MUSIC REVIEW: Oleh Chmyr at Weill Recital Hall: a baritone in his artistic prime (06/11/00)

MUSIC REVIEW

Oleh Chmyr at Weill Recital Hall: a baritone in his artistic prime

by Bohdan Markiw

NEW YORK - Oleh Chmyr brought his warm baritone voice to Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall on May 30 after many years of performing in the opera houses of Europe.

Currently, Mr. Chmyr teaches voice at County College of Morris in New Jersey and devotes his time to song recitals. Lovers of good vocal artistry are happy to cheer Mr. Chmyr's increasing involvement with the song literature, and in the future we may expect entire programs devoted to song cycles as has become the tradition in the 20th century, thanks to the advocacy of such master singers as Hans Hotter, Hermann Prey, and Dietrich Fisher-Dieskau.

When a handsome man possesses a good baritone voice as Mr. Chmyr does, the temptation to show it off in a variety of styles must be hard to resist. This may explain the range of the concert program, featuring songs from Scarlatti to Liudkevych, Rachmaninoff to Ravel.

The evening's program began with eight Schumann songs, followed by four songs by Schubert and four by Bellini, with single selections by Mahler, Scarlatti, Ravel and Rachmaninoff, and the remainder by various Ukrainian composers, including three songs by Tchaikovsky.

From among the Schumann songs - "Die Lotusblume" and "Du bist wie eine Blume" - were rendered with a special tenderness of feeling. Of the Schubert songs, the best to this writer's taste was "Der Neugirige" (The Curious Fellow). Among the Bellini songs that Mr. Chmyr sang were the well-known "Malinconia, ninfa gentile" and the encore piece "Per pieta, bell'idol mio." The intelligence, sincerity and vocal culture that he brought to his performance made the music seem utterly fresh.

He also sang memorably six seldom-heard Chopin songs on German and Polish texts. Mr. Chmyr was not reluctant to sing with an earthy energy and grainy straight tones when the music called for it. In the many places where gentle, sustained and focused pianissimos were indicated, he provided them effortlessly.

Mr. Chmyr is to be congratulated on his handling of German, French, Italian, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian texts with convincing idiomatic delivery and the right balance between interpretation and vocal beauty. As a song recitalist, Mr. Chmyr is in his artistic prime.

Volodymyr Vynnytsky, as usual, provided superb piano accompaniment.

Bohdan Markiw has recently retired as longtime librarian at Yale University's aquisition department and director of St. Michael Ukrainian Catholic Church Choir in New Haven, Conn. He has a degree from the Music Conservatory in Madrid as violinist and has performed with various Connecticut symphonies.

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