RECITAL REVIEWS

 "An immaculate and inventive recitalist. The young American baritone has become a critic's darling for his mellifluous voice and sterling diction."--The New Yorker

Musical Oddities, Delightfully Sung
by David Patrick Stearns, Philadelphia Inquirer
Young singers can take the most chances in recitals, knowing that the audiences didn't pay the huge ticket prices that warrant a safe Puccini aria or two. But no singer I've encountered assembled such musical obscurities as baritone Thomas Meglioranza during Wednesday's Philadelphia Chamber Music Society recital at the American Philosophical Society.

On paper, the program looked like a perverse joke - strange songs by long-forgotten composers and so-so ones by familiar figures such as Poulenc and Debussy, all hailing from the World War I era. The appeal wasn't nostalgia - the audience wasn't that old - but a tour through the attic of your eccentric grandparents in a 90-minute concert without intermission.

Oddest of all was a cycle of 30-second songs (and some even shorter) written by one Carrie Jacobs-Bond and consisting of little more than such homespun aphorisms as "Success never comes to the sleeping." There were songs about germs and Satan protesting the wars of mankind. We're talking cultural roadkill here, stuff that's best left behind in the era that spawned it except when sung by a fine singer and good strategist like Meglioranza.

Much of the delight (and there was plenty) was afforded by Meglioranza's healthy love of absurdity and folly that unexpectedly arise from something serious - all aggrandized with no sense of mockery. The fairly seasoned baritone (whom I've heard in Bach's St. Matthew Passion in New York) has an effortless sense of style that arises naturally out of the needs of the words and the music. He fluffed up the phrases of Rudolf Sieczynski's "Vienna, My City of Dreams" and found logic in fractured word settings of Charles Ives.

The unfussy beauty of his voice - his upper range suggests the tone of the great Gerard Souzay - makes him a phone-book baritone able to make the thinnest repertoire alluring. Few recitalists are so at home onstage with a physical freedom to thoroughly characterize the song without fear of possible embarrassment - particularly important in Poulenc's characterization of camels and lobsters in his "Le Bestiaire" song cycle.

Meglioranza didn't court the audience - with his Italian/Thai/Polish good looks he doesn't have to - but assumed that we were already friends and would like everything he did. And he was right, even in three potentially alienating atonal songs by Anton Webern that he introduced by describing them as so delicate that "I feel like I'm blowing bubbles." I'd love to hear him take on canonic works like Schumann's Dichterliebe. But at this point, I'd trust him in any program in which he trusts himself.

"He is a singer of forthright clarity, his voice powerful and resonant...Was it art or entertainment? By the end of the evening, marked by Meglioranza's earnest, compelling artistry, it hardly mattered."
--David Weininger, The Boston Globe

With Playful Wit, Thomas Meglioranza Shares His Old Favorites
by Steve Smith, The New York Times
A free concert on a Monday evening, an auditorium off the beaten path--it was a perfect opportunity for the bright young baritone Thomas Meglioranza to shake off the conventional solemnity of the lieder recital, and simply indulge in a few of his favorites from the repertory he has performed with the pianist Reiko Uchida during the last few years.

Although he was not aiming for a particular theme, he said from the stage of the Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University, unbidden threads linked the six Schubert lieder that opened his recital. Four were based on texts dealing with aquatic themes--fisherman and boatman, river and whirlpool--and all featured persistently rippling accompaniment.

The introductory remarks established a relaxed, conversational tone that lingered throughout the concert, part of the River to River Festival. Communicativeness was clearly the goal not only of Mr. Meglioranza's affable running commentary but also of his singing. He projected Schubert's finely honed vignettes vividly, deploying his burnished voice with exacting diction and dramatic flair.

More obvious connections surfaced in four songs by Debussy and three by Fauré. Most were based on poetry by Paul Verlaine, including settings of "En Sourdine" and "Mandoline" by each composer. To suggest that the sunny lyricism of the Fauré songs better suited Mr. Meglioranza's temperament is not meant to imply any shortcoming in his delivery of the more rarified Debussy settings. Ms. Uchida's playing in both sets was refined and exquisite.

Evidence of Mr. Meglioranza's playful intelligence came in the three American works performed between the Debussy and Fauré groups. Each played against type.

The prickly serialist composer Milton Babbitt was represented by "The Widow's Lament in Springtime", an achingly lovely William Carlos Williams setting, and "The Pregnant Dream" by Aaron Jay Kernis, a composer known for ecstatic instrumental scores was an athletic unaccompanied setting of a labyrinthine interior monologue. Cathy Berberian's "Stripsody", a manic catalog of cartoon noises, illustrated the cheekier side of the avant-garde, and even as Mr. Meglioranza read from a score, he reveled in the work's broad humor.

After the Fauré group, he returned to American music with "Nature Calls", three innovative miniatures by the eclectic young composer Derek Bermel. Mr. Meglioranza closed the program with "The New Suit", Marc Blitzstein's stylishly absurd paean to haute couture. His encore was an unembellished, heartfelt rendition of Carrie Jacobs-Bond's Tin Pan Alley chestnut "I Love You Truly."

Getting a collection of songs this disparate to stick together must have been tricky, but Mr. Meglioranza's handsome sound and congenial manner provided the necessary glue.

Baritone brings elegance, wit, to German art songs
-Allan Kozinn, The Portland Herald
In the decade since he won the Naumburg Competition, Thomas Meglioranza has built a busy career, both in the opera house and in the more intimate confines of the recital stage. His baritone voice is both commanding and subtle, and he is a superb actor, but he is especially compelling as a recitalist, particularly in contemporary music, where his ability to win over an audience with his warm tone and interpretive astuteness has served composers well. But as he reminded listeners at Bowdoin College’s Studzinski Recital Hall on Saturday afternoon, he is also a fine interpreter of the standard art song repertory. [. . .]

Meglioranza grouped his selections thematically, more or less, with groups that looked at the poet’s meditations on the divine, the mysteries of night, and love and longing, with the final set a miscellany of peculiar scenes and observations. His voice is in fine shape, and admirably flexible: He drew on a range of techniques that ran from a harsh whisper (to evoke the hangover at the start of “Zur Warnung”) to a rich, full tone than projected nicely over the often busy keyboard figures. And more to the point, he moved through the vivid imagery of this varied collection with elegance and wit.

Uchida is also a player of considerable experience accompanying vocalists and instrumentalists, and having worked with Meglioranza for a decade, she knows his timbres and shadings well enough to play Wolf’s often complex piano lines assertively, secure in the knowledge that she was unlikely to cover the singer. Theirs is a superbly balanced partnership, and precisely what these evocative songs demand."

Baritone Thomas Meglioranza and pianist Reiko Uchida in a stunning Schubert song cycle
—Peter Dobrin, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Even in our time, nearly two centuries after its writing, Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin needs no heightened drama to help sell it. Baritone Thomas Meglioranza seemed to know as much Sunday afternoon in a Philadelphia Chamber Music Society performance of the work with pianist Reiko Uchida.

On any scale of dramatic potential, this was an understated interpretation of Schubert’s landmark 65-minute song cycle — and powerful still. The work speaks without any expressive exaggerations.

Meglioranza and Uchida did not indulge in extreme dynamics or excessive stretching of pivotal moments. Nothing was delivered in boldface. Whatever mood-residue the afternoon’s bright sunshine left on listeners entering the American Philosophical Society’s Benjamin Franklin Hall, Schubert transported them to a different place.

The Rewards of Normality Enrich a Notable Die schöne Müllerin
— Bernard Jacobsen, Seen and Heard International
In addition to a baritone voice of notable warmth and the technical ability to float a line of admirable clarity, Meglioranza possesses an unusually vivid feeling for the sound and meaning of a poetic text. . .his diction was at once precise, authentic, and richly expressive. . .there was a welcome sense also of flexible interplay between Meglioranza and pianist Reiko Uchida, both of whom seemed able to adjust their rhythm and phrasing instantly at the drop of their partner’s hat.

Baritone at Home in a Foreign Land
—Jeremy Eichler, The New York Times
With clever programming the baritone Thomas Meglioranza began both halves of his Tuesday night recital with the same four lines of text from Joseph von Eichendorff's "In der Fremde" ("In a Foreign Land"). First there was the somberly beautiful opening of Schumann's Opus 39 "Liederkreis". The second was as a musical memory of the first, composed by Hanns Eisler as part of his "Hollywood Songbook". For Schumann the text suggested the inner exile of a soul in winter; for Eisler, who sets the words above a jabbing piano line, exile in Los Angeles in the 1940's was very real and aching.

The thoughtful linkage was one of the many pleasures in this Weill Recital Hall debut. Mr. Meglioranza, a 2002 Concert Artists Guild winner, may be young, but he already posesses a clear and warmly burnished voice. Accompanied by pianist Hsi-Ling Chang, he excelled in the song recital format, bringing to each piece a character and presence all its own. His phrasing was fluid and his diction exemplary in the Schumann and in the six Eisler songs.

Debussy's "Fêtes Galantes" was on the heavy side, but it worked as a prelude to "Plundered Hearts", a pair of new songs written for Mr. Meglioranza by the composer Jorge Martín, based on poems by J.D. McClatchy. The appealingly spare "Pibroch" was preceded by the striking "Fado", with used turbulent piano writing and dramatic melismas to capture the expressiveness of the eponymous Portuguese song style without resorting to mimicry. Rounding out the program were two witty songs by Marc Blitzstein, breezily delivered with charm to spare.

The voice is supple, well-scaled, not overpowering but with strength where necessary. There was never a hint of stridency or forced production, and he gave an impression of relaxed ease with his instrument that was inviting. That he is also an intelligent musician was also evident, in the attention given to the choice of poetry and music and in the remarks that he gave about each set of songs.—ionarts

an unusually sensitive interpreter of English-language song
--The New Yorker

Though he also does opera, oratorio and sings with orchestras, Meglioranza was to Lieder (songs) born. He possesses a smooth, focused baritone that illumes text precisely and an engaging stage presence to go with it. He and Uchida, with whom he performs and records, worked hand-in-glove on six Schubert songs. All of them dealt with winter and looking ahead to spring – ironically, as it turned out, said Meglioranza, considering Cincinnati’s uncharacteristically mild February. The highlight of the Schubert set, performed with drama and tenderness by Meglioranza and Uchida, was Viola...
—MusicInCincinnati.com

Despite his youth, Meglioranza performed like a seasoned artist, establishing a comfortable intimacy with the audience, genially discussing songs and composers before each set and singing with a vibrance that was as dramatic as it was natural. The ride they [Meglioranza and pianist Reiko Uchida] provided their audience proved delightful from beginning to end. —The Honolulu Advertiser

Meglioranza had us in his hands to enjoy his sense of fun. The last line of his encore absolutely soared with a gentle ringing beauty and effortless quality of voice rarely heard anywhere. We floated out the door into the rain.
—The Boston Musical Intelligencer