SONGS PORCELAIN AND SILVER-PLATED
by
Douglas Messerli
Barbra Steisand Barbra: The Music, The Memories, the Magic /
2017
Just
before Christmas, I sat down to watch the first recording of a Barbra Streisand
concert that I had seen since I was a teenager.
In several ways, this older Barbra is
even better than her younger self of the 1960s when she performed in My Name Is Barbra and Color Me Barbra. Certainly, she now
seems less showy and far more sure of herself. She loves, as this
Netflix-sponsored film makes clear, to be in charge. And she is in charge,
apparently of nearly everything: the songs she sings (even in Funny Girl she insisted to Flo Ziegfeld
that she had to choose her own songs), the instrumentation, the pacing of her
performance, and, most importantly, she utterly controls her amazing tonal
modulations, altering between a quiet hum, melodic whispers, and old-fashioned vocal
“belting it out.”
If anything, she now has greater vocal
control, but she’s always had one of the most remarkable voices in song-singing
history. Like the very greats, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Rosemary
Clooney, and so many others, Streisand’s voice is always recognizable and
memorable in a way that has attracted what seem to be worshippers more than a
mere audience. The Miami audience here felt that they not merely needed to madly
applaud each song, but turned every number into a standing ovation, to which
Streisand generally and seemingly honestly awarded with a “Thank you,” “Wow!” “I’m
glad you liked it!” or “You’re a wonderful audience.”
If you like good music and, like me, are a
hardened liberal, what is there not to like? Although Streisand restrained
herself at this concert, you clearly knew what she felt about Trump and his kind,
and if you live in Los Angeles, it’s hard not to know that she has given
millions to hospitals and other charities. And, because of her talent and
goodness of heart, you can almost forgive her from some of her crazy
obsessions, like constructing a kind of mini-mall, just for herself, in the
basement of her Malibu house. The very fact that she’s still singing so very
gloriously is a cause for celebration. So what if she centers much of this
concert around her own past achievements, singing far too many of her standards
such as “The Way We Were” and “Evergreen?” Give the girl some credit.
And credit she certainly got from her
audience. As Robert Lloyd summarized it in the Los Angeles Times:
Like any great artist, she is at the mercy of
the character she converts to art. ("I could not help but do it my
way" is a theme of the evening.) She is complicated and contradictory, a
Countess from Brooklyn, ethnic and elevated. Her singing is the sound of
aspiration, of arrival, of indomitability. It is practiced and it's punk, it's
tender and ferocious; she can create an impression of great power by getting
very quiet. Her diction is impeccable, her accent unreconstructed. She is
precise with her consonants and extravagant with her vowels.
Yet why did I still have this strange
feeling that I would have preferred to be hearing Garland and Clooney, or even
the far rawer Bette Midler; it surely would have been more fun. Or listening to
a great Broadway songstress like Christine Ebersole, Barbara Cook, Bernadette
Peters, Audra McDonald, or Patti LaPone, all of whom I’ve heard live on stage.
Of course, I too liked Streisand on the movie musicals of Funny Girl and Hello Dolly!
What I kept asking myself was what wrong with this wonderful performance?
When Streisand sings a stage musical
number such as Sondheim’s “Being Alive,” Anthony Newley’s and Leslie Bricusse’s
“Who Can I Turn To,” or Jerry Herman’s “Before the Parade Passes By,” I
immediately wake up; I too might have given her a standing ovation just for the
Newley piece. And I have to give her an award for hutzpah for tackling the
dead-on-arrival Rodgers and Hammerstein walnut, “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” (with
Jaime Fox, no less). I could hardly bear that song even in my high school production.
But the problem is, and always has been,
is that, at heart, Streisand prefers the kitsch. She clearly prefers working
with Alan and Marilyn Bergman and composers such as Marvin Hamlisch, or with
Dave Brusin and Phil Ramone, as she did in her Yentl’s “Pappa Can You Hear Me?” (sorry not the same Yentl I recall
from Isaac B. Singer)—all gifted purveyors of populist nonsense, as opposed to
the greats like Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, or Stephen Sondheim. Even with all
her talent, Streisand still prefers the musical silver-plated and porcelain-like
knock-offs produced for Hollywood in the manner of The Franklin Mint. Almost
every time she has a choice, Streisand chooses sentimentality over wit. And in
the end, despite the wonderment she brings to nearly every musical offering, her
artistry suffers.
It’s not that LaPone or McDonald have
never sung the Broadway versions of these same knock-offs, written by the likes
of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Disney composers; it’s simply that they keep it in proportion,
returning to Sondheim or even Jule Styne (the man who actually made Streisand
famous), whereas Streisand obviously would rather work with her long-time
friends, the Bergmans. I am sure that many in her Miami audience actually
prefer “Evergreen” and Neil Diamond’s “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” over her nearly
perfect rendition of “People.” But Streisand, apparently, doesn’t even
recognize the difference.
Los Angeles,
December 27, 2017
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