Amy Dodington's "Touch of Old"

What better way to round off “A Perfect Day” than with a recital by Amy Dodington, accompanied by Doreen Uren at the piano? The Gravenhurst Opera House, dating from 1901, is a perfect venue for a merry mixture of Elizabethan, baroque, folk songs, Broadway musicals and Edwardian parlour music.

Right at the beginning of this review, I have to admit a certain partiality for Amy’s voice and finely crafted programs. My first draft clearly registered an overall 15 on my usual scale of 10 when reporting a performance. I decided to take a deep breath, set the gush-o-meter down several notches and make a new start in the morning, for the sake of coherence and objectivity.

The next day, instead of grabbing the pen right away, I stopped to analyze the effect on me of seeing, first on the program, a song from Purcell’s Fairy Queen that I have sung myself, at a Grade Ten Conservatory exam. It is not a cherished memory. While my accompanist struggled as if tackling a Himalayan mountain top without enough sherpas or equipment, my clenched teeth ensured that my intonation would get sharper and sharper. How I got a passing mark, I have no idea. Perhaps it was Mozart’s hymn to the Blessed Virgin that saved me.

A happier memory intervenes - a strawberry tea on the lawn of the Michelham Priory in Sussex, England, after a full performance of The Fairy Queen. I remember the strawberries and cream better than the music.

Now I come happily back to the Gravenhurst Opera House on the evening of 14 July 2012, when I at long last heard the Purcell aria as I would have liked to sing it - in fact, as I had not yet heard it sung to my satisfaction. “A Touch of Old” opened with Purcell’s triumphal flourish dedicated to the first Queen Elizabeth of Britain. The piano introduction flowed easily in the hands of Doreen Uren, wafting us lightly into a land of enchantment, where pleased cupids clapped their wings to the rhythm of a voice drenched in magic - Amy Dodington’s. She had a lot of fun with those cupids.

A cluster of art songs followed, Brahms expanding on the elusiveness of poetic inspiration, Reynaldo Hahn’s inspired setting of a poem by Verlaine, Barber’s ditty on The Monk and His Cat and Schubert’s setting of Gretchen’s spinning wheel song from Goethe’s monumental “Faust”.

Verlaine’s “L’Heure exquise” has encapsulated the essence of French Romantic poetry for me and my husband, who kept it on the wall above his desk. This was my first hearing of its evocative musical setting by Reynaldo Hahn. Before attempting any commentary, I went to youtube to listen to several singers' interpretations, and was amazed at how many of the greatest and the best of them fall short of evoking the scene painted by the poet's words. In general the singer was content with intoning the notes in a mellifluous voice.

What about the mystery and the beauty of moonlit woods, where the profound mirror of a pond reflects the silhouette of a black willow and a vast and tender tranquility from the heavens enfolds the scene? Amy Dodington’s voice has a visionary quality, breathing in magic and breathing it out again in “L’Heure exquise”. She seems to be experiencing this poem from within, and inviting the listener into Verlaine's woods under his moon.

Here I would like to highlight another of Amy’s outstanding performances: Gretchen am Spinnrade, an outpouring of enraptured love accompanied by the relentless rhythms of the spinning wheel. In this homely setting for unquenchable passion, Gretchen is on her way to ruin and madness, the victim of Mephisto’s wiles, with Faust as the engine of her undoing.

Glazounov’s “Oriental Romance”, the Irish folk song “She Moved Through the Fair” and the Scottish, “There’s Nae Luck About the House” completed the first part of our travel through space and time. Both Amy and her sister Victoria Banks are gifted unaccompanied singers of Irish songs. I could listen to them all night.

The second part of the program featured tuneful Broadway melodies, including “Edelweiss”, “If I Loved You” and a mischievous “Once in Love with Amy”. Then a costume change was in order from the diva dress to an heirloom outfit dating back to the parlour songs of the early 1900’s. Amy’s flexible voice revives the pathos, the joy and the courage of these nearly forgotten gems. She has unearthed a whole collection, like “When You Come to the End of a Perfect Day”. Her three encores were also of that charming vintage.

Links:

Amy sings Margaret (or Gretchen) at the Spinning Wheel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO83WErmCPU&feature=channel&list=UL

Amy sings: If I loved you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_mWT-jlQ7U&feature=channel&list=UL

Amy’s website: http://www.amydodington.com/

Gravenhurst Opera House: http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com

AMY DODINGTON’S “OLD TIMES’ SAKE”

A Diva’s Green Travelogue in Time and Space

The Gravenhurst Opera House felt rather like a Victorian parlor on Friday evening, 22 July, 2011, lending its warm acoustics to the sunny voice and presence of Amy Dodington, soprano. Her program, “Old Times’ Sake”, is a delightful, eclectic, array of gems from opera, music hall, classics, traditional folk music, operetta, musical comedy and parlor songs, encompassing not only hundreds, but thousands of years.

 The program began with the lute of the legendary Orpheus,  and proceeded smoothly and surely through different styles and periods. The magic carpet comes to mind as a perfect vehicle for all this traveling in time. Lift-offs were impeccable, and landings airy on a variety of musical terrains. Amy Dodington’s flexible voice is equally at home in the lyric, dramatic, and - perhaps even more equally - the coloratura repertoire. This much was evident in the first half of the program. Then in the second half, she revealed an affinity with the Celtic tradition as if she’d been born to sing the Irish “My Lagan Love” and the Welsh, “David of the White Rock”. Without a doubt in my mind, she was.

Amy Dodington’s gifts extend beyond her musicianship to the knack of drawing an audience into the charmed world of a carefully crafted program inspired from the heart, where “pin drop” after “pin drop” silences descend between the final note of a song and the applause. I’ve never heard so many such hushed moments in any one concert by anybody.

The more than 100-year-old stage of the Gravenhurst Opera House lent itself to dressing like the diva that Amy Dodington is for the first half of a concert, then stepping out in costume of the early 1900s in the second half. In a few well chosen phrases she shared a family background of her father’s classical records and a tuneful mother with a lovely voice - the latter now silenced forever. When Nora Dodington passed on in 2009 at the age of 65, the Cellar Singers dedicated their performance of the Bach B Minor Mass to her. The second part of her daughter’s concert begins with Dvořák’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me”, beautifully shaped and textured.

Back to Amy Dodington’s musicianship, she delivers each song from the inside out; she is the song, while cloaked in its vintage and style. We may have heard “I Could Have Danced All Night” from “My Fair Lady” adorably sung by a galaxy of great sopranos from Julie Andrews to Audra McDonald. Amy from Port Carling also makes it hers. I suspect that she has more than one feeling for interpreting any song afresh every performance.

The accompanist for this concert was the multi-talented Geoffrey Conquer, who also treated us to four glittering solos that reflected his own personal assimilation of the Russian schools of piano. He has studied with internationally renowned masters like Marina Mdivani, a pupil of the great Emil Gilels. Keep an eye and ear open for the name Geoffrey Conquer.

Thankfully, this review is not an adjudication, but merely an appreciation intended to re-create at least in part a delightful experience. Still, I have to give excellent  German and Italian pronunciation its due recognition. When it is as authentic as Amy Dodington’s it could easily go unrecognized, seamless with the song. German can be a lovely language when lovingly pronounced. In this concert it was easy for the fussiest germanophile to stay entirely enchanted by Wolf’s setting of Goethe’s exquisite poem, “Anakreons Grab”.

I wish I could go on about each tasty morsel of the whole program, “Old Times’ Sake”, and gush about that gorgeous gown the colour of ruby red wine, but rather than get completely carried away, I have one more thing to say before ending this review. Pause for me to get up on a soap box.

More than 20 years ago I put together a list of songs about green growing things like trees, the water and sun that nourish them and the creatures that live in them. Only recently did I begin a blog to suggest to artists that they include “green” pieces in their programs. Something to that effect must be capturing the attention of many who aspire to keeping our planet green.

Amy Dodington begins with a song about Orpheus playing his lute to the trees, the mountains, plants, flowers, the sun, showers, the sea. “Anakreons Grab” depicts a poet’s last resting place, sweet with the scent of roses and the sound of turtle doves, planted with laurels and green bushes and under the care of the gods. The second-last piece is Oscar Rasbach’s “Trees”. The concert ends with a song by "Annie Laurie" composer, Alicia Scott, evoking the sweet perfume of jasmine.

When a graduate from Zoology, Anthropology and Environmental Sciences puts together a program called “Old Times’ Sake”, no wonder it’s green. Thank you, Amy, for a refreshing, reflective evening sparkling with your unique sense of humour.


http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com/