Friday 16 October 2020

A Stirring Voice Has Left Us: In Memoriam Erin Wall

 It's truly difficult for me to imagine a world where I won't ever hear the singing of Erin Wall in another concert, a world where I will never again have the thrill of anticipation of settling into my seat, knowing I was about to hear that splendid voice.

It's something of a truism among singers that a star soprano is born every minute.  After over half a century of concerts and opera performances, I can easily become jaded about sopranos, and about the legendary egos and antics of some prima donnas.  But every so often, out of the mass of showy, flashy high notes, there emerges a singer who compels you to sit up and pay close attention by the very versatility of her voice, and by the depth and passion of her involvement in her art.  

Canadian/American soprano Erin Wall was in another league altogether.  She was a singer who was also an artist and a musician -- and that's not by any means a universal condition.

It's a great sorrow to me that I never heard her in a live operatic performance.  Most of the obituaries I've seen have focused on her impact in the operatic world.  In particular, I experienced a real pang of jealousy upon hearing that she had earned a specific reputation for her interpretation of the title role in Richard Strauss' Daphne, an opera which I dearly love but have only ever heard performed live once.  For me, though, it was as a concert singer that I knew and esteemed her artistry.

Even after she had well and truly "arrived" in the international operatic world, she continued to appear on a regular basis on stage with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and -- I'm sure -- with other major Canadian orchestras as well.

In these concert roles, she demonstrated the extraordinary versatility of her voice, which combined qualities often considered mutually exclusive -- true pianissimos in which the texts remained clearly audible, lyrical beauty and caressing tone in quieter passages, and gleaming, trumpet-like purity in higher, louder music.  In all of this, the most noteworthy aspect of Erin Wall's artistry for me was her precise judgement of the amount of vibrato that was "just right" -- and I never, ever heard her overshoot the mark.

Erin Wall's purity of tone and clarity of line in Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem was special.

In Part One of Mahler's gigantic Symphony No. 8, her high B-flats and Cs rode clearly and securely over the entire ensemble of 400 performers, without a hint of strain in the tone.  She then blessed her gentler role in the second part with a lyrical beauty of line that, appropriately, brought the world of lieder very near.

At the opposite pole, in the short soprano role of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 ("Resurrection"), Wall accomplished to masterly perfection the challenging effect of having her voice be slowly "discovered" as it emerged from the mass of choral sopranos, without the exact moment when she began to sing being audible.

More than any of her other Toronto appearances, I treasure my memories of her in A Sea Symphony, the first symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams.  It's a work not nearly as well known as it ought to be on this side of the Atlantic, but Wall sang it as one to the manner born.  This role called for all facets of her artistry to be employed at various points.  She nailed down the security and power of "Flaunt out, O Sea" as memorably as she floated the luminous tone of her final pianissimo "Behold, the sea itself" at the end of the first movement.  In the finale, her duet passages with Russell Braun were memorable for the way she exactly captured both the sense and the style of the soul "caroling free," in the evocative words of Whitman's text -- and Erin Wall's voice did indeed carol freely in those pages of the score.  At the symphony's final grand climax, her voice again sounded over all the other performers, gleaming, trumpet-like, clear and effortless, in her last invocation to "sail forth."

Last year, her final performances with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Sir Andrew Davis were captured in concert for release on the Chandos Records label.  The album is a spectacular, plaudit-winning complete concert performance of the opera Thäis by Massenet.  Sadly, I missed those concerts but this recording will hold an honoured place in my collection.

Although her career was cut short at the tragically premature age of 44, Erin Wall's distinguished achievements will be remembered.  As an artist of uncommon versatility, her singing was a great gift to the world of music, both in opera and in concert.

 

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