Park Avenue Armory 2019 Recital Series Review: Ilker Arcayurek
Singer Makes U.S. Debut with Touching Selection of Schubert
By Logan MartellOn February 14, 2019, the Park Avenue Armory’s recital series saw the second performance of Austrian tenor Ilker Arcayurek, who made his U.S. recital debut with the performance just three days earlier.
The recital featured a program comprised entirely of Franz Schubert songs and lieder, celebrating the composer’s vast body of poetry put to music.
Spring & Storm
His first number was “Faith in Spring,” which made for a captivating opening as the richness of Arcayurek’s voice made itself known almost immediately. This quality of voice, coupled with the rapturous text embracing the changes of springtime, complimented each other wonderfully and allowed Arcayurek to create a sensitive atmosphere of emotion and sound.
The second song, “Song of a Sailor to the Dioscuri,” carried a similar feeling through its opening stanza, but a forte chord from Simon Lepper’s accompaniment quickly threw the music into stormier waters. Here Arcayurek displayed a firmer, more courageous sound, highlighting the risk and reward of braving the raging sea; this culminated in a powerful formata on the word “blessed,” an exaltation which would serve to transition back to the original softer mood for the third and final stanza.
Goethe
Of the texts Schubert set to music from Goethe were “Restless Love,” and “On the River.” This first song featured a quick, almost running accompaniment as Arcayurek passionately sped through the descriptions of love’s ability to cause both pain and joy. The second bore a more tranquil feeling, bolstered by the ripple-like figures being played in the piano’s lower registers.
Following this was the lengthier poem “The Youth on the Hill,” which describes a grieving youth being temporarily cheered by pastoral imagery until he is brought back to reality by the sight of his lover’s funeral procession, through which he learns to transform his loss and heartache into a reverential gratitude. As the happier arpeggios of the opening stanzas began to ease away, Arcayurek’s delivery and expression suitably changed, with him giving a strong low note on the last word of the line “only in his heart nothing could be seen of joy.” In describing the procession, Arcayurek bore a dire, almost absent quality that conveyed being gripped tightly by his grief. The shift towards acceptance and reverence could be heard in the second repetition of the line “Now they lowered the coffin; the grave digger arrived, and gave back to the earth what God had taken from it.”
Dopplegangers
After the bold and rugged song titled “The Boatman,” a number that rose and crashed away quickly like a wave, much more impactful moment came in the following song, titled “The Doppelganger.” Arcayurek bestowed a delicacy to the extended phrases that created a trance-like atmosphere, vividly painting the narrator’s encounter with a past memory of himself, who anguishes over a love that is long gone. The lingering dissonance in the accompaniment’s chords built as Arcayurek came to the revelation that “the moon shows me my own form.” As the song ended with a pleading for answers, Arcayurek ended dewy-eyed and close to tears.
A similar tender power came with the song “Nocturne,” which ended the first half of the program. It followed an elderly man making a journey into the forest for a peaceful death with his harp in his hands and a song in his heart. While there was much affection given to the imagery of earthly beauty, Arcayurek demonstrated a feeling of letting go which nicely matched the transcendence of the elderly man over pain and death.
Through this journey through the songs of Schubert, Ilker Arcayurek brought an abundance of emotion, making for a wonderful showcase of his vocal artistry. While greater attention was paid to deeply touching and sentimental songs, Arcayurek did include more tumultuous, gritty numbers such as “Over Wildemann,” “’The Boatman,” “Restless Love,” and “Song of a Sailor to the Dioscuri.”
A rising artist, Arcayurek will be making his U.S. operatic debut this summer in the role of Nadir in the Santa Fe Opera’s production of “Les Pecheurs de Perles.”