Apollo Saal, Staatsoper Unter den Linden
Wolf:
Auf
einer Wanderung; Verschwiegene Liebe; Begegnung; Nimmersatte Liebe; Lied vom
Winde
Schoenberg:
Brettl-Lieder: ‘Galathea’, ‘Mahnung’, ‘Arie aus dem “Spiegel
von Arkadien”’
Brahms:
Feinsliebchen,
du sollst mir nicht barfuß gehn,
WoO 33 no.12; Da unten im Tale, WoO
33 no.6; Vergebliches Ständchen,
op.84 no.4
Mahler:
Des
knaben Wunderhorn: ‘Trost
im Unglück’; ‘Verlorne Müh’’; ‘Aus! Aus!’
Brahms:
Zigeunerlieder, op.103: ‘Brauner Bursche’, ‘Röslein
dreie’
Wolf:
In
dem Schatten meiner Locken
Brahms:
Liebesglut, op.47 no.2
Wolf:
Die
Zigeunerin
Hermann
Reutter: Tanz
Falla,
arr. Christian Dominik Dellacher: Siete canciones populares
españolas (first
performance)
Katharina Kammerloher (mezzo-soprano)
Roman Trekel (baritone)
Klaus Sallmann, (piano)
Ensemble Monbijou: Dana Sturm (piano), Tobias Sturm (violin), Boris Bardenhagen (viola), Hannah Eichberg (cello), Kaspar Loyal (double bass).
With this recital, mezzo-soprano
Katharina Kammerloher, joined by colleagues Roman Trekel, Klaus Sallmann, and musicians
drawn from the Staatskapelle Berlin under the name of Ensemble Monbijou, celebrated
her twenty-five years as a member of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s
ensemble. From the past couple of years or so, I have heard her as the Ariadne Composer, Marcellina,
and Eva
(Meistersinger), and in a trio of
roles from Schumann’s Szenen aus Goethes Faust at the
Linden opera’s reopening, a good number of performances before that too. This,
however, was the first time I had heard her in recital. This evening in the
Staatsoper’s Apollo Saal proved most enjoyable, heightening the sense of a
likeable, intelligent, and versatile artist.
The opening set of Wolf songs did
not necessarily offer the easiest way to start, yet struck just the right tone.
Attention to detail in Auf einer
Wanderung was noteworthy: the floating first syllable of ‘Nachitigallenchor’
indicative of a world of song to come. Pianist, Klaus Sallmann’s piano
introduction proved skittish and generative, for both parts. A sense of change,
of transformation following the song’s Wagnerian interlude was palpable,
Richard Strauss and his world no longer distant; ‘Ach hier, wie liegt die Welt
so licht!’ A rapt Eichendorff Verschwiegene
Liebe, and vividly communicative performances of the two following songs,
prepared the way for a dramatic, unmistakeably post-Wagnerian reading of the
Mörike Lied vom Winde, Sallmann’s nimble,
directed fingerwork rendering him at least an equal partner. Here and elsewhere,
Kammerloher’s collegiality shone through: this was clearly as much an occasion
to celebrate the company as a whole as her contribution over the past quarter
of a century.
Why Schoenberg’s Brettl-Lieder are not performed all the
time, I simply cannot understand, although I suppose I
would say that. It would doubtless be an exaggeration to say they are as
indicative of the composer’s subsequent path as his Gurrelieder, but an excellent performance, albeit here of only
three, can persuade one otherwise – as this did. One thinks, perhaps
inevitably, of Berlin, but a sense of the composer’s travelling between Vienna
and Berlin is, or should be apparent, and was in this case. (The songs were
not, as has sometimes been claimed, written for Ernst von Wolzogen’s Buntes
Theater, where Schoenberg served as Kapellmeister; Schoenberg had written them
in Vienna, before leaving for Berlin.) Whatever Schoenberg may have had to say
about style and idea, style is crucial here, and Kammerloher – Sallmann too – captured
that Schoenbergian cabaret style, leading to Pierrot and beyond. Driven by words in a different way from Wolf, yet
without loss to the melodic line, these witty performances were equally driven
or, perhaps better, founded upon a rhythmic lilt it is difficult not to
consider Viennese.
Brahms and Mahler concluded the
first half, the former in folksong mode, the latter not a million miles therefrom,
albeit with a distancing that comes necessarily with the Mahlerian territory. Perhaps
there might have been a little more sense of alienation in those Wunderhorn songs, although, by the same
token, it might in context have sounded overdone. Joined now by pianist Dana
Sturm and baritone Roman Trekel, Kammerloher and her partners again worked with
the lilt of dance rhythms, to bring out verbal as well as musical meaning, the
lightly worn sadness of Brahms’s Da Unten
im Tale a particular highlight for me. I was intrigued, moreover, by how
Mahler sounded with reference not only to Brahms but to Schoenberg: interesting
programming, which paid off handsomely.
Brahms reappeared after the
interval, this time accompanied by Wolf (and Sallmann). A lively Brauner Bursche offered perhaps more
refulgent vocal tone than we had heard hitherto, yet not at the cost of
precision and verbal communication. Brahms’s Liebesglut offered a welcome instance of the composer in darker
mode: turbulent and determined in both parts, in work and performance. Such
richness here in a single song, wonderfully revealed! Wolf’s Die Zigeunerin offered an intriguing pendant:
much more than a more pendant, of course, but again indicative of intelligent,
meaningful programming, as was the inclusion thereafter of Hermann Reutter’s post-war
Lorca setting, Tanz. One rarely hears
Reutter’s music, doubtless partly on political grounds. This song suggested,
however, that we should. Motoric, after Hindemith, it proved quite thrilling,
both as song and scena, Kammerloher
not afraid to make a rawer sound, yet within the bounds of song.
An accomplished new
arrangement, by Christian Dominik Dellacher, for voice, piano, violin, viola,
cello, and double bass, of Manuel de Falla’s Siete canciones populares españolas, received its first performance
as the final item on the programme: both well prepared and welcome in its
contrast. Dellacher’s work was not overdone, yet helped lift or translate the
songs into a new setting, the instrumental ensemble bringing an atmospheric
sense, appropriate in context, of somewhere between the coffee house and the
cabaret. In the most overtly ‘Spanish’ of the songs, such as ‘Nana’ and the
closing ‘Polo’, the latter imbued with nervous energy by all concerned, Kammerloher
seemed both possessed by and to possess the local idioms. The intervening ‘Canción’
proved, aptly enough, more conventionally songful, harking back to much of what
we had heard before. It was a lovely evening, then, and a fitting tribute to Katharina
Kammerloher as first among equals.
