Voice Professor To Perform Forgotten Art Songs By Female Composers

by Richard Veit

Deborah Williamson, assistant professor of voice and director of vocal studies at Baylor University, will present "Ariettes oubliées: Art Songs from a Century of Female Composers" during a faculty recital at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 20, in Roxy Grove Hall. She will be joined on stage by guest artist Elvia Puccinelli, assistant professor of music at the University of North Texas and former director of collaborative piano at Baylor.
"Ariettes oubliées" translates as "Forgotten Airs," an apt title for a recital that brings to the audience a whole evening's worth of beautiful but unjustly neglected repertoire: songs by 19th- and early 20th-century female composers.
The program will open with Six chansons françaises by French composer (and member of "Les Six") Germaine Tailleferre.
Then Williamson and Puccinelli will offer a group of five art songs by German composer Josephine Lane. After hearing the 16-year-old Fräulein Lang perform in 1831, Felix Mendelssohn wrote, "She has the gift of composing songs and singing them as I have never heard before. It is the most complete musical joy I have ever experienced."
The program also will feature six settings by Poldowski of poems by Paul Verlaine. Poldowski was the stage name of Irene Regine Wieniawska, daughter of the great Polish violinist and composer, Henryk Wieniawski. The program will close with Three Browning Songs, Op. 44, by American composer Amy Marcy Cheney Beach.
The recital is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Baylor School of Music at (254) 710-3991.