Randall Scarlata, In Winning Voice

By Tim Page Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, January 18, 2003; Page C01

The Vocal Arts Society presents what is probably the most consistently excellent series of classical concerts in the Washington area. After years of sold-out residence at the French Embassy, the VAS moved to the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater this season, with the result that almost 500 people can now attend its eight annual presentations, with only the slightest sacrifice in intimacy.

On Thursday night, baritone Randall Scarlata joined forces with the adept and responsive pianist Cameron Stowe for a program of works by Schubert, Brahms, Poulenc, Marc Blitzstein and the contemporary American composers Lori Laitman and David Baker. Scarlata was last seen in Washington as Scrooge in the Virginia Opera's presentation of Thea Musgrave's "A Christmas Carol." He won first prize in the 1999 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, a recognition that served only to reaffirm the good taste of those judges who had previously awarded him first prize in the 1997 Joy in Singing Competition and the 1998 Alice Tully Vocal Arts Debut Recital Award of the Juilliard School. Scarlata's success is made all the more remarkable by the fact that his voice is not an especially lustrous instrument. Not a "bad" voice, of course -- not by any means -- but one of modest size and range. A listener would never attend one of Scarlata's recitals merely to bathe in gorgeous sound, but the intelligence and musicianship with which he uses what he has elevates his work to a high level of artistry. It is impossible to imagine him singing a mechanical or thoughtless phrase. Indeed, he is a deeply calculating interpreter: One has the wonderful sense that Scarlata searches out the Platonic essence of anything he plans to sing and then uses every attribute at his disposal to create the most appropriate and fully dimensional realization possible. And so every piece on the program brought out a slightly different Scarlata. He summoned an airborne lyricism to Schubert's "Ganymed" and an opiated heaviness to the same composer's "Wanderers Nachtlied II." He approximated Arnold Schoenberg's idea of Sprechstimme -- "speech-song" -- in passages of Schubert's "Prometheus" and highlighted the breezy, boulevardier charms of Poulenc's "Banalites." He brought aching maturity to Brahms and daffy, childlike bewilderment to Laitman's "Men With Small Heads" and "Refrigerator, 1957" (to texts by Thomas Lux that throw off loopy verbal sparks like so many Roman candles).

The world premiere of Laitman's "Long Pond Revisited" was a melancholy pleasure. In this setting of five elegiac poems by C.G.R. Shepard, Scarlata was joined by the cellist Marcy Rosen. The words are declaimed in a direct and straightforward manner, while the cello follows the voice like an abstracted soul, reacting inwardly to the outward expressions of nostalgia and sorrow. The ending was nothing less than a masterstroke: After the last words had finished, the cello twitched on for a moment and then faded to an empty, nerveless open chord, and it was over. I was reminded of one of those deathbed scenes in the movies where the life line on the hospital monitor suddenly goes flat. Incredibly, in an instant the loved one is gone, the poetry is lost and the world is gray.

Over the years, the Vocal Arts Society has presented Washington recital debuts by artists including soprano Renee Fleming, mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, countertenor David Daniels and bass-baritone James Morris, among dozens of others. It's an amazing track record, and, next Thursday, soprano Jennifer Aylmer will take the Terrace Theater stage and continue the VAS tradition. Information: www.vocalartssociety.org. © 2003 The Washington Post Company