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EAGLEN GIVES AN INTIMATE DELIVERY OF POIGNANT LETTER
- Melinda Bargreen, The Seattle Times, May 2004

The emergence of an important new piece of music, performed by some of the region's finest musicians with a world-renowned soloist, is an event to bring out Seattle music lovers. A sold-out house assembled in the recital hall at Benaroya for Monday's premiere of "Letter to Warsaw" by Thomas Pasatieri, best known as an opera composer and the orchestrator of a long list of major movies.

The appearance of dramatic soprano Jane Eaglen as the soloist for the 70-minute song cycle was doubtless the catalyst for a lot of the attendees. How would this Wagnerian-sized voice, famous for soaring over 100-piece orchestras in 3,000-seat opera houses, sound in the 540-seat Nordstrom Recital Hall?

The pre-concert announcement that Eaglen was suffering from a severe cold sent a frisson of distress through the house; but we needn't have worried. Though Eaglen was coughing and obviously congested, she rose to the challenge with a performance not markedly different from the one on the excellent new CD of "Letter to Warsaw," just released on the Naxos label. This was a more intimate Eaglen than one usually hears; expressive, communicative and subtle. And, on occasion, able to unleash high notes that filled the room so completely you could hardly breathe.

Both Eaglen and composer Pasatieri faced a difficult quandary: How do you deal with texts that wrench the heart and stare death in the face? "Letter to Warsaw" is based on six unpublished poems of poet/cabaret singer Pola Braun, who died in the Majdanek concentration camp in 1943, and the final poem concludes, "Answer us, fate/ And this time be true,/ Where will you lead us:/ To freedom, or to the gas?"

Pasatieri's lyrical language does not overdramatize such lines; he sets them very simply and directly, and that's how Eaglen sang them.

Despite the anguished content of most of the poems (to which Braun originally wrote music that has since been lost), Pasatieri's music is not dirgelike; some of the orchestral interludes between the songs are full of optimism and energy.

Gerard Schwarz drew expressive, expert playing from the dozen players (most of them Seattle Symphony members) who formed a surprisingly full orchestra in miniature.

The premiere was a roaring success with the audience. "Letter to Warsaw" is a major addition to the repertoire, joining a list of stellar compositions commissioned by the creative Music of Remembrance series under the leadership of Mina Miller.

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