Kirchschlager/Henschel/Drake - Wolf, 6 January 2013

Wigmore Hall
 

Königlich Gebet

Der Sänger
Auf einer Wanderung
Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchens
Das verlassene Mägdlein
Lebe wohl
Im Frühling
Prometheus
Grenzen der Menschheit
Philine
Spottlied aus Wilhelm Meister
Harfenspieler I-III
Mignon I-III
Kennst du das Land

Anglelika Kirchschlager (mezzo-soprano)
Dietrich Henschel (baritone)
Julius Drake (piano)

 

Twelfth Night at the Wigmore Hall brought Hugo Wolf from Angelika Kirchschlager, Dietrich Henschel, and Julius Drake. Whilst there was much to enjoy, most of that came courtesy of Kirchschlager, Drake proving variable in his command of Wolf’s admittedly difficult piano writing, Henschel having one wish for variability in order to leaven an often unpleasant tone.

 

Mörike settings opened the programme. In Auf eine Wanderung, Kirchschlager and Drake offered heightened, Schubertian expectancy, presenting the song as a child of Die Post. Ghosts of Tristan were to be heard during the interlude between the two stanzas, harmony quite properly the agent of transformation. Kirchschlager’s communicative artistry told, both through the excellence of her diction and, just as important, her use of those words. (It is no good simply being heard, if one does not know what to do with the words, what their implications might be, as many of us found to our cost with Bryn Terfel’s deeply disappointing recent Wotan at Covent Garden.) In Lebe wohl, harmony and vocal line sounded anticipatory of Strauss, whereas Mahler and the Second Viennese School hovered on the horizon in Das verlassene Mägdlein. If only Drake had been more in command of the piano part here and elsewhere, this could have been very special indeed; as it was, it seemed, rightly or wrongly, as if more practice would have been in order. Nevertheless, Kirchschlager offered a soaring account of Im Frühling, albeit an account without the lack of verbal attention that often accompanies that adjective. Moreover, she showed how she could scale her tone down to the greatest intimacy. Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchen took us both back and forward to youthful excitement. The delirious nature of Wolf’s post-Wagnerian writing was compromised a little by Drake’s less than complete technical control; nevertheless, the essential mood of the song still registered.

 

Goethe settings made up the rest of the programme. Drake proved a little too orchestral in Königlich Gebet, which sounded oddly akin to an orchestral reduction. However, he proved admirably detailed in his response to Der Sänger. Henschel’s dryness became increasingly difficult to bear, though, especially when, as in Grenzen der Menschheit, it was compounded by seeming inability to maintain a vocal line, let alone to shape it. The song, alas, might have been better off entitled Grenzen der Sänger; indeed, Sprechstimme would have come as a relief. In Prometheus, the piano was furious, Lisztian in spirit, yet often surprisingly inexact. The voice had not improved; if anything, it had deteriorated, hectoring beyond anything even Fischer-Dieskau’s wildest detractors might ever have alleged.

 

Henschel returned after the interval to introduce a second half made up of songs from Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. The second Harfenspieler suffered from Drake’s inability to make Wolf’s syncopations sound as such, rather than as simply odd metrical uncertainty, though matters improved as the song progressed. Henschel offered more of the same, so it was a great relief when Kirchschlager returned for Philine, coquettish, seemingly anticipatory of Schoenberg’s cabaret songs. Henschel’s Spottlied presented a voice that had seemingly disintegrated; there was little to hear beyond barking. Despite occasional intonational issues, the return of Kirchschlager for the Mignon songs was again most welcome, the first in particular a hochdramatisch reading, the third suffused with sadness, its onward tread maintained as if to prevent any slide into the merely lachrymose. Kennst du das Land, the fourth of the set, was almost, yet rightly, not quite, operatic; once again, Strauss beckoned. The encore, Schubert’s duet version of Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt seemed, to me at least, to cross the operatic line, but with Henschel in attendance, that hardly mattered.

Carmen, Deutsche Oper Berlin, 8 March 2009

Images: © Bettina Stöß

Carmen – Angelika Kirchschlager
Frasquita – Anna Fleischer
Mercédès – Julia Benzinger
Micaëla – Michaela Kaune
Don José – Massimo Giordano
Moralès – Andrew Ashwin
Zuniga – Ante Jerkunica
Escamillo – Raymond Aceto
Remendado – Thomas Blondelle
Dancaïro – Jörg Schörner
Lillas Pastia – Marek Picz
Andres – Jan Müller

Peter Beauvais (original director, 1979)
Søren Schuhmacher (revival director)
Pierluigi Samaritani (staging and costumes)
Ulrich Niepel (lighting)

Children’s Choir of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (chorus mistress: Dagmar Fiebach)
Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (chorus master: William Spaulding)
Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin
Yves Abel (conductor)

This was to have been a new production of Carmen at the Deutsche Oper, the first since 1979. Sadly, illness on the part of director, Jürgen Gosch intervened, so the house was compelled to revive, under Søren Schuhmacher, Peter Beauvais's thirty-year-old production, with not so much as a Konzept in sight. Reactionaries and cynics would doubtless wish, or at least claim to wish, that such a setback might happen more often, but I am afraid that the prettified naturalism of the sets looked, unsurprisingly, tame and dated. Maybe I have been corrupted by my experience, good or otherwise, of more adventurous modern productions; this, however, seemed more akin to the world of musical comedy – and not in the original sense of the Paris Opéra Comique. Nothing was harmful; by the same token, there was no especial insight afforded into the work. The production had its moments. Costumes, particularly the soldiers’ uniforms, were well designed. The dark mountain setting for the third act was considerably more effective than the other mises-en-scène. I thought the crowd scenes ably directed, something one certainly cannot take for granted in terms of contemporary stagecraft. It was good to have no apology made for twin bêtes noires of liberal fascism: cigarettes and bull-fighting.

The management of the Deutsche Oper had of course been place in an impossible position; this course was certainly far preferable to cancellation. Those who lament current directorial trends could do worse, however, than sample a few precursors and to recognise that it takes a producer of true genius – Patrice Chéreau springs to mind – to present something that will not quickly date. Better this, however, than the mindless populism of Francesca Zambello’s ‘West End spectacular’ approach for the Royal Opera; quite apart from the latter’s sheer untimeliness, at least with respect to anywhere east of the Met, it inflated Bizet’s opéra comique into something quite alien. There was, in general, an intimacy to the Beauvais-Schuhmacher production that worked well on its own terms.

Angelika Kirchschlager’s Carmen would, I suspect, have been the principal attraction for much of the audience, even had this not been a revival. There were a few moments in which she let her acting get the better of her vocal skills, but hers remained a keenly observed portrayal. Indeed, for the most part, stage presence and singing could not be disentangled, which is just as it should be. There was sexiness aplenty in the first two acts, without ever descending into a loss of dignity. Moreover, one could feel keenly the fatal transformation in Carmen’s character by the fourth act. Massimo Giordano projected both ardour and weakness as Don José. His is an impressive voice although, in repertoire such as this, he would do well to suppress the Italianate sob that too frequently intervened here. Still, one could readily relate to his anguish, even if it occasionally veered a little close to melodrama. Michaela Kaune offered a beautifully sung Micaëla. The smaller roles were generally well taken, Andrew Ashwin proving an especially winning Moralès; his career should be one to watch. And the children’s chorus was deservedly cheered; this was an estimable contribution indeed. The only real disappointment was Raymond Aceto’s Escamillo. Although he had a certain swagger on stage, it was never matched by his generalised vocalism and sometimes uncertain intonation. It was difficult to understand why Carmen might have chosen him.

Yves Abel handled Bizet’s score well, if without the fire that marks out the more notable interpretations. Care had clearly been taken to make the orchestra sound credibly French, not least when it came to some delectable woodwind solos. A notable instance was the flute solo in the second entr’acte, although sadly a sustained barrage of coughing ruined what should have been a truly magical atmosphere. Abel showed sound judgement in eschewing Ernest Guiraud’s once fashionable recitatives in favour of the original spoken dialogue. The conclusion, however, was disappointingly low-key, seeming rather to fizzle out from exhaustion. This was not a Carmen for the ages, but it marked an impressive debut for Kirchschlager and, especially given the difficult circumstances, should be accounted a success for the company.

Hänsel und Gretel, Royal Opera, 9 December 2008

Royal Opera House

Hänsel – Angelika Kirchschlager
Gretel – Diana Damrau
Gertrud – Elizabeth Connell
Peter – Sir Thomas Allen
Witch – Anja Silja
Sandman – Pumeza Matshikiza
Dew Fairy – Anita Watson

Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier (directors)
Christian Fenouillat (set designer)
Agostino Cavalca (designs)
Christophe Forey (lighting)

Tiffin Boys' Choir and Tiffin Children's Chorus
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Colin Davis (conductor)

This is the Royal Opera’s first production of Hänsel und Gretel since 1937: most surprising, given the halo that tends to accompany Humperdinck’s Märchenoper. I had a few niggling, even curmudgeonly doubts during the first act, especially when it came to the passages that sound not so much influenced by Wagner as plagiarised from his works, especially Die Meistersinger. However, as time went on I was much more convinced – and that, I think, should be credited to so excellent a performance.

I can imagine some taking against Sir Colin Davis’s reading of the score but for me this was a very great advantage. He luxuriates in its Wagnerisms; for, although Wagner is not the first composer one thinks of in terms of this conductor, he has had considerable experience, both at the Royal Opera and at Bayreuth. The conclusion to the second act gave a sense of being subsumed, Parsifal-like into heavenly revelation, albeit without any of those troubling doubts one always entertains concerning who or what is being redeemed. With this Hänsel, we had a case of magical dreams, pure and simple. The following morning, as Gretel awoke, there was a nice sense – not overdone, but certainly there – of a miniature Brünnhilde’s awakening. It is all there in the score, of course, lest this sound like superimposition. Many conductors might have taken the music a little more quickly but Davis did not need to do so. Details were made to count, yet always in the context of a sure, loving narrative flow and an unimpeachable command of structure. And, as ever, the members of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House played their hearts out for Davis. Especially lovable were the rapt strings and the almost unbearably beautiful horns: this could have been another orchestra with which Davis has a longstanding relationship, the venerable Staatskapelle Dresden.

There was not a weak link in the cast. Angelika Kirchschlager is a truly wonderful boy Hänsel, as utterly credible as when she plays Octavian. Her every movement betokened a great affinity with the part; vocally, she was every bit as good. I did not think that Diana Damrau, probably the greatest Zerbinetta I have heard, made quite so convincing a girl, but musically I should have little but praise for her. Elizabeth Connell sounded gorgeous in the maternal role of Gertrud, although her diction was not always so clear as that of the rest of the cast. It becomes almost wearisome to say this upon his every appearance, but Thomas Allen yet again proved what a consummate musician and musical actor he is, as Peter. Jette Parker Young Artists Pumeza Matshikiza and Anita Watson both gave excellent performances in the lovable roles of the Sandman and the Dew Fairy respectively, cushioned and seemingly inspired by Davis and the orchestra. And then there was Anja Silja as the Witch. Age has certainly not dimmed her lustre; she remains a truly formidable vocal actress, with no need to ham up the part, presenting a truly nasty old woman of a sort children might actually meet and fear.

In this, Silja was assisted by the production. Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier provided her with a Zimmer frame (which she did not need: we have all met such fraudulent recipients...) and a modern but slightly deranged appearance. This was a credible character, just as Hänsel was a credible boy. Not only had great attention gone into the Personenregie; it worked. There was a true sense of magic when the angels appeared and the children dreamed of Christmas, whilst the industrial ovens of the witch’s house brought a real danger to proceedings. The sets were uncontroversial without cloying – although I did think the space, if not the decor, for the house in the first act looked suspiciously like that for the directors’ Barber of Seville a few years ago. To have the forest, so crucial to the tales of the Brothers Grimm, visibly surrounding every scene was a welcome touch, although more might perhaps have been made of its menace. There was a veritable coup de théâtre in the explosion that followed the trapping of the witch – and the subsequent liberation of the biscuit-children, who sang their song rather well. It is a difficult balancing act, to present something that would work both for children and for adults, but I think that this production and this performance managed to do so.

Prom 48: Gürzenich Orchestra/Stenz, 22 August 2008

Royal Albert Hall

Mahler – Symphony no.5
Stockhausen – Punkte
Schubert (orch. David Matthews) – Ständchen, D921
Schubert (orch. Manfred Trojahn) – Bei dir allein, D866/2
Schubert (orch. Colin Matthews) – Nacht und Träume, D827
Schubert (orch. Detlev Glanert) – Das Lied im Grünen, D917
Beethoven – Overture: Leonore III, Op.72b

Angelika Kirchschlager (mezzo-soprano)
Apollo Voices
Gürzenich Orchestra, Cologne
Markus Stenz (conductor)

Once again, Roger Wright has displayed great flair in terms of programming: properly understood, one of the most difficult yet rewarding aspects of concert-planning, yet all too often dismally lacking in imagination or even thought. This was a ‘re-creation’ of the 1904 first performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony in Cologne, albeit with a couple of significant twists. Stockhausen’s Punkte, also premiered in Cologne, joined the programme on the composer’s eightieth birthday, and orchestrations of the four Schubert songs were commissioned. With the exception of Punkte, however, the performances did not really live up to this promise.

That of the Mahler symphony was not bad; I have heard far worse. Yet one needs rather more than that in Mahler, or ultimately in any great music. This, I think, is one of the most difficult of Mahler’s symphonies to bring off, not unlike Beethoven’s Fifth, which also this year was treated to imaginative programming and yet given an indifferent performance, considerably more so than the Mahler in fact. The opening Funeral March was taken at a swift initial tempo: more march than funereal. Unfortunately, the solo trumpet proved fallible, which seemed to induce a lack of confidence amongst the rest of the orchestra. A number of passages were not quite together and there were more slips than one can simply write off. There followed considerable flexibility and the stormy sections were taken quite fast indeed, but not too fast. There was a rather impressive sense of a nightmarish, ghostly procession of contrasts, reminding one of Mahler’s debts to Berlioz. I liked the second movement, completing the First Part of the symphony. Here there was the same quality of a nightmarish procession, with something of a ghostly puppet show too. There were some marvellously ominous passages of stillness, not least that with ’cellos and kettledrum. Leader Ursula Maria Berg proved a fine soloist. The chorale received a duly splendid statement and disintegrated in a fine, neurotic style that was too often missing from the rest of the symphony.

In the Scherzo (Part Two), the strings often lacked quite so full a tone as would have been desirable, although this may partly have been a consequence of the venue’s acoustic. More seriously, the opening section was taken not only too fast – Mahler writes nicht zu schnell (‘not too fast’) – but far too lightly. This is a scherzo, but it needs vigour; it should be kräftig (‘strong’ or ‘powerful’. If not quite Mahler as Delibes, the performance edged in that direction. The splendidly eerie woodwind provided some compensation and subsequent statements of the opening material had greater weight, profitably suggesting this movement’s transitional status. The scherzo hurtled to a thrilling and suitably ambiguous conclusion, although sadly too much damage had already been done.

The Adagietto was taken swiftly in the modern fashion, although it was in no sense unyielding. It was rather very much a love letter from Mahler to Alma, without a hint of world-weariness; death, let alone its Venetian variety, was not on the menu. The finale was attacked immediately, the ‘busy’ nature of its mock-Bachian counterpoint registering very well, even if it sometimes sounded a little too fast for its slightly pedantic quality to shine through. (It needs to have something of Die Meistersinger to it.) This counterpoint was wittily punctuated by strongly-taken brass interjections. The episodes were well characterised, although again they sometimes lacked the desirable fullness of orchestral tone. I worried when the chorale began at a strangely fast tempo, but it worked given the liveliness of the orchestral detail below. There was a sense of fun to the conclusion, but it did not sound hard won enough. As a whole, then, this reading of the symphony was pretty much all there structurally, save for the opening of the Scherzo, but it needed at least a little more horror, extremity, passion, and phantasmagoria.

Stockhausen’s Punkte received the finest performance of the evening, here in its final revision of 1993. It was visually and aurally striking to have two harps facing each other at the front of the orchestra. This and other spatial details were truly enabled to tell. One heard how the ‘points’ of the initial 1952 version became groups and even melodies. Stockhausen, Stenz, and the orchestra were ‘joining up the dots’, as it were, forming constellations from the original, pointillistic star music. There was much activity, counterbalanced by oases of sustained stillness. Some of the more ‘starry’ sounds, especially from strings and percussion, seemed to be straining towards the electronic means Stockhausen would soon adopt, although this remained very much a work for orchestra, or at least for large ensemble. The splendid brass climax for three trombones proved a far more overwhelming experience than anything in the Mahler. This was a performance of great intensity and drama, both in terms of its outbursts and the greater line. It is a pity, then, to report that much of the audience seemed rather restless. Having wildly applauded the Mahler, it once again displayed a lack of discernment.

The Schubert orchestrations, I am sad to report, proved a major disappointment, the single exception being that by Colin Matthews: Nacht und Träume. Matthews adopted a darker, more imaginative orchestral sound than his fellow composers, rather akin to Mahler or Wagner, especially Tristan: an interestingly Novalis-like take upon the night and dreams of Matthäus von Collin’s text. The important role for solo trumpet, often doubling the vocal line, was impressively sustained in a quite unsettling performance. Matthews’s brother David and Manfred Trojahn both adopted an early-ish-Romantic sounding orchestra, redolent of Mendelssohn or, at a push, Berlioz without the colour. David Matthews’s Ständchen relied a great deal – too much? – on pizzicato and woodwind. It had a more warmly Romantic postlude, with a touch of Wagner in the orchestration and harmony, although I am not sure that this attempt, as Matthews put it, ‘to move the song into a different world’, really worked. Trojahn’s orchestration lacked even this originality. Detlev Glanert’s Das Lied im Grünen was again rather conventional. It clearly aimed to impart a sense of the countryside, with woodwind solos aplenty, although some of it sounded oddly like the lighter Elgar. It was pretty enough but showed no particular insight. What we needed was a creative re-imagination along the lines of Hans Zender. Angelika Kirchshlager was an excellent soloist, her diction commendably clear and her musical line always carefully shaped. Apollo Voices worked well in their interplay with her in Ständchen. (What a pity, then, that the BBC printed the text to the wrong Ständchen in the programme: Rellstab rather than Grillparzer. Anyone can make mistakes, but someone really should have checked and picked up on this.)

Beethoven’s third Leonore overture received the weakest performance of the night. I do not think that this should be attributed principally to tiredness, although there were signs of that in a number of technical errors; Stenz’s conception that was to blame. The overture began with a distinctly ‘authenticke’ lack of vibrato in the strings and soon burst forth far too fast. Throughout, it sounded unduly sectional, with little sense of a greater symphonic whole: this for the work in which Beethoven went beyond the operatic overture to create a self-standing symphonic poem. The brass blared crudely and the trumpet solo from above was far too loud. Like the rest of the performance, it utterly lacked mystery or any sense of the metaphysical. We were subjected to a vulgar dash to the finishing line, even though we were as yet nowhere near that line. And so, there was a massive slowing before a repeated dash. Again, the audience appeared to love the performance, but I cannot for the life of me understand why. As an encore, we had a much better performance of a bleeding chunk from Parsifal’s Transformation Music. The orchestra as a whole was in superior form, and Stenz delineated the excerpt’s form – I realise that this edges towards a contradiction – with commendable clarity. Whether Wagner’s music benefits from thus being torn out of context is at best debatable, but the putative debate must surely be put behind us when, owing to the lack of bells, the arrangement began repeating earlier music over and over again, as if Wagner were a godfather of American minimalism.

Messiaen and Bach, DSO Berlin/Metzmacher, 21 March 2008

Philharmonie, Berlin

Messiaen – Les Offrandes oubliées
Bach – Cantata: ‘Weinen, klagen, sorgen, zagen’, BWV 12
Bach – Cantata: ‘Christ lag in Todesbanden,’ BWV 4
Messiaen – Trois petites Liturgies de la Présence divine

Julia Kleiter (soprano)
Angelika Kirchschlager (alto)
Andreas Weller (tenor)
Alfred Reiter (bass)
Steven Osborne (piano)
Valérie Hartmann-Clavérie (ondes martenot)
Rundfunkchor Berlin
Simon Halsey (chorus master)

Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Ingo Metzmacher (conductor)

This was the first in a series of four concerts combining works by Bach and Messiaen over the holy weekend. Messiaen’s Les Offrandes oubliées is an early work, written in 1930. Although one could hear the influence of Franck and perhaps Dupré, that most personal of voices was nevertheless clearly apparent. In the alternation of very slow music with eruptions of joy, this was also typically Messiaen. The orchestra sounded surprisingly ‘French’ in tonal quality, especially the strings. Occasionally, I wondered whether in the very high notes at the end, a little less vibrato from the violins would have helped intonation, but this was barely a problem. This early ‘méditation symphonique’ provided an excellent curtain-raiser for an impressive concert.

The first Bach cantata took a little time to settle, although the oboe soloist was first-rate even in the opening sinfonia – and also as obbligato in the alto aria, standing to perform, as a participant in an unfolding drama. Angelika Kirchschlager, here described as an alto rather than a mezzo-soprano, was so expressive in her recitative that it almost sounded like arioso, leading into that wonderful aria, ‘Kreuz und Kronen sind verbunden’. Her imploring tone upon the words ‘Christen haben alle Stunden/Ihre Qual und ihren Feind,’ was deeply moving. The rock-solid continuo of ’cello, double bass, and organ should also be commended. Alfred Reiter, in the bass aria that followed, sounded ever so slightly dry, but this should not be exaggerated. His diction was superb. Andreas Weller suffered a little from a catch in his throat, but nevertheless handled Bach’s unsparingly melismatic writing well. The trumpet chorale accompanying his aria was plangent but steadfast in the surety of faith: perfectly judged. By the time of the closing chorale, the choir sounded in better shape than its somewhat tentative opening chorus had suggested, fuller in tone though able to scale back where necessary.

Christ lag in Todesbanden sounded brighter than it often does, which is not inappropriate for what is after all an Easter rather than a Passion cantata. Here the strings sounded more at ease than they had during the previous cantata, less afraid to use vibrato and even some longer bows. The brass both underpinned and crowned the texture. Kirchschlager and Julia Kleiter shone in their beautiful duet, as did Kleiter and Weller in theirs, imparting an almost Handelian lyricism to Versus 6. Whatever slight problems had troubled Weller in the previous work had now vanished, as was also proved in his mellifluous solo. Likewise Reiter had lost his hint of dryness, and sounded almost Sarastro-like in his solo. The choir handled both homophonic and contrapuntal sections with aplomb, marking a fine performance all round.

Messiaen’s wonderfully bizarre Trois petites Liturgies had the second half to itself, and received a splendid performance. The slight inhibitions some of the orchestra had exhibited during the first half were banished. Augmented by very fine percussion, the DSO Berlin was on very good form. So were the ladies of the Rundfunkchor, who even had a reasonable stab at sounding French. Steven Osborne was luxury casting indeed on the piano, but this definitely paid off. His command of rhythm and colour was dazzling, helping to make this a memorable performance indeed. Equally fine was Valérie Hartmann-Clavérie: the ondes martenot was far more audible than can sometimes be the case, and this really helped to express Messiaen’s ecstatic response to the presence of the Lord. Her glissandi and vibrato were especially notable. At the helm was Ingo Metzmacher, whose guidance had unsurprisingly been more at a remove in the Bach works. Metzmacher clearly has a strong feeling for Messiaen’s music, and revelled, as he had in the first work on the programme, in its moods and colours.