Dalton Baldwin, Fellow Gardener
Dalton Baldwin, pianist
One of my most inspiring gardening friends was also one of my most influential music teachers. Dalton Baldwin had homes in Toms River, New Jersey, and in Antibes, France. He carefully oversaw the design and building of each house, with the result that the two homes shared many characteristics: they were secluded, they were on water, each had a private, tower-like structure where Dalton had his own bedroom and piano, each had a more public main floor where he had another piano or two and did his teaching and coaching. And each had extensive gardens, in which he worked whenever he had spare time (he also hired part-time gardeners), and which were luxuriant, fantastic places, reminiscent of the vocal music which was his professional bread and butter.
I first met Dalton after a concert he presented with soprano Elly Ameling, at Northwestern University, during the summer of 1980. I tagged along to a dinner presented in their honor, and in the course of it he told me about an art song festival he was organizing at the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee for the following summer. The list of master teachers was amazing, Gérard Souzay and Elly Ameling among them; so I applied and was accepted. My first time up, I sang Schumann’s Schöne Wiege meiner Leiden. I wasn’t four measures into the piece, before Gérard, whom I had never met, stopped me, turned to the auditors, and said, “Why is it that all you American singers think German music is angry? You all try to sound like that singer with three names.” And with that, I was ushered into the cult of Gérard Souzay. The ensuing “lesson” was excruciating, but I gradually became aware that his cutting criticism and sarcasm meant that he actually like my singing and thought I was worth his time; so I loosened up and enjoyed myself. Gérard did not care about flowers, but he was a great artist and a grand teacher.
My second time up, I sang Fauré’s En sourdine, for Elly Ameling and Dalton. Again, we did not make it past four bars before being stopped. Dalton came over to the pianist, told her to move aside, and played for me, himself. As he began the simple arpeggios of the introduction, I was transported to paradise. This was music making at a level I had only dreamt of. I was lifted on the wings of his playing, without interruption, through to the end of the piece. The experience was breathtaking.
Dalton Baldwin, pianist
At the end of the festival, Dalton and Gérard spoke with me about coming to Nice the following summer, for a session at the Conservatory. I had never been to Europe, and it took a lot for me to gather the courage, and money, to go; but I took the plunge. It was through this trip, and subsequent visits over the following years to Dalton and Gérard’s home in Antibes, that I became aware of Dalton as a gardener. He deeply loved his gardens—once he told me that it was his goal to be constantly surrounded by flowers, and he came close.
Early each morning we would walk down his driveway and jump into the Mediterranean, swim out to some rocks and back, then hike back up his driveway. We’d drink coffee on his terrace, surrounded by his gardens, and he’d plan his day. I never saw him so happy, so relaxed, as he was at those times. He would give me gardening assignments—weed here, prune here, pick these beans. I think he was genuinely thrilled to find a fellow traveler, and he made the most of my presence, taking me to visit farms and gardens in the area, and hiking up in the mountains (where he had yet another house) to see the wild cherry trees and swim in the ice cold alpine lakes. The beauty of the forests, the meadows, the flowers, was a holy thing to him—he embraced it with a religious fervor, he couldn’t get enough of it. And I grew to realize that he sought, through music, the same passion and fervor, the same total experience of beauty and joy.
Over the years Dalton sent me flower seeds, as well as advice; when I visited him in New Jersey, he gave me plants. When he came to Charlottesville to accompany me in a Poulenc centennial recital at UVA, he gave me $150 and told me I needed to buy some rhododendrons; he even told me where to plant them. And he sent me photos of flowers he was growing, of a newly discovered vistas in the Alpes-Maritimes, of gardens he admired.
Once, in a master class, a very competent soprano, a college voice teacher, sang a major Poulenc song. When she was done, Gérard said to her, “You are such a good student. But good students bore me. I need fire.” Pretty much destroyed that soprano. But I heard, and felt, what he meant. He and Dalton shared a total commitment to beauty, to passion, to no-holds-barred expression. It was their fiery gift to the world.
One summer when I was singing a Brahms concert with the Robert Shaw Festival Singers in Souillac, France, Dalton drove up from Antibes to hear us. He then drove me from the concert site back to where we were staying, complaining all the way about how boring we were. The repertoire had included both sets of Liebeslieder Waltzes, which I had sung the previous summer with Dalton, in a series of daringly expressive performances, so I understood his complaint-- one can bend things far more with one piano, two pianists, and four singers, than one can with two pianos and sixty singers. Dalton did not in the least understand the strictures of choral performance.
It was, finally, Dalton’s and Gérard’s commitment to beauty at all costs, to the fires of creativity, that affected me and shaped me. I am incredibly fortunate to have been touched by these great artists.