Soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, In Fine Form
by Tim Page, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Washington Post
March 7, 2005 Monday
Final Edition

Isabel Bayrakdarian has a high, bright soprano voice that she employs
with a lithe and winning energy; her Friday night recital at the
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, sponsored by the Vocal Arts Society,
had much to commend it.

The Armenian Canadian’s program began with Manuel de Falla’s
“Seven Popular Spanish Songs” — a favorite offering of the late
Spanish soprano Victoria de los Angeles, who died earlier this year.
Bayrakdarian brought a nice variety of mood to these simple, sturdy
pieces: “Jota” stole the show, as it usually does, with its exciting
reiterations that ebb and flow in volume and intensity as the song
progresses.

Samuel Barber assembled his “Hermit Songs” from poems, diary entries
and marginalia dating from the 8th through the 13th centuries.
Bayrakdarian sang with a minimum of vibrato (indeed, at times her voice
sounded almost boyish, befitting the monastic origin of the texts)
and a keen attention to emotional nuance. Barber was not necessarily
a great composer, but he was, most likely, the most immaculate of
American musical craftsmen. Every note in his work is there for a
reason, and some of the “Hermit Songs” have the concentrated intensity
of haiku. Bayrakdarian managed to give each song its individual due,
while working it into a larger totality.

A selection of songs by Rossini (including the familiar “La Danza”)
followed intermission and — for this listener, at least — provided
the evening’s greatest pleasures. The music is wonderful — warm,
inventive, full of humor and pathos — and Bayrakdarian gave it her
all, with teasing wit and expansive lyricism.

Thereafter, the evening’s uncommonly sensitive pianist, Warren Jones,
played a selection from Liszt’s “Annees de Pelerinage.” Jones has
exactly the right approach for Liszt, who can so easily sound windy,
rhetorical and pretentious. Instead, Jones simply sat down and let
the music happen, as if he were relaying an anecdote in the most
direct and straightforward language. Rarely has this composer seemed
so friendly and confidential.

Bayrakdarian then took the stage to close the evening with a selection
of four songs by Tchaikovsky — beautiful music, sung with abundant
feeling. My only general complaint about her work on Friday would be
that she seemed to overcompensate for a voice that is not naturally
very large by singing quite loudly — too loudly, on occasion, for
the intimacy of the Terrace Theater. Still, she is an artist and
deserves her following.