the pianist. That’s why I sing everything in a row and thentake a rest. Because when the voice gets tired, it doesn’t speak. Peoplesometimes say that music is top sport, I always thought that was anexaggeration, but now I think: yes, there is actually something in it.”
McFadden met Melnikov at a winter festival in Salzburg, where they were pairedup for an ad hoc performance. It was their first acquaintance, on stage, andthey hit it off right away. McFadden: “When I met him again at the airport,Sasha asked [Melnikov, red] if I didn’t want to do Rachmaninov with him, the_Six songs_ , opus 38.” She acted surprised. Rachmaninov’s repertoire ishighly romantic, while McFadden mainly focuses on baroque and contemporary:’If there’s something I’m not, it’s a lyric soprano. Why me? But Sasja wantedthe clarity and precision of my voice, to be able to hear the harmoniesbetter.”
A few years later the time had come. Rehearsals were a lot of fun, saysMcFadden, not least because of Melnikov’s language coaching: “I pretty muchcrawled into his mouth to find out how he made those sounds. I don’t speakRussian, but after the concert his mother was in tears.”
And then Melnikov said: now I want to discover your world. “’Are you sure?’ Iasked. For the pieces by Crumb and Knussen he has to step out of his comfortzone, the idiom and playing techniques are very different from what he is usedto. But he plays them wonderfully. In return, we also do the _Five songs_without words, op. 35 by Prokofiev.”
The three song cycles form focal points at the beginning, middle and end ofthe recital. The works in between are not songs, but pure vocal art: the_Aria_ of Cage, the legendary Sequence III by Luciano Berio, written for hiswife, mezzo and composer Cathy Berberian. From Berberian himself, McFaddenvoices Stripsody , with a graphic score in the form of a cartoon, in whichher virtuoso cackling comes in handy. It’s easy to dismiss such pieces asacrobatic bits and pieces from the twentieth-century cabinet of curiosities,but the listener is doing the music (and themselves) short.
Intensity of a crying child
McFadden: “People knew hundreds of thousands of years ago that sound is linkedto emotion. The more pain, the more fear, the deeper the sound and the greaterthe intensity. When a child cries, you immediately hear whether it is real orfake – you hear it in the silence before. Breath, sound and emotion areclosely connected. And a piece like Berio’s Sequence III is close to thatprimal source of human sound. It can be funny, but I did it once in aperformance about the war, to give voice to a woman who has seen too much.Afterwards it was completely silent.”
McFadden also sees it as her task to train the collective experience, to letthe tension escape in a controlled manner, without anyone clapping too early -whether it is from enthusiasm or from the fright of unleashed emotions: “Musicbrings a space in vibration and those vibrations rise, you should not justdrop them. We made something together, the audience and I. Feeling thatconnection, that’s what it’s all about.”
She tells that she once Bachs Matthew Passion sang in the Concertgebouw andafterwards someone asked her if she was religious. The person was surprised ather answer, says McFadden: “My imagination must be big enough to imagine thatit is me, and that I can make you believe it.”