Looking forward to Parsifal at Bayreuth (II)

An apt metaphor for and precursor to Monsalvat?

Our hearts are thrilled with compassion, for it is old Jehovah himself who is making ready to die. We have known him so well, from his cradle in Egypt … We saw him bid farewell to those companions of his childhood, the obelisks and sphinxes of the Nile, to become a little god-king in Palestine to a poor nation of shepherds … We saw him move to Rome … he obtained power and, from the heights of the Capitol, ruled the city and the world, urbem et orbem. … We have seen him purify himself, spiritualise himself still more, become paternal, compassionate, the benefactor of the human race, a philanthropist … But nothing can save him!

Do you not hear the bell? Down on your knees! The sacrament is being administered to a dying God!

(Heinrich Heine, ‘Of Germany since Luther,’ in Revue des Deux-Mondes, 1834, IV, 408)

What might be revealed in His place?

I do not believe in God, but in godliness, which is revealed in a Jesus without sin.

(Cosima Wagner's Diaries, 20 September 1879)

Much about church and state; he says, 'For me Christianity has not yet arrived, and I am like the early Christians, awaiting Christ’s return.' – But in the search for ideality, he adds, things look different!

 (Cosima Wagner's Diaries, 15 July 1879)

But how might they look different?

After breakfast he talks about philosophy and says that Kant found something eternal in his quiet avenue in Königsberg, an ideality of time and space, like Jesus in Galilee: 'My Kingdom is not of this world.'

(Cosima Wagner's Diaries, 31 January 1880)

Perhaps that points us to an answer, perhaps not; yet, in a sense, it merely rephrases the question, which may be another reason we need Parsifal, in which such issues are dramatised rather than 'resolved'...

Müller-Brachmann/Heilmann - Heine settings by Schubert, Brahms, and Schumann, 16 January 2012

Wigmore Hall

Schubert – Schwanengesang, D 957: songs by Heine
Brahms – Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht, op.96 no.1
Es schauen die Blumen, op.96 no.3
Meerfahrt, op.96 no.4
Es liebt sich so lieblich im Lenze, op.71 no.1
Schumann – Liederkreis, op.24

Hanno Müller-Brachmann (bass-baritone)
Hendrik Heilmann (piano)

Having only given a cursory glance at the programme beforehand, it was a welcome surprise upon arriving at this lunchtime concert to realise that the verse would all be Heine’s. First off were the Heine settings from Schubert’s Schwanengesang. The immediate impressions from the opening bars of Der Atlas were of excellent diction, Hanno Müller-Brachmann truly drawing one into the poet’s words, a reminder that Müller-Brachmann’s instrument is truly a bass-baritone, darker than one often hears in this repertoire, and of alert musicianship from Hendrik Heilmann on the piano. Those would be impressions that would endure, indeed deepen, throughout the recital. Müller-Brachmann quite rightly made no distinction between performance of words and music, the two coming together as Lied: the words ‘Du stolzes Herz!’ (‘You proud heart!’) received emphasis without the slightest disruption to the musical line. Ihr Bild was hallucinogenic, voice and piano as one, Müller-Brachmann and Heilmann offering an uncanny (unheimlich, one is almost bound to translate) synergy, not just unanimity, of the vocal line and the piano bass. There was, moreover, true rage, to be heard upon the final line: ‘daß ich verloren hab’!’ (‘that I have lost you!’). Heilmann showed himself fully adept at handling Schubert’s modulations and their meaning in Das Fischermädchen, the interlude between second and third stanza fairly taking one’s breath away, whilst his una corda playing in Die Stadt proved evocative in both pictorial and, crucially, metaphysical senses. Müller-Brachmann’s voice here and in Am Meer sounded properly Wagnerian in its musico-dramatic response, a reminder of his Amfortas and his Rheingold Wotan. A slight roughness of tone on the final line may have been deliberate: the woman has poisoned him with her tears. It was, if anything, a slight blemish in the face of such manifest sincerity. Finally, Der Doppelgänger: Müller-Brachmann’s initial tone and manner took us into his confidence as a teller of ghost-stories, proceeding truly to shake us at the great climaxes – Amfortas again – as the protagonist found himself, the wraith, revealed in the moonlight.

Brahms’s settings, though of course from a later date (1877-c.1885), are less Wagnerian, arguably more song-like in a ‘conventional’ sense. Within its more modest bounds, Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht emerged as a heartfelt gem, intimate but not withdrawn. Heilmann’s account of the piano part to Es schauen die Blumen emphasised its inward tumult, decidedly upon the verge of ‘late’ Brahms. The pianist’s way with the rocking water music of Meerfahrt and the glistening waves of Es liebt sich so lieblich im Lenze likewise hit the spot, the latter almost suggesting Debussy, the former’s syncopations telling musically just as they would in Brahms’s solo piano works. I was surprised and intrigued by how close the piano writing sounded to contemporaneous Liszt.

Schumann’s Liederkreis, op.24, received equally distinguished performances, expectancy present from the very opening of Morgens steh’ ich auf und frage. When Müller-Brachmann told us that he wandered through the day dreaming, as if half asleep, that was precisely how it sounded, the delicacy of Heilmann’s postlude both underscoring and unsettling. The mad hopelessness of Es treibt mich hin was searingly conveyed, whilst the echt-Romanticism of Ich wandelte unter den Bäumen sounded painfully beautiful. If Heine’s irony is lost here, that is Schumann’s doing, and what we gain as well as lose! For there was to be no sacrifice of tonal beauty, the third stanza of Schöne Wiege meiner Lieden (‘Hätt’ ich dich doch nie gesehen, Schöne Herzenskönigin!…’ / ‘Would that I had never seen you, though, fair queen of my heart!...’) as ardent as it was bitter. One could have said much the same of Schumann’s wondrous postlude. Beauty and danger – and beauty in danger – were equally apparent in Berg’ und Burgen schau’n herunter, Heine’s Rhine Journey. (Heine was himself of course a Rhinelander by birth, born in Düsseldorf; indeed, its university would eventually rename itself after him.) Poet’s and composer’s ambivalence were conveyed, as they must be, but again without hardening or lessening of tone. (Were I truly to scramble to criticise, I might note that Müller-Brachmann opened the second line with ‘auf’ instead of ‘in’, but I can think of nothing more negative to say.) Bitter beauty was also the hallmark of the final Mit Myrten und Rosen, its piano interludes almost unbearable, not just in themselves but as a consequence of what had gone before: evidence, were it needed, of a true collaboration between two fine musicians. Love’s spirit (‘Der Liebe Geist’) was both rendered ravishing and yet lain bare as a pernicious delusion: the Wahn of Schopenhauer and Hans Sachs. For an encore, we were treated to a rapt, painfully seductive, further Schumann setting, Die Lotosblume.

Müller-Brachmann’s artistry is by now well known, certainly in Germany but also in this country. Heilmann’s was new to me, but I hope to hear more; it seems that he is an active chamber musician too. (It sounded like it.) The concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at 2 p.m. on Saturday 21 January.

Pisaroni/Rieger - Schubert, Rossini, and Liszt, 6 March 2011

Wigmore Hall

Schubert – Il modo di prender moglie, D902/3
L’incanto degli occhi, D902/1
Il traditor deluso D902/2
Rossini – La promessa
L’esule
L’orgia
Liszt – Im Rhein, im schönen Strome, S.272 (second version)
Vergiftet sind meine Lieder, S.289
O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst, S.298
Die Vätergruft
Tre sonetti de Petrarca, S.270 (first version)

Luca Pisaroni (baritone)
Wolfram Rieger (piano)

(Image: Marco Borggreve)

I was surprised to discover that this was Luca Pisaroni’s Wigmore Hall debut. On the basis of this splendidly planned recital, he should return very soon indeed. I admired him enormously as Salzburg’s 2007 Figaro and he has recently been garnering plaudits in the same role in Vienna’s somewhat more ‘traditional’ production. It is therefore a delight to report that Pisaroni is just as much at home in the recital room, and every bit as comfortable with German as Italian song.

Schubert opened the recital, but in the guise of his three Metastasio songs, D 902, dedicated to the Italian bass, Luigi Lablache. (They were also published with a German translation.) Pisaroni made something very particular out of them, turning their mixed German-Italian nature into a point of interest rather than a mere compromise. The opening Il modo di render moglie, in which the narrator asks why he might not choose a wife for money, had something of the opera too it: Mozart in the third stanza, moving to Rossini at climax, but Pisaroni was always careful to present these songs as songs; they never overstepped the boundary into aspirant opera, despite the tumult one could only really describe as ‘operatic’ in the recitative of Il traditor deluso and the subsequent portrayal of Metastasian furies. The central L’incanto degli occhi sounded closer to German Romanticism, and were blessed by a beautiful richness of tone especially apparent upon the deeper bass notes. It was a pity that pianist Wolfram Rieger could sometimes, especially in the outer pair, prove a little plodding, but that did not detract from Pisaroni’s artistry.

Schubert, as we hear in his Sixth Symphony, was far from immune to the Rossini craze that swept Vienna, even though he would always remain much closer to Beethoven. It was time to hear from Rossini himself: again, not in aria, but in song, and Pisaroni was every bit as successful in ensuring that the three Rossini songs were heard just as that. One could certainly hear that he would make a fine Rossini singer in the theatre, not least from his beautifully sustained line, but that was not the point on the present occasion. Indeed, we heard, especially in La promessa (Metastasio again), a more Romantic and songlike Rossini than would generally be the case, without stepping too far from the classical poise of the text. Rieger imparted a nice, if slightly Germanic, spring to the piano part for L’orgia, but it was Pisaroni who stole the show, his naughtily confiding ‘Gulliva ravviva / Rinnova ogni cor’ an especial joy, on account of a subtlety one does not necessarily expect to hear applied to Rossini.

Then, a true mark of intelligent programming, we moved to Liszt: German, but not quite, closer to Italian music than, say, Wagner or Brahms. Pisaroni’s diction and sense of style had been predictably yet still creditably fine in the Italian songs; they were no less so when it came to Heine, Freiligrath, and Uhland. Im Rhein, im schönen Strome, announces the first song (‘In the Rhine, the beautiful river’), and that is very much what we heard, but beauty heightened the rapt response to Heine’s verse rather than drawing attention from the words. Rieger seemed more at home in Liszt than during the Italian songs, though it took him a couple of songs or so to get going here. The second Heine setting, Vergiftet sind meine Lieder, was more impassioned than the first, yet stood some way from abandon. One was doubly thankful, then, for the Romantically ardent baritone whose songs, were they poisoned (vergiftet), could not but tempt one to taste of his poison. O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst! would become the celebrated Liebesträume no.3. In Pisaroni’s rendition, its Italianate vocal line blended perfectly with German verse and harmonic direction: Lisztian alchemy indeed. Die Vätergruft emerged in ghostly fashion: an old man, clad in armour, entered an ancient chapel, and, floored by a song of exhortation, fell to his final rest. Midway between Schubert and Wagner (perhaps even Mahler’s Das klagende Lied), it retained the twin Italian and German virtues of the previous Liszt songs. I can honestly say that, had I not known the nationality of the singer, I should never have guessed from his German that he was not a native speaker. Matched with rare beauty of tone and unerring control of line, this made for something special indeed.

Finally came the Petrarch Sonnets. Those very virtues of tone and line, married once again to fine diction, permitted the beauty of Petrarch’s verse to emerge afresh. Expectation upon no.104’s ‘E temo e spero, ed ardo e son un ghiaccio’ (‘I fear, yet hope; I burn, yet am turned to ice’) turned dramatically yet naturally to soaring in the heavens for ‘E volo sopra ‘l cielo’. No.47 was perhaps a little less impressive, opening in comparatively casual fashion; there were, moreover, a few moments when intonation wavered, though when it did not, which was most of the time, there was much to savour. Such was the clarity of diction that one readily detected typographical errors in the printed text, such as ‘primo’ for ‘promo’. And when Pisaroni concluded Sonnet no.123 with the words ‘Tanta dolcezza avea pien l’aere e l’vento’ (‘Such sweetness had filled the air and winds’), one could only concur. If one is to hear a lower voice rather than a tenor in these songs, I cannot think of anyone I should rather hear. Rieger too had seemed incited by the poetry and produced some magically Lisztian beauty, not least in the final postlude. As an encore, we were treated to Es muss ein wunderbares sein, S.314, Pisaroni’s treatment as rapt as the Heine setting with which the Liszt selection had opened. One Thomas Hampson, seated with his partner immediately behind me, apparently unbeknown to his son-in-law on stage, was impressed too...

God in the nineteenth century: Wagner (Parsifal)

A sermon delivered at Evensong, at Trinity College, Cambridge on Sunday 26 October: https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/show.php?dowid=627. The series, God in the nineteenth century, will culminate with Terry Eagleton on Nietzsche on Sunday 23 November. Other sermons may be found at: https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/index.php?pageid=459.