Paysages

Paysages, soprano Susanna Phillips' solo debut album, marks what seems destined to be an impressive career. Her voice has plenty of power and it's sweet and warmly rounded, with a seamless legato. The absolute security of her technique is apparent in this repertoire, and she seems undaunted even by the workout Messiaen gives her. She invests each phrase with a depth of understanding and personality that can't help but communicate with listeners. It's no wonder that she has been showered with awards, accolades, and prestigious performance opportunities in her brief career leading up to this recording.
Happily, more and more sopranos are recording and performing Messiaen's remarkable 1936 song cycle, Poèmes pour Mi, long considered so difficult that it was a rarity in concert or on disc. Other sopranos have beautifully negotiated its interpretive eccentricities and extreme vocal demands, which veer from hammered declamation to extravagantly soaring melismas and compass an outrageous range, but Phillips seems to apprehend the music on an entirely different level; she brings coherence and a sense of inexorability to Messiaen's ecstatic visions, which throb with religious passion entwined with romantic fervor. The music has never sounded stranger, yet at the same time so utterly natural and impetuously spontaneous. Messiaen scored the piece for "grande soprano dramatique," specifically the voice of Marcelle Bunlet, a Wagnerian soprano, but the music calls as much for the gossamer delicacy of Lucia as the heroic grandeur of Isolde, and Phillips spins it all out with apparent ease and absolute command of its stylistic and expressive range. The heaving moans and powerfully ferocious recitative (delivered almost as Sprechstimme) of "Épouvante" have a visceral emotional punch, and the supple melisma at the end of "Action de Grâces," has the light grace and rippling freedom of a ribbon in the breeze. She is no less masterful in her delivery of the Debussy's cycle Ariettes oubliées and a selection of Fauré songs, which present fewer technical challenges but give Phillips opportunity to shine in her command of long, beautifully sculpted bel canto line. She soars with warm luminosity in songs like Fauré's "Les roses d'Ispahan" and Debussy's "C'est l'extase." Pianist Myra Huang provides an exceptionally sensitive and poetic accompaniment and is a strong match for Phillips' intelligence and intensely focused musicality. Bridge's sound is exemplary: warm and cleanly detailed with a realistic presence. Highly recommended.