Appl/Johnson - Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Pfitzner, and Wolf, 4 January 2016

 

 

Wigmore Hall

Schumann – Frühlingsfahrt, op.45 no.2; Der Einsiedler, op.83 No.3; Der frohe Wandersmann, op.77 no.1

Mendelssohn – Pagenlied, WoO 17 no.2; Nachtlied, op.71 no.6; Wanderlied, Op.57 no.6
Brahms – In der Fremde, op.3 no.5; Mondnacht, WoO 21; Parole, op.7 no.2; Anklänge, op.7 no.3
Pfitzner – In Danzig, op.22 no.1; Der Gärtner, op.9 no.1; Zum Abschied meiner Tochter, op.10 no.3
Wolf – Nachruf; Das Ständchen; Der Musikant; Der Scholar; Der Freund

Benjamin Appl (baritone)

Graham Johnson (piano)

I had heard excellent things about Benjamin Appl, one of BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Artists. On the basis of this Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert at the Wigmore Hall, they would all seem to have been true. It certainly was not his fault, nor that of Graham Johnson, that I left an all-Eichendorff recital feeling that I had heard enough from the poet for a while. I am sure this is a matter of taste – maybe lack thereof – rather than of critical judgement, but it would seem that, for me, a little of his verse, especially when it wears its piety on its sleeve, goes a long way. His distinguished list of musical settings is, however, another matter. Here we heard three sets: Schumann and Mendelssohn; Brahms and Pfitzner; and Wolf.

 

Frühlingsfahrt made for a forthright opening. Appl’s dark, rich baritone would have had anyone sit up and listen. So equally would its subtle transformations, whether responding to verbal or musical prompting. The difference in shading and general manner of delivery between the music for the ‘zwei rüst’ge Gesellen’ was spot on: almost but not quite ‘characterisation’, for there was no easy lapse into the first person here. Quiet gravitas marked Der Einsiedler, both vocally and in Johnson’s careful hermit tread. Appl’s diminuendo on ‘dunkelt’ captured to perfection the sense of a darkening sea; yet, as with all his colouring, it remained integrated into something greater than the moment. Der frohe Wandersmann benefited from a commendably generative rhythmic impetus. Mendelssohn’s Pagenlied did likewise, albeit in its own, very different way, the poet’s mandolin here our guide. Nachtlied offered the first of a number of glorious vocal perorations, all the more so here for its subtlety, preparing the way for a final subsiding. Equally excellent command of line was to be heard in Wanderlied.

 

Early Brahms followed. And yet, the piano part already sounded darker, perhaps even more involved, with In der Fremde. (It is partly, of course, a matter of the register in which Brahms writes.) Mondnacht offered a stronger sense of inheritance from Schumann. I especially liked the sense of homecoming on the final ‘nach Haus’. In Parole, we heard another of those splendid Appl perorations, a swift contrast being presented by the ghostly Anklänge. It was, much to my surprise, Pfitzner’s In Danzig (1907) that proved the highlight of the recital. I was quite unprepared for the almost Schoenbergian sense of harmonic adventure and mystery, a highly intelligent choice, as if the Brahms song had partly, but only partly, prepared the way. Structurally, it sounded, moreover, almost as if a mini-scena. If the following two Pfitzner songs were more conventional, then there was winning grace to be heard in Der Gärtner and another splendid yet integrated peroration to enjoy in Zum Abschied meiner Tochter.

 

Finally, Wolf. Johnson’s evocation of a lutenist’s strumming in Nachruf eased us into those magical Lisztian harmonies – and prepared the way for the undimmed beauty of Appl’s voice. Another ‘instrumentalist’ introduction in Das Ständchen made for a nice link between the two songs. Der Musikant sounded, in context, as something lighter, more straightforward. The tricky vocal chromaticism of Der Scholar held no fears for Appl, who negotiated notes and words equally well. Der Freund proved an intriguing climax, almost implying a contrasting encore: the ever-special and, here, particularly-magical Verschwiegene Liebe.




 

ORF SO/Metzmacher - Schreker, Mahler, Berg, and Pfitzner, 7 December 2012

Großer Musikvereinsaal, Vienna

Schreker – Vorspiel zu einem Drama

Mahler – Rückert-Lieder
Berg – Three Orchestral Pieces, op.6
Pfitzner – Palestrina: Three Preludes

Petra Lang (mezzo-soprano)

ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra

Ingo Metzmacher (conductor)

I struggle to recall the last time I heard a piece by Franz Schreker in a concert programme. It is a great pity, since, whilst he might not be a ‘great’ composer, he is often a very good one, and certainly superior to many composers who occupy concert, still more opera, programmes. This performance of his Vorspiel zu einem Drama, an expansion of the opening Prelude to Die Gezeichneten, opened with what one might consider a classic Schreker sound from the ORF SO under Ingo Metzmacher: lush yet variegated, with a finely-judged phantasmagorical quality. Not that it lacked direction; indeed, the onward tread, especially later on, of its progress was a particular quality of this reading. Unsurprisingly Metmzacher sometimes emphasised the more overtly modernistic qualities of Schreker’s writing, for instance for tuned percussion, but never didactically. Performance and work veered between post-Gurrelieder, post-Tristan, post-Salome writing, with a proper sense of nausea at the end. Having walked to the gilded Musikverein from the Belvedere, where I had seen a good number of works by Gustav Klimt, this seemed, as it was, properly golden late-late-Romanticism. If Metzmacher did not wallow unduly, the music remained something of a guilty pleasure.

 

Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder followed, albeit in unusual order. ‘Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft’ offered an immediately sparer sound: contrast with, perhaps even respite from, what had preceded. Petra Lang’s voice was not always ideally focused, although matters improved somewhat during the following ‘Liebst du um Schönheit’. Her delivery, however, continued to tend towards the operatic; one had to listen to the orchestra for a more detailed response. Turbulence aplenty came from that quarter in ‘Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder!’ Nastiness and fear – is this child’s play, or something more, and in any case is not child’s play something fearful? – pervaded Mahler’s orchestral writing, Lang’s performance more animated too. She certainly delivered gravity, a Nietzschean ‘deepness’, in the opening of ‘Um Mitternacht’, though later on became more operatic again. There was, however, a finely etched orchestral performance, the woodwind echoes of the Nietzsche movement of the Third Symphony especially apparent. ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ brought Lang’s finest performance, unfortunately disrupted by a mobile telephone. Blowsiness was banished; lines were clearer. I still, however, could only make out about half of the words; that I knew them already should neither have been here nor there.

 

Berg’s Three Orchestral Pieces received a mixed performance. There was much to admire, for instance the truly inchoate opening, out of which germinated all manner of things Mahlerian and post-Mahlerian, though the harmonies could only ever have been Berg’s. Metzmacher’s was not a chilly performance, not even a Boulez-like performance; Romantic contrasts were more his thing than clarity. Sometimes that was problematical, when balances proved less than ideal. However, as time went one, communication of the hierarchy of voices – an extraordinarily difficult task to accomplish in performance – improved, the odd occluded and/or tentative entry notwithstanding. When waltz and march rhythms really got into their stride, the musical narrative was compelling indeed – and there was something undeniably moving to hearing this music in the Musikverein. A stray trumpet note after the final chord was a pity, but did not obliterate memories of the twentieth-century terror we had previously experienced.

 

Berg metamorphosed without a break into Pfitzner. The idea was to present two different past visions of musical futures. Of course, though, we knew whose vision won out, and in this case juxtaposition served principally to underline the justice of the musico-historical verdict. Pfitzner’s unpleasant nationalism aside, his æsthetics led nowhere, and even in the Preludes from what many consider his finest work, Palestrina, the invention sounded a little threadbare in response to the Bergian labyrinth. Metzmacher and the ORF SO certainly did what they could to level the score, their performances more consistent than they had been in Berg; whether this were the case or no, Pfitzner sounded more thoroughly rehearsed. The first prelude was dignified and direct, rhythms taut. Though great contrast was afforded by the performance of the second, I could not help but think that a less hard-driven account might have been to its benefit. Debts to Parsifal are so obvious in the third prelude, less productively (Debussy, Mahler) than just watered-down, that there is not much to be done other than to perform the music with as much conviction as one can muster. Metzmacher certainly did that. However, as I said, we knew only too well whose vision of the future won out, and were grateful for it.