Crowe/Sulayman/Drake - Mendelssohn and Liszt, 14 January 2025

Wigmore Hall

Mendelssohn: Abendlied, op.8 no.9; Erntelied, op.8 no.4; Keine von der Erde Schönen, WoO 4 no.1; Schafloser Augen Leuchte, WoO 4 no.2; Pilgerspruch, op.8 no.5; Frühlingslied, op.8 no.6; Das Waldschloss, WoO 17 no.1; Pagenlied, WoO 17 no.1; Romanze, op.8 no.10; Hexenlied, op.8 no.8; Todeslied der Bojaren, WoO 18 no.2; Ich hör ein Vöglein, WoO 18 no.1
Liszt: Tre sonetti de Petrarca, S 270/2
Liszt: Freudvoll und Leidvoll, S 280/2; Wieder möcht ich dir begegnen, S 322; Lasst mich ruhen, S 317; Ihr Glocken von Marling, S 328; Verlassen, S 336; Blume und Duft, S 324; Freudvoll und Leidvoll II, S 280b; Angiolin dal biondo crin, S 269/2; Go not, happy day, S 335
Mendelssohn: Volkslied, op.63 no.5; Maiglöckchen und die Blümelein, op.63 no.6

Lucy Crowe (soprano)

Karim Sulayman (tenor)

Julius Drake (piano)

 

An interesting recital of songs by Mendelssohn and Liszt raised questions concerning what we expect of and in a Liederabend. Contrasts are in general a good thing, yet might they impede the development of a guiding thread making the evening more than the sum of its parts? Can the contrary case also prove a problem? How do ideas transfer from paper to performance? Though we applaud versatility and adventure, complaining when performers and venues give us the same old repertoire over and over again, how much should a programme be constructed around performers’ acknowledged strengths? 

Often underestimated on account of his ‘Victorian’ reputation, Mendelssohn seems perpetually in need of reassessment. An assortment of songs, given in pairs by Lucy Crowe and Karim Sulayman, accompanied by Julius Drake, might have been just the thing, yet was the selection, ranging far from the beaten track, at least in some ways more interesting than satisfying? Crowe at any rate offered a nicely contrasted opening pair, though Drake’s piano parts at times sounded a little stiff. Although that in part have reflected the writing and there was benefit in laying bare the counterpoint ‘as written’, not least in voice leading, more overt advocacy might also have helped. Sulayman’s first pair, Byron settings (in translation), proved more ardent and imploring, revealing a beautiful lyric tenor, Crowe responding in Pilgerspruch with a well-placed ‘early Romantic’ approach emerging from earlier Classicism, yet in colouring extending beyond it. In general, where Mendelssohn become more ‘Romantic’, distancing himself from models that were perhaps more operatic, their fruits tending to sound a little fussy in the concert hall, the stronger the impression became. Narratives such as Das Waldschloss (Sulayman) and Hexenlied (Crowe) were cases in point. The highly unusual Todeslied der Bojaren also grabbed the attention, its dramatic starkness arresting and surprising, Sulayman imparting an almost visionary quality to it. In a charming Ich hör ein Vöglein, he hinted at waters running deeper, without trying to turn the song into something it is not. And the strangeness of the late Tennyson setting, Go not, happy day, was relished. 

In Liszt, the record was also mixed, perhaps more so. Crowe’s Sonetti de Petrarca, before the interval, received committed performances from her, although Drake might have offered a little more in the way of Romantic abandon. Whether they were quite her thing, though, lingered as a question. Whilst some way from strained, there were passages in which the longer, cantabile line proved elusive. There was a proper sense of a new world, new aesthetics, and so on, yet it was only in the third of the set, ‘I’ vidi in terra angelici costumi’, taken at a helpfully swift tempo, that the longer line truly emerged. Her second-half Angiolin dal biondo crin also benefited from being heard as if in a single breath, revealing perhaps unsuspected riches in a Liszt rarity (his first song, albeit in its 1850s revision). 

Liszt’s songs are not for everyone. Fischer-Dieskau, game to take them on, lacked some of the requisite Italianate quality (not the only one, but a sine qua non) for the Petrarch sonnets. Sulayman’s Liszt performances, bookended by two of his settings of Freudvoll und Leidvoll, tended mostly towards a world of reverie, the final of those Goethe settings offering welcome contrast in its tumult. If I did not especially mind, I wondered whether a little more contrast might have helped: a sequence of several slow songs, tending, as it were, toward the listless, lacked variety. That said, the desolation of Verlassen, the quiet ecstasy, piano bells and all, of Ihr Glocken von Marling, and the fragrance and flowers of Blume und Duft were all in themselves highly welcome. 

Perhaps anticipating potential criticisms, Drake announced that now, at last, we should hear the two singers together. In conclusion, Crowe, Sulayman, and Drake gave two vocal duets by Mendelssohn. Sensitively done and, especially in the case of the second, Maiglöckchen und die Blümelein, op.63 no.6, winningly animated, they arguably imparted a sense of what might have been, yet were nonetheless a delight. As an encore, we heard the unusual, intriguing Suleike und Hatem, a Goethe setting by Fanny Hensel. It had much in common with her brother’s songs: finely crafted, clearly in a Classical line, though perhaps not quite fully inside the Lied tradition. Whether that suggests we might revise our conceptions of the latter, founded (too strongly?) on Schubert, Schumann, et al., is a question worth asking from time to time.  

Maltman/Drake - Eisler, Hollywood Songbook, 1 June 2013

Wigmore Hall

Hollywood Songbook

Christopher Maltman (baritone)

Julius Drake (piano)

 

‘Fascinating’ hardly begins to describe Hanns Eisler. A pupil of both Schoenberg and Webern, who to a certain extent rejected Schoenberg and the mainstream of ‘New Music’ on account of his political convictions, Eisler proved a surer collaborator with Brecht than Weill had ever done. (Weill’s selling out in his American exile is one of the saddest stories of twentieth-century music, the composer of the Violin Concerto. the Second Symphony, and Mahagonny reduced to non-ironic churning out of popular song.) Exiled from the Third Reich, Eisler would eventually be expelled from the McCarthyite USA too, despite support from luminaries as diverse as Picasso, Charlie Chaplin, Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein, Henri Matisse, and a good few others. The final phase of his career would be spent in the GDR, where the collaboration with Brecht would continue. Berlin’s Hochschule für Musik continues to bear Eisler’s name.

 

The Hollywood Songbook, as one would expect, comes from Eisler’s years in Los Angeles, being made up of songs written in 1942 and 1943. As Christopher Maltman pointed out in his engaging spoken introduction to the recital, one thing about LA – at least from a European standpoint – is simply how far away it is from home; Eisler’s émigré status, not without bitterness, shines through, and clearly offered a starting point to Maltman and pianist Julius Drake, whose idea it had been to perform the Songbook. It was a splendid opportunity, though there were times when I wondered whether performing Eisler alongside music from the traditions, past and more present, from which he had been uprooted and indeed from which he had uprooted himself, from Schubert to Schoenberg, might have been a better idea. One can argue fruitlessly, though, about immersion versus contextualisation; both have their advantages. I cannot imagine that anyone in a clearly appreciative Wigmore Hall audience would have been disappointed, either with the songs performed or the excellent performances.

 

The first half was devoted to Brecht’s ‘Flight’ songs. Having Brecht’s original texts printed in the programme enabled one to hear the good number of changes Eisler made to then, often minor but not always so. Poised somewhere between Schoenberg and Hindemith – a rough and ready description, but one that might help to place him for those unacquainted with his music – Eisler’s voice sounded strongly from the outset, a language not so distant from Schoenberg’s period of ‘free atonality’ evident in the piano introduction to ‘Der Sohn’. (I thought more than once of the op.11 Piano Pieces.) And when ‘her heart kept beating so loud’ (‘Ihr Herz, das pchte so laut’), it certainly did, Drake having mastered rhetoric as well as musical language; the anger in the first song’s conclusion was palpable. Maltman’s excellent German diction and fine communicative skills proved just what was required, very different from Matthias Goerne (whose recording offers an inevitable frame of reference): less dark, in a sense, but finely attuned to the shifting moods of both Brecht and Eisler. The second ‘Sohn’ song thus offered a well-judged balance between the helpless and the defiant, the latter characteristic undeniably present but never exaggerated; words and music did the job largely for themselves, or so it seemed. A sardonic approach, for instance in ‘In den Weiden’, works so much better than caricature. ‘Little’ touches, such as the eloquently spoken ‘das Hoffen’ (hope) with which ‘Frühling 1942’ concluded, proved splendidly telling, followed as it was a postlude somehow both nonchalant and felt. The richness of Maltman’s description of beer, goat’s cheese, fresh bread and berries in ‘Speisekammer 1942’ was such that one could almost taste the goods so cruelly denied the emigrant across the seas. Deep sadness characterised ‘Über den Selbstmord’, again all the more so for the lack of self-imposition from the artists; one felt duly numb at the end. In the barrage of ‘Gedenktafel für 4000 Soldaten, die im Krieg gegen Norwegen versenkt wurden,’ Drake’s piano part proved fiercely relentless, likewise Maltman’s vocal delivery, just the right side of hectoring. Succinct, even spare, the ensuing ‘Epitaph auf einen in der Flandernschlacht Gefallenen’ made its point all the more clearly after that. Attention to detail made all the difference, for instance the second recounting of the words ‘ich bin noch da’ (I’m still here) in ‘Spruch’, not only louder, but richer in tone. ‘Der Kirschdieb’ was skittish but not carefree; unease manifested itself in the piano’s disintegrating dance rhythms, whilst its chromaticism, in ‘Winterspruch’ drew one in emotionally, both in terms of work and performance. A darkly sardonic – perhaps more Goerne-like – rendition of ‘Panzerschlacht’ offered a Lehrstück of sorts, yet remained above all a song, a Lied, perhaps the ultimate defiance, Eisler’s echoes of Schubert’s Erlkönig reminding us of great distance, both geographical and chronological.

 

The second half opened with the ‘Anakreontische Fragmente’, by way of Hölderlin. High spirits, not notably evident before, offered contrast in the opening ‘Geselligkeit betreffend’, rendering Maltman’s imploring performance of the ensuing ‘Dir auch wurde Sehnsucht’ all the more touching in its sadness. In many of the songs, the semi-autonomous nature of the piano part – again, Hindemith came to mind, if only as a starting reference – came equally to the fore, the strength of musical structure in, for example, ‘In der Frühe’ readily apparent. The balance, or dialectic, between what we might call ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ was finely projected in the ‘Zwei Lieder nach Worten von Pascal’, Pascal’s Pensées (in English) offering an ideal condensation of form and expression. ‘Erinnerung an Eichendorff und Schumann’ provided, as its title suggests, a moving remembrance of both Eichendorff and Schumann. (It would be renewed in the encore: Schumann’s original setting of ‘Aus der Heimat’.) Head voice offered a degree of characterisation in the Goethe setting, ‘Der Schatzgräber’, unearthly, with a proper sense of the sinister, whilst a more involved, ‘German Romantic’ quality reasserted itself upon a return to Hölderlin, in ‘Andenken’. There was, similarly, an aching sense of ‘lateness’, of the ‘hopelessness’ of the ‘too late’, in ‘An eine Stadt’, dedicated to Schubert, with its gnawingly memorable, seemingly ‘remembered’, harmonies. Much the same could be said of ‘Erinnerung’. A post-expressionist nightmare briefly summoned itself in ‘Nightmare’: angry, chilling, surreal, or all three? If that aggression were echoed in the first of the five Brecht ‘Elegien’, the second offered an almost Strauss-like, yet far from incongruous, Romanticism, albeit heavily ironised in its postlude. ‘Vom Sprengen des Gartens’ summoned up a longing for the gardens of home, but the final ‘Die Heimkehr’ remained clear-eyed about what return might bring. What would the native town (‘Vaterstadt’) look like after the bombers had done their work? Such was the tragedy, or part of the tragedy, of post-war Germany; the song’s bitter truthfulness once again proved all the more telling for the lack of histrionics.

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.

Richter/Prégardien/Drake - Wolf, 10 January 2012

Wigmore Hall

Mörike-Lieder

- Der Knabe und das Immlein
- Nixe Binsefuss
- Elfenlied
- Begegnung
- Der Gärtner
- An die Geliebte
- Der Feuerreiter

Goethe-Lieder

- Ganymed
- Die Spröde
- Die Bekehrte
- Gleich und gleich
- Ritter Kurts Brautfahrt
- Der neue Amadis
- Genialisch Treiben
- St Nepomuks Vorabend

Mörike, Geistliche Lieder

- Neue Liebe
- Schlafendes Jesuskind
- Karwoche
- Wo find ich Trost?
- Auf ein altes Bild
- Gebet
- Seufzer
- Denk’ es, o Seele!
- Zum neuen Jahr

Anna Lucia Richter (soprano)
Christoph Prégardien (tenor)
Julius Drake (piano)


This first in a series of concerts in which the Wigmore Hall will present the songbooks of Hugo Wolf offered much to savour, despite the late replacement of the indisposed Julia Kleiter by Anna Lucia Richter. For a singer so young – I cannot imagine there have been many vocalists who made their Wigmore debut at the age of twenty-one – Richter performed more than creditably. However, there were times when not only her lack of experience but also the youth of her voice showed. Problematic intonation at the beginning of her first song, ‘Der Knabe und das Immlein’ was doubtless a matter of nerves, yet her overly playful delivery of the rest of the song suggested an excessive if understandable desire to sound – and to look – ‘characterful’. There were times when the winsomeness became a little wearing. Enunciation was generally excellent: a necessity in Wolf’s songs, though still worthy of proper acknowledgement. However, it was not always clear that she knew what to do with the words; in this recital, she was, after all, dealing with Mörike and Goethe. ‘Intensity’ was a little too effortful in 'Die Bekehrte', the overall impression – at least vocally – anything but erotic. ‘Neue Liebe’ was simply too operatic for a fine specimen of the Lied, whilst ‘Wo find ich Trost?’ simply needed a more fully developed voice, a Kundry even, for its extraordinary text properly to register. I was tempted to say that Richter would have been off leaving ‘Ganymed’ to Christoph Prégardien, then recalled that, rightly or wrongly, Wolf considered it to be a woman’s song.

Nevertheless, with Prégardien, we stood on much surer ground. Highlights included a heartfelt ‘An die Geliebete’, with a powerful climax upon ‘ewiger Genüge’ and wonderful use of the head voice upon the poet’s smiling of the stars, and truly Bergian expressionism in ‘Die Feuerreiter’: ‘Hinterm Berg, hinterm Berg rast er in der Mühle!’ The cold ride to the grave in the latter reminded one, moreover, that expressionism looks back to Schubert as well as forward to the Second Viennese School. Likewise the changing moods – ‘Frühlingstraum’ from Winterreise came to mind – of ‘Denk es, o Seele!’ and the haunted rendition of ‘Seufzer’. Another aspect of the tenor’s artistry was displayed in the ballad delivery of ‘Ritter Kurts Brautfahrt’: here narrative thrust issued forth both purposeful and meaningful.

To stop there, however, would leave us with an unsung as well as non-singing hero, for Julius Drake’s performance was perhaps the finest of all. Whilst his companion struggled somewhat in ‘Der Knabe und das Immlein,’ Drake’s piano part left us in no doubt from the very first bars that Wolf was knocking upon the door of early Schoenberg: the kinship to the op.2 songs is remarkable. The chimes of ‘Elfenlied’ struck both terror and wonder into the heart, whilst the difficult progression from darkness to light in its successor song, ‘Begegnung’, was judged well-nigh perfectly. Wolf’s piano writing in ‘Der Feuerreiter’ is positively Wagnerian, and so it sounded here, yet it also sounded thoroughly pianistic. Echoes of Schubert’s ‘Der Leiermann’ in ‘Die Bekehrte’ were powerfully yet subtly conveyed. If the odd stitch were missed in the interlude before the final stanza of ‘Ritter Kurt Brauutfahrt’, that is more or less the only criticism I can muster, and it is a minor one at that. ‘Karwoche’ benefited from a keen awareness of the piano part’s proximity to Strauss. Moreover, I could not help but wonder whether ‘Zum neuen Jahr’ – the only vocal duet – was performed with full awareness of Liszt’s delightful solo piano suite, Weihnachtsbaum. It certainly sounded as if it were, and it came as no surprise to read afterwards that Drake is recording the complete songs of Liszt for Hyperion. On this evidence, it should prove an invaluable collection.