Kožená, Bestiary of the Exotic

Charles T. Downey, Magdalena Kozena at Shriver Hall
Washington Post, February 19, 2013

Love and Longing (Ravel, Dvořák, Mahler), M. Kožená, Berlin Philharmonic, S. Rattle (2012)

The things that make a good song recital happen can be as elusive as alchemy. Part of it is the choice of songs, part is the singer’s ability to narrate in music as if simply reciting poetry, and part is the pianist’s ability to set the scene. All three of these elements came together in the recital by Magdalena Kozena on Sunday at Shriver Hall, the Czech mezzo-soprano’s first in the area since 2009.

By most vocal standards, Kozena’s voice is not extraordinary; it has a pretty but relatively small tone that tends to sound forced at extremes of dynamic and range. Her wide-eyed storytelling was key to bringing off this unusual program of rarely heard song sets, in which she conveyed the rambling thoughts of children (Mussorgsky’s “The Nursery”), the obsessions of birds and insects (Ravel’s “Histoires Naturelles”), and the shrieks and quirks of Slovakian folk song (Bartok’s “Village Scenes”). Kozena could float these vocal lines — most straightforwardly in Rachmaninoff’s six Op. 38 songs — with ease and confidence, with virtuoso pianist Yefim Bronfman providing the color at the keyboard.

[Continue reading]