SOPRANO RETURNS, BELLINI AND KOMITAS IN TOW
By Allan Kozinn

New York Times
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March 11 2008
NY

Isabel Bayrakdarian’s latest major appearance in New York was to
have been singing Susanna in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of
"Le Nozze di Figaro" in October. But Ms. Bayrakdarian, very pregnant
at the time, bowed out. On Saturday evening, five months later and
one child lighter, this Armenian-Canadian soprano, supported by her
husband and pianist, Serouj Kradjian, was in fighting trim, or at
least fine voice, in a recital at Zankel Hall.

Ms. Bayrakdarian seems fond of balancing standard repertory with
rarities. In a 2006 recital at the Morgan Library & Museum, she offered
selections by Pauline Viardot, Rossini art songs and flamenco-tinged
pieces by Fernando Obradors. This time, she retained elements of that
formula. The Italian-opera-composer-as-miniaturist slot was given
to Bellini. In place of Viardot, the underexposed curiosity was the
Armenian composer Komitas. And Obradors was back, represented by a
different group of works.

Ms. Bayrakdarian began with an alluringly dark-hued rendering of
Bellini’s "Vaga luna, che inargenti," and more extroverted readings
of "Per pieta, bell’idol mio" and "La Ricordanza." In the last,
her dynamics were fluid, particularly in her upper range. She took
risks, but they paid off: her performance, subtle on the surface,
had an electrifying undercurrent.

She also took an unusual approach to Poulenc’s "Banalites," opting
for bright timbres and crisp enunciation instead of the smoky, muted
tone singers typically bring to 20th-century French music. Usually,
the smoky approach works just fine; both the texts and the music seem
to suggest it. But Ms. Bayrakdarian’s altered perspective put these
songs in a fresh light.

She closed the first half of her program with two visions of
Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Jake Heggie’s accessible "Songs and Sonnets
to Ophelia" (1999) wraps a dramatic, shapely cloak around four poems
by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Ms. Bayrakdarian made them sound
graceful and likable. But she did Mr. Heggie no favor by putting his
work beside her thoughtfully shaped, trenchant account of Berlioz’s
"Mort d’Ophelie."

Ms. Bayrakdarian made a strong case for five invitingly modal songs by
Komitas, among them the pained "Call to the Sea" and a sweetly turned
lullaby. She also did a lovely job of highlighting the folkloric
accents within Ravel’s "Five Popular Greek Melodies," and closed her
program with five endearingly melismatic, sun-drenched Obradors songs.