Don't get me wrong. I love holiday music. I arrive ridiculously early for sing-along Messiahs so I can sit up front. I once sang "O Holy Night" at a vocal recital. In the summer. But after spending hours listing bell-bedecked holiday concerts for this year's roundup story, I was ready for a change.No art songs, as far as I know, are about tinsel. So the thought of the Fortnightly Music Club's concert on Dec. 12 is rather refreshing. No carols, no dreidels; just a lovely-sounding selection of works by Jean Francaix, Mozart and Schumann -- and then a program of English, German and French art songs performed by baritone Geoffrey Cooper and pianist Melissa Smith.
I've sung one of the songs, Samuel Barber's gorgeous, haunting and challenging "Sure On This Shining Night." (It was a different recital. I swear.) But I had a lot of fun this afternoon getting introduced to some of the others, thanks to the miracle of YouTube. My favorite was Benjamin Britten's arrangement of the Welsh tune "The Ash Grove" -- I heard renditions both sweet and sprightly. Not sure how traditional the Greek-flavored Nana Mouskouri one was, but I would call it particularly earnest-sounding.
The program also contains John Woods Duke's "April Elegy," Hugo Wolf's "Fussreise" and three Gabriel Faure songs. The free concert is at 8 p.m. in the Palo Alto Art Center auditorium, 1313 Newell Road.
Pictured: Samuel Barber in a photo by Carl Van Vechten, taken from Wikipedia.
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