05-05-09 - Thanks to the Quadricentennial and a collaboration between the Hudson Opera House and the Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music, concertgoers in Columbia County had the opportunity, on Saturday, May 2, to hear two very impressive Dutch musicians: Lenneke Ruiten, soprano, and Thom Janssen, piano.

Unless you’ve limited your opera experience to Glimmerglass, Lenneke Ruiten probably wouldn’t fit your notion of an operatic soprano. She’s not very tall. No one would describe her as buxom. But her voice is huge—so much so that it’s hard to believe that it emanates from someone who looks as if she might be a new generation’s Dutch Janis Ian.

Not only did Ruiten sing beautifully, she sang with tremendous energy and remarkable control, conveying with great expressiveness the sense and emotion of each song. At one point, Ruiten, who in a charming and unstudied manner introduced each set of songs, providing background about the poets who had created the lyrics and explaining the themes, was frustrated when trying to explain a particularly elusive concept in a song by Henry Duparc. (English is, after all, not her native tongue.) “It’s very complicated to tell,” she said finally, “but the music will show you.” And, as she sang, it did.

The program was sung in German, English, French, and Russian. There were songs about love by Johannes Brahms, and songs celebrating the night by Franz Schubert. There was also a set of songs generally on the theme of love—sensuous, comedic, surprising—by contemporary British composer Jonathan Dove.

After the intermission, a set of songs by Gabriel Fauré carried on the themes introduced in the first half of the program before the mood shifted to themes of sorrow and loss, expressed first in songs by Henry Duparc and then in songs by Sergei Rachmaninoff. Ruiten, who remarked that she had only recently started singing the songs of Rachmaninoff, seemed to ratchet up the energy and emotion of her performance—and the volume—with these songs.

Ruiten was ably and skillfully accompanied by pianist Thom Janssen. An easy rapport existed between singer and accompanist, which suggested a wealth of experience on the part of Janssen as both teacher and accompanist.

The audience in the intimate space of the West Room was clearly delighted with the performance and expressed it in the comments exchanged during intermission and in the enthusiastic applause at the end of the program, calling Ruiten and Janssen back for not one but two encores—the first a song by Brahms, a choice enthusiastically approved by Wanda Fleck, director of Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music, who was in the audience, and the second a song by Rachmaninoff that gave Janssen a chance to show off his virtuosity.

What a treasure the Hudson Opera House has become for the people of Columbia County—providing us with so many outstanding musical experiences!  

Lenneke Ruiten

Thom Janssen