This article by Jeffrey Charles Palmer was published by Australian classical and new music magazine CutCommon on 29 April 2024. To see the article in full, click here.
Golda Schultz, photographed by Dario Acosta.
On Monday, 8 April 2024, a total solar eclipse was visible across a band covering parts of North America. I was on my way to hear South African soprano Golda Schultz give a recital in Princeton, New Jersey when the moon passed between the earth and the sun just before half past three that afternoon. I safely pulled over and put on my protective glasses as the light dimmed all around me, casting an eerie glow over the New Jersey landscape. From where I was, I was able to see the moon cover about 90 per cent of the sun for a few minutes before the light began to brighten, and the glorious spring day that existed just a short while before returned as if nothing had happened. A few hours later, with this rare celestial event fresh in my mind, I walked through the doors of Princeton University’s brownstone and red granite Alexander Hall for what would be an equally celestial and memorable occasion.
Originally hailing from Cape Town, South Africa, Golda Schultz trained at the Juilliard School and Bayerische Staatsoper’s Opernstudio before captivating audiences with her brilliant voice and effervescent stage presence at some of the finest opera houses on both sides of the Atlantic. For this evening’s recital, accompanied by the exceptional Texas-born and Berlin-based pianist Jonathan Ware, Golda focused on works written by five female composers, ranging in style from the Romantic to the contemporary.
Clad in a midnight blue blazer over a royal blue gown, Golda joyfully bounded onto the stage in her bare feet, radiant smile beaming. After a quick remark about how excited she was to perform in such a beautiful hall, the opening strains of Clara Schumann’s Liebst du um Schönheit began. With this song resting in the singer’s mid-range, I was immediately struck by the warmth she possessed in the lower half of her voice – often rare in a soprano. With the ease of late afternoon sunlight, her voice flowed out into the hall with seeming effortlessness, basking us all in its honeyed warmth.
After the dreamy Warum willst du and’re fragen, the audience was confronted with a bit more urgency during Schumann’s Am Strande and Lorelei. Golda’s dramatic power was suddenly on full display, as was the notable musical chemistry she shared with Jonathan, whose nimble playing and sensitivity to her timing and breath provided the perfect support to her glorious soprano.
Met with rapturous applause, the pair took a well-deserved bow after the four Schumann lieder, and Golda shared some thoughts on why this program is so important to her. ‘Tonight is not an introduction to music that’s good for being written by a woman, but an introduction to good music! Women make up 50 per cent of the population, and we need to make sure that women’s voices are never overlooked, dismissed, or left to slip into the ether.’
Golda then went on to speak about the 19th-Century German composer Emilie Mayer, who is well known for her symphonic works, but who also wrote some beautiful pieces for voice. The three Mayer lieder she chose were Der Erlkönig, Du bist wie eine Blume and Wenn der Abendstern die Rosen. With their complex rhythms and heightened emotion paired with a refined Viennese sensibility, the Mayer pieces were particularly well-suited to Golda’s voice and were a definite highlight in the evening’s program.
To round off the first half of the recital, we were given four songs by 20th-Century British composer and violist Rebecca Clarke. Starting with Clarke’s haunting setting of Down By The Salley Gardens by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, the tone dramatically changed with the growling piano trills and slightly unsettling vocal line of The Tiger, a setting of a poem by William Blake. Another Blake setting followed with Cradle Song. Possessing the air of a somewhat nightmarish lullaby, this short piece was so arresting in its distorted beauty that the audience couldn’t help but burst into applause upon its phantasmic conclusion. And finally, before taking what she described as ‘a short but necessary break’, Golda treated us to The Seal Man. Perhaps Clarke’s most famous work, this song tells the tale of a shapeshifting creature, known as a selkie in Norse and Celtic mythology, who assumes human form to lure a woman into the sea and to her ultimate death by drowning.
After the interval, I was delighted to hear four gorgeous songs by the remarkable French composer Nadia Boulanger, all of which allowed Golda to show of the crystalline top end of her voice. With the same warmth and control she possesses in the lower part of her range, her top notes have a sweet, shimmering quality to them which make for a truly lovely listening experience.
Presenting a very different view of the sea from The Seal Man, Golda glided through Boulanger’s La mer est plus belle before showing off her stratospheric virtuosity in Prière – the prayer of a woman who seemingly wishes to morph into the Virgin Mary, punctuated with descending piano chords reminiscent of cathedral bells. The ethereal Élégie and Cantique followed, casting a hushed sense of wonder over the enraptured audience.
For the final portion of the program, Golda presented a song cycle entitled This Be Her Verse by contemporary South African composer Kathleen Tagg and British-American librettist Lila Palmer. Especially commissioned by Golda and Jonathan, these three songs for soprano and piano present a brutal and witty look at watershed moments in a woman’s life. Including some percussive rhythms plucked and strummed on the piano’s stopped strings, the style swung from art song to jazz, and the lyrics from heartbreak to humour. Ending with the powerful words ‘here will I be’, this remarkable song cycle served as the perfect finale for a program of work dedicated to the stylistic range and fearless determination of female classical composers over the last 200 years.
As it happened, Tagg herself was seated directly behind me during the concert, and I was able to speak with her briefly after Golda sang in Afrikaans a touching encore about missing home. ‘I’ve only heard Golda perform my song cycle twice,’ Tagg told me. ‘The first time was in Philadelphia, and we changed a few things after that performance. Hearing it again tonight, it sounds so natural. It’s such a gift to have an artist like Golda sing my work and to know that she will continue to do so for years to come.’
With the sun having set for the second time that day, and the recital finished, I walked out of Alexander Hall into the blossom-scented night air of the Princeton University campus feeling grateful that artists like Golda continue to give glorious voice to the vital and enduring legacy that women have forged in classical music. A legacy that will never be eclipsed.