#1
Posted: 1/18/09 at 9:37pm
The first Lincoln Center "American Songbook" Concert of the season, NIGHT AND DAY: ROB FISHER CELEBRATES COLE PORTER WITH DAVID HYDE PIERCE AND VICTORIA CLARK was one of the finest concerts of its type I’ve ever attended. The program of nineteen songs concentrated on early Porter of the ‘20s and ‘30s, and while some classics were too famous to be ignored, there was a generous peppering of rarely performed and obscure material (largely chosen by Clark and Pierce) to please aficionados.
The evening offered a master class in the proper way to sing Cole Porter. As expected, Victoria Clark was sublime, her medley of Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye/Goodbye Little Dream, Goodbye a particular highlight, suffused with a tenderness and aching longing familiar to PIAZZA fans, while she dove in to Ridin’ High, thrillingly belting this seldom-sung Merman song from RED, HOT AND BLUE to the rafters, and infused the The Physician with a perfect saucy sincerity, sans ‘underlining’.
It was a delight to see and hear Clark’s sense of fun and flair for high comedy expressed in an unforgettable version of What Is This Thing Called Love?: Maestro Fisher announced it as the next number, “but we’re going to have to do without the trumpet solos it usually has.” Sitting with Pierce, martini aloft, Clark buzzed her lips in a trumpet blast, a twinkle in her eye. Summoned to a music stand, Clark’s ‘hot lips’ filled in tasty trumpet riffs to the audiences delight, eliciting much laughter during her lulls while she leafed through a copy of Vogue from her music stand.
I had only known of David Hyde Pierce’s charming musical talents from CURTAINS (and yes, he deserved that Tony- as did Raul) but his take on Porter was something of a revelation, finessing the material with understated, crisp wit (IMHO, far surpassing the celebrated Porter stylings of Bobby Short). While Pierces’s baritone may not be the strongest, he knows precisely how to utilize it, respecting Porter’s lyrics and singing them straight and clean, his finely-honed comic timing perfectly punctuating each song when needed. Pierce made a meal with such smart patter songs as Thank You So Much, Mrs. Lowsborough - Goodbye, and The Extra Man, and displayed a tender romantic yearning in an uncommonly sensitive version of Dream Dancing, where he illustrated Porter's practice of composing a melody before wedding it to words, by taking to the piano for the first chorus, then singing it while romantically gliding Clark across the stage cheek-to-cheek.
Wonderful apart, together, Pierce and Clark possed an alchemical chemistry, and their duets were delicious, from After You, Who? (one of my favorites) Nobody's Chasing Me, It's De-Lovely, You Do Something to Me (complete with voodoo doll) and Let's Do It. ("Porter wrote dozens of verses for this song, " noted Pierce, "So in the interest of time we are going to sing all of them.").
The evening concluded with a breezy duet of You're The Top, topped by Irving Berlins delightfully salacious version (written in 1935 as a gift for Porter and Moss Hart) followed by an encore of True Love.
The audience response was rhapsodic - On the escalator I ran into Michael Lavine and Brian Batt, both giddy with glee, the latter exclaiming “Wasn’t this extraordinary?.
Afterwards I was privileged to meet both Victoria Clark and David Hyde Pierce. Ms. Clark exuberantly noted “I adore David – I’ve never had so fun rehearsing anything!”, while the latter returned the compliment, modestly noting “A concert like this is all very new to me. I’ve never done anything like this before.”
I’d hate to think this Songbook Concert was a magnificent ‘one-off’…If a just Higher Power exists, the show should be repeated, recorded…and taped for PBS’ “Great Performances.”
The evening offered a master class in the proper way to sing Cole Porter. As expected, Victoria Clark was sublime, her medley of Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye/Goodbye Little Dream, Goodbye a particular highlight, suffused with a tenderness and aching longing familiar to PIAZZA fans, while she dove in to Ridin’ High, thrillingly belting this seldom-sung Merman song from RED, HOT AND BLUE to the rafters, and infused the The Physician with a perfect saucy sincerity, sans ‘underlining’.
It was a delight to see and hear Clark’s sense of fun and flair for high comedy expressed in an unforgettable version of What Is This Thing Called Love?: Maestro Fisher announced it as the next number, “but we’re going to have to do without the trumpet solos it usually has.” Sitting with Pierce, martini aloft, Clark buzzed her lips in a trumpet blast, a twinkle in her eye. Summoned to a music stand, Clark’s ‘hot lips’ filled in tasty trumpet riffs to the audiences delight, eliciting much laughter during her lulls while she leafed through a copy of Vogue from her music stand.
I had only known of David Hyde Pierce’s charming musical talents from CURTAINS (and yes, he deserved that Tony- as did Raul) but his take on Porter was something of a revelation, finessing the material with understated, crisp wit (IMHO, far surpassing the celebrated Porter stylings of Bobby Short). While Pierces’s baritone may not be the strongest, he knows precisely how to utilize it, respecting Porter’s lyrics and singing them straight and clean, his finely-honed comic timing perfectly punctuating each song when needed. Pierce made a meal with such smart patter songs as Thank You So Much, Mrs. Lowsborough - Goodbye, and The Extra Man, and displayed a tender romantic yearning in an uncommonly sensitive version of Dream Dancing, where he illustrated Porter's practice of composing a melody before wedding it to words, by taking to the piano for the first chorus, then singing it while romantically gliding Clark across the stage cheek-to-cheek.
Wonderful apart, together, Pierce and Clark possed an alchemical chemistry, and their duets were delicious, from After You, Who? (one of my favorites) Nobody's Chasing Me, It's De-Lovely, You Do Something to Me (complete with voodoo doll) and Let's Do It. ("Porter wrote dozens of verses for this song, " noted Pierce, "So in the interest of time we are going to sing all of them.").
The evening concluded with a breezy duet of You're The Top, topped by Irving Berlins delightfully salacious version (written in 1935 as a gift for Porter and Moss Hart) followed by an encore of True Love.
The audience response was rhapsodic - On the escalator I ran into Michael Lavine and Brian Batt, both giddy with glee, the latter exclaiming “Wasn’t this extraordinary?.
Afterwards I was privileged to meet both Victoria Clark and David Hyde Pierce. Ms. Clark exuberantly noted “I adore David – I’ve never had so fun rehearsing anything!”, while the latter returned the compliment, modestly noting “A concert like this is all very new to me. I’ve never done anything like this before.”
I’d hate to think this Songbook Concert was a magnificent ‘one-off’…If a just Higher Power exists, the show should be repeated, recorded…and taped for PBS’ “Great Performances.”
"Hurry up and get into your conga clothes - we've got to do something to save this show!"
Updated On: 1/18/09 at 09:37 PM
You would have loved it. It was really something special. 
