Old and New Selections To Be Featured in 'Bach Before and Beyond'

[caption id="attachment_73792" align="alignright" width="423"] Mary Hubbell. Geoffrey Silver photo[/caption]

By Joan Baum

Eager to initiate the 2017-18 season of Bach Before and Beyond — the third year for this chamber music group that holds forth at The Old Whalers Church — Maestro and Old Whalers Church Artistic Director Walter Klauss says he leaves it “to the soloists to decide each concert.” He can’t contain his enthusiasm, however, for the opening program October 29, noting that some of the pieces are “absolutely wonderful.” Well, of course they are, says soprano Mary Hubbell who made the selections. Many of the songs she’s done for years, but she’s also adding a couple she’s just learned. For sure, audiences will recognize a few in the program’s second half. No humming along, please.

Hubbell’s delighted to honor the Bach Before and Beyond theme by offering music composed before Bach (1685-1750), and modern and pop, though her take on “beyond” centers on Broadway and American songbook. As to what she has chosen, she says she mainly likes to pick songs she’s done before, finding challenge in doing them slightly differently each time. At 42 she’s still the ardent perpetual student. After attending Boston College and the University of California, Santa Barbara, she went on to study at the prestigious Royal Conservatory in The Hague where she trained with teacher / composers who were influenced mainly by French art songs that stressed mélodie. And thus, her expertise and her love of this lyrical early 20th century school that for many performers replaced the more emotional, florid Italian repertoire. She’s working on a doctorate in Musical Arts at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Yes, Italian arias are great, but the French art songs, more subtle, attract her more. “You don’t want to hit high notes just because they’re there.” At least she doesn’t. Indeed, those who have heard Mary Hubbell sing know she likes to emphasize persuasive dramatic delivery, investing in deliberate and nuanced phrasing that brings texts to significant musical light – both in the classical pieces she does as well as, for example, “Someone to Watch Over Me” or “I Could Have Danced All Night.”

Hubbell studied composers mostly in the French School such as Meinard Kraak (1935- ), Pierre Bernac (1899-1979), a close associate of Francis Poulenc, and Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947). She points out that the great opera stars when they’re soloing, say at Carnegie Hall, tend toward performing French art songs, many of which draw on poetry set for voice and piano. The French art song time was vocally rich, “a period when poetry and music were integral.” Ah, but what about those stickler French? How do they regard your pronunciation? She pauses, then laughs. Well, she did live in Europe a while, studied there and continually attends to language. She modestly notes that audience members have complimented her on her language skills: “we thought you were French,” she recalls once being told.

And what about performing both classical and pop music? Some trained opera singers cannot carry off the transition. Well, says Hubbell, her training and her careful reliance on bringing out the drama inherent in all song, has served her well in all genres. With American pop songs she tries to shape the sound from the words. With European music, she concentrates a bit more on technique. She’s also particularly fond of Czech folk tunes, the Moravian folk songs that Leos Janacek (1854-1928), for example, set to music, “so moving . . . I remember once a person in the audience crying.”

Though Ms. Hubbell is married to composer Gregory W. Brown who specializes in choral music, she hasn’t done his pieces . . . yet (they typically call for more instruments). Meanwhile the East End welcomes her, as Klauss says, who has had Hubbell to his home for a musicale.

Klauss is delighted with the growing number of supporters of the Bach Before and Beyond series, the only such year-round resident chamber group on The East End. People like hearing familiar work, of course, but “they also seem to appreciate being exposed to music and to composers they never heard before. . . They come back.” We tend to reject what we don’t know or understand, Klauss notes, “so I feel that what we do in the series is in some ways fulfilling a mission. After one program when we did a Ravel, a man came up to me and said Ravel was a revelation and he was going to buy Ravel CDs. And also a CD on How to Listen to Classical Music.”

Klauss, who is at the Old Whalers’ Church organ every Sunday, hopes that people stop in, especially because he has the privilege of playing on the oldest functioning pipe organ on Long Island that is still regularly used for Sunday services” (it was restored in the 1970s). “Sag Harbor has wonderful theatre, art galleries, pop music concerts and festivals, a community band and literary events, but until Bach Before & Beyond no established classical music series.” The fact that season three of BBB is alive and well is ample testimony, he feels, to the popularity of series and to a growing appreciation of chamber music in one of Sag Harbor’s most unique chambers.

Mark your calendars: Bach to Broadway will take place on October 29, 2017. On March 11, 2018, BBB will feature once again, on demand, the harmonious voices of the Accord Treble Choir, and on May 20, 2018, Liu Fang, the Queen of the Pipa [look it up!] will hold forth in a program called Exotica. Klauss will accompany on piano. All concerts are at 3 p.m. and at the Old Whalers Church on Union Street in Sag Harbor. Tickets can be purchased online or at the door for $20. For more information visit: bachbeforeandbeyond.com.