Izzy Kratzer ’12 filled the Timken Room in Graves Hall with her dazzling soprano voice last Sunday evening.
Kratzer started off her performance with four songs in French and two in German. The audience responded with enthusiastic applause as she finished the last of these pieces.
Kratzer’s virtuosic music skills were featured in her performance of the next piece, “The Sun, Whose Rays are all Ablaze” by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan from their opera “The Mikado.”
Performing all the high notes will perfect skill and accenting her voice at just the right time, Kratzer continued to impress the crowd.
Kratzer then sang Benjamin Britten’s “The Last Rose of Summer” and New Rorem’s “Ferry Me Across the Water” with a smooth voice and calming tone to finish the first half of her performance.
After a brief intermission, Kratzer returned to the stage with a rejuvenating voice, singing “I Could Have Danced All Night” by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, a song from “My Fair Lady,” and “Home” by Alan Menken, a song from “Beauty and the Beast.”
Her performance of these two pieces was one of the highlights of Kratzer’s recital. Kratzer wrote in an e-mail to The Phillipian, “I love the times when I forget that I’m singing–when I’m not concentrating on what I have to do, and the music just happens. The theatrical pieces in the second half…are my favorites.”
Kratzer sang her last four songs, “Taylor the Latte Boy” by Marcy Heisler and Zina Goldrich, “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” from “Phantom of the Opera,” “A Cockeyed Optimist” from “South Pacific” and an Irish traditional song “The Parting Glass” just as stunningly and gracefully as the rest of her performance, ending her performance on a high note.
“I was really surprised by the turnout; it was so sweet of everyone to come. I actually thought the full room made me a little less nervous…sometimes small audiences can be intimidating. Having more people around reminds me that I’m performing,” said Kratzer.
Kratzer put a lot of preparation into the performance beforehand.
“A full, hour-long program doesn’t come together in a couple of weeks, at least, not in high school. Years of learning repertoire for lessons and smaller performances went into the preparation for this recital. In the end, I put together a program of my favorite pieces to sing from the past number of years,” Kratzer continued.
