Kolesnikov - 'In Memory of Marcel Proust': Schubert, Louis Couperin, Hahn, Fauré, and Franck, 3 February 2022

Wigmore Hall

Schubert: Piano Sonata in G major, D 894: 1st movt
Louis Couperin: Unmeasured Prelude in G minor
Reynaldo Hahn: Le rossignol érpedu: ‘Les deux écharpes’
Schubert: Atzenbrugger Tanz in A major, D 365/30
Hahn: Premières valses: ‘Ninette’, ‘Valse noble’
Schubert: Waltz in B minor, D 145/6
Hahn: Premières valses: ‘La Feuille’
Schubert: Atzenbrugger Tanz in A major, D 365/30
Hahn: Le rossignol érpedu:’Narghilé’
Fauré: Nocturne no.12 in E minor, op.107
Louis Couperin: Sarabande in A minor
Franck: Prélude, choral et fugue
Hahn: Le rossignol érpedu: ‘Ouranos’
Schubert: Piano Sonata in G major, D 894: 2nd, 3rd, and 4th movts

Pavel Kolesnikov (piano)


Pavel Kolesnikov has never shied away from imaginative programming, connecting small pieces and movements from larger works so as to provoke fascinating encounters and transitions. In this case, he wished explicitly to pay tribute to Marcel Proust in his centenary year, intriguingly playing with conceptions of musical time—and what could be more apt for this of all novelists? I confess to having felt a little scepticism toward Kolesnikov’s claim, cited in the programme note, that Schubert and Proust would ‘merge miraculously’ in an ‘art of stretching time and communicating poignant intensity through what is intimate and even miniscule,’ but was quite won over by what I heard in practice. 

Schubert’s G major Sonata, D 894, opened and closed the recital, indeed stretching time in ways quite unexpected. The first movement, heard at the opening, was spacious and highly, subtly flexible. In some ways, it felt slow, in others not at all; I honestly have no idea how long it took, nor did I feel any desire to find out. It spoke with wounded nobility, without ever tending to the lachrymose or anything otherwise sentimental. It had all manner of colours, whilst only rarely raising its voice. Kolesnikov may have looked as if he were lost in reverie, but this was throughout a directed as well as highly imaginative performance. And then, Schubert transformed into Couperin, Louis Couperin that is, in one of his Unmeasured Preludes, G major transformed into its tonic minor—sort of. I say ‘sort of’ because the use of tonality is as different as other aspects of the writing. One might have spoken of improvisatory ‘style’, but in reality, it was more a matter of creating music out of what had been left, the pianist revelling in apparent weirdness, in clashes of melody and harmony. Whose music, whose memory, is it anyway?

The rest of the first half sequence was given not only to Schubert and Louis Couperin, but also to Reynaldo Hahn (Proust’s lover) and Gabriel Fauré (greatly admired by Hahn and Proust). Hahn’s ‘Les deux écharpes’ emerged from within that Unmeasured Prelude, or so it sounded. Kolesnikov captured flow, chiaroscuro, glitter, and fleetingly something darker below. A Schubert dance, in many ways similar to a waltz—think of Mozart’s various ‘German dances’—and an actual Schubert waltz, more wistful and refined, danced on and off stage. New moods, new vignettes, new boundaries to be blurred—until the subtleties of a Fauré Nocturne were heard, not slowly, yet supremely un-rushed. If I find Hahn’s music charming whilst it lasts, yet always struggle to remember a note of it thereafter, that says its own thing about time, or me, or both. A closing Louis Couperin Sarabande evinced quiet dignity, speaking of a past (real or imagined) from a similar past and present. 

César Franck’s Prélude, choral et fugue opened the second half, in more improvisatory fashion, yet convincingly so, than one might have expected. Whether that were on account of the specific context, or because that is how Kolesnikov hears it anyway, is rather beside the point; it made sense here, interior subjectivity the thing. An appealing, ‘after-dinner’ pedal haze sustained harmonies without loss to purpose. Not that the machine à modulation (Debussy) failed to make that aspect of his presence felt, especially in a ‘Choral’ as Romantic as a ‘Fugue’ that favoured harmony over counterpoint. Hahn offered a wandering interlude, less still than evoking stillness.

And then, back to Schubert. It felt like a shift to another plane, as if a flashback were over (oddly, given much of the chronology, yet it did not feel odd). The ‘Andante’ received a lovely, unsentimental reading even before its sterner turn. The Minuet had a fine spring in its step, more forthright than its sister dances earlier on, enabling its trio to take us once more to a dream-world, albeit a different one. The finale united and set against one another those twin tendencies. Taking its time, it and we enjoyed both the route and diversions from it. It sounded very much like the finale to an evening, not only to a sonata, though Debussy’s ‘La cathédrale engloutie’ made for a strikingly Parsifal-ian encore, reminding us of two further Proustian enthusiasms.

Gens/Manoff - Gounod, Polignac, Massent, Duparc, Hahn, and Offenbach, 2 July 2018

Wigmore Hall

Gounod: Où voulez-vous aller?; Le Soir; O ma belle rebelle; Sérénade; Mignon; Viens, les gazons sont verts

Edmond de Polignac: Lamento

Massenet: Chant provençal; Elégie; Nuit d’Espagne

Duparc: Chanson triste; La Vie antérieure; Extase; Lamento

Reynaldo Hahn: Le Rossignol des lilas; Mai; Les Cygnes; Infidélité; Rêverie

Offenbach: Six Fables de La Fontaine: ‘La Cigale et la fourmi’, ‘Le Corbeau et le renard’

Véronique Gens (soprano)

Susan Manoff (piano)

It came as quite a surprise throughout much of the first half of this recital of French song, that it was the piano-playing of Susan Manoff that made the greater impression upon me than the singing of Véronique Gens. With the best will in the world, it could hardly be claimed that the songs of Gounod and Massenet are possessed of remarkably piano parts. And yet, from the prelude to the opening Où voulez-vous aller, it was often the piano that proved more communicative, that grabbed and retained my interest. Indeed, Manoff’s evident love for the music and for music-making in general proved so infections that I found more in the songs, especially Gounod’s, than I might ever have imagined possible. Whether it were her teasing, effortlessly ‘natural’ rubato in the Lamartine setting, Le Soir, the immediate establishment of a cradle rhythm, and her play therewith, in the Hugo Sérénade, or the unerring sense of line and shaping the song as a whole in Mignon, (sort of) after Goethe, it would have been more or less impossible not to warm to these performance. I certainly did not try. Likewise in the rhythms of Massenet’s  Nuit d’Espagne. ‘Generative’ might be thought too Teutonic a way of considering the music in a song like that; it was nevertheless the word that came to mind to this incorrigible Teutonophile.

Gens sometimes sounded reticent by comparison, rather as if she were holding something back for the second half. Perhaps she was. Not that there was nothing to admire. Above all, there was her ready way with the texts and her cleanness of line. A touch more vibrato might on occasion, though, have been welcome – at least to me. The tasteful sadness of Massenet’s Elégie prove eminently satisfying, though. In Edmond de Polignac’s Lamento, simple and well-formed, far more than a mere curiosity, both artists left one wanting more. The piano’s harmonic inflections nevertheless proved the key, or so it seemed.

If I found Gens at times a little ‘white’ of voice in Duparc’s songs – Vie antérieure in particular – that is more a matter of taste than anything else.  It remained, however, the piano parts in which I found, again to my surprise, the greater interest, at least until the Théophile Gautier setting, Lamento. Contemplation of the white tomb, as opposed to entombment itself, was very much the thing – until the high drama (relatively speaking) of the third and final stanza. ‘Ah! jamais plus près de la tombe je n’irai…’

Try as I might, I cannot summon up the enthusiasm shared by so many for the songs of Reynaldo Hahn, whether in the second half proper, or as encores. Nevertheless, I found myself well able to appreciate the darker undercurrents of a song such as Mai in performance. Likewise that ineffably Gallic regret – a cliché, I know, but what of it? – in Infidélité, another Gautier setting. Moreover, the way Manoff set up musical expectations through rhythm in the Hugo Rêverie reminded me very much of the opening Gounod set.

Offenbach’s cynical humour is probably just more appealing to me. I do not think I had ever heard his songs before. The two pieces from his Six Fables de La Fontaine, pretty much operettic scenas in their own right, made me keen to hear more. Gens now seemed far more at ease, more readily communicative. ‘She played humorously with the closing phrase of ‘Le Corbeau et le renard’ – ‘qu’on ne l’y prendrait plus’ – with no need to underline. The preceding ‘La Cigale et la fourmi’ closed with a true invitation to the dance. This was by now a true partnership, whether between soprano and pianist or grasshopper and ant.

Salzburg Festival (3): Karg/Martineau - Wolf, Montsalvatge, Duparc, Ravel, Hahn, Koechlin, Poulenc, and Barber, 11 August 2015

Mozarteum

Wolf – Kennst du das Land; Mir ward gesagst, du reisest in die Ferne; Mein Liebster singt am Haus im Mondenscheine; Mein Liebster ist so klein; Ich ließ mir sagen und mir ward erzählt; Ich hab’ in Penna einen Liebsten wohnen; Sagt, seid Ihr es, feiner Herr; In dem Schatten meiner Locken; Klinge, klinge, mein Pandero

Montsalvatge – Cinco canciones negras
Duparc – L’Invitation au voyage
Ravel – Cinq mélodie populaires grecques
Hahn – Lydé; Vile potabis; Tyndaris
Koechlin – Chanson d’Engaddi, op.56 no.1; La Chanson d’Ishak de Mossoul, op.84 no.8; Le Voyage, op.84 no.2
Poulenc – Voyage à Paris; Montparnasse; Hyde Park; Hôtel
Barber – Solitary hotel; Sure on this shining night

Christiane Karg (soprano)

Malcolm Martineau (piano) 

 

One of the most tiresome clichés of contemporary life, and the competition is stiff, is that of the ‘journey’. It perhaps reached its bathetic nadir – I say ‘perhaps’, since I cannot claim to have read the book – in the title of Tony Blair’s autobiography. (Yes, Tony: what really matters most about the invasion of Iraq is how it affected you and your ‘journey’.) How refreshing it was, then, to have an intelligently programmed recital which presented an array of different journeys, actual and anticipated, in excellent performances from Christiane Karg and Malcolm Martineau.

We began with Wolf and specifically with Goethe (not, one suspects, artists with whom our beloved ex-Prime Minister has spent much time). There was nothing of the warm up – how could there be? – to Kennst du das Land? Karg sang as if reaching out – not, I hasten to add, in the sense of a Blairite ‘journey’ – towards the land where lemons blossom, Martineau’s piano part offering Lisztian urgency. On the level of small detail – slightly lingering upon ‘Geliebter’, ‘glänzt’ whispered almost as Schwarzkopf were reborn – and the longer line, with all its increasing dramatic urgency, this seemed to me a model performance. Mir ward gesagt, du reisest in die Ferne, first of the Paul Heyse settings, sounded as continuation and foil in equal measure. The spirit of Chopin’s mazurka pervaded Mein Liebster singt am Haus im Mondenscheine, whilst performative wit, especially to the ending, brought smiles, inward and outward, in Mein Liebster ist so klein. Moving from Italy to Spain, Sagt, seid Ihr es, feiner Herr, sounded imbued with the spirit of the dance. Again, a knowing smile, visible and audible, characterised the final ‘Ach nein!’

Xavier Montsalvatge’s Cinco canciones negras proved a revelation to me: expressing the voice, it seemed, of a Catalan Poulenc. The habanera rhythm of the opening ‘Cuba dentro de un piano’ offers scope, fully realised, for rhythmic play with word endings. Karg and Martineau seemed equally in their element. Rhythmic flexibility and intriguingly ‘different’ harmonies were the order of the day in the ensuing ‘Rhythmus der Habanera’. Karg’s delicious pianissimo singing was the abiding memory of ‘Canción de cuna para dormer a un negrito’. The set reached a wonderfully lively conclusion in ‘Canto Negro’.

Duparc’s L’Invitation au voyage initiated a series of French songs in the second half, the performance striking just the right note of invitingly French post-Wagnerism. The varying moods of Ravel’s Cinq melodies populaires grecques were unfailingly captured, verbal detail impressively present yet unexaggerated. Piano rhythms were flexible where necessary, insistent where necessary. Reynaldo Hahn, I am afraid, is a composer to whom I am yet to respond; the three Etudes latines we heard seemed very well performed, but as music, I found them little more than pleasant. Charles Koechlin offered something far more interesting. Chanson d’Engaddi emerged very much with a personal ‘voice’, its spare quality leading one in, especially with such varied vocal colourings, to the Schoenbergian harmonies of La Chanson d’Ishak de Mossoul.

 

Poulenc is so often at his finest in song, and so he proved again here. Voyage à Paris plunged us immediately into a world of unmistakeably Parisian urbanity, Montparnasse offering a sad foil of solitude, hinting at the world of La Voix humaine: those harmonies, that tristesse… Hyde Park again made me smile: surely the point, whilst the passing time – a Parisian Marschallin, perhaps – of Hôtel cast its own melancholy spell. The programme concluded with two songs by Samuel Barber. Karg’s vocal shading and her understated sadness had Solitary Hotel linger in the memory for some time.

Maltman/Martineau recital, Wigmore Hall, 11 April 2011

Wigmore Hall

Fauré – Cinq mélodies ‘de Venise’, op.58
Schumann – Zwei Venetianische Lieder, op.25/17 and 18
Schubert – Gondelfahrer, D 808
Mendelssohn – Venetianisches Gondellied, op.57 no.5
Hahn – Venezia: Chansons en dialecte vénetien
Schubert – L’incanto degli occhi, D 902/1
Il traditor deluso, D 902/2
Il modo di prender moglie, S 902/3
Du bist die Ruh, D 776
Lachen und Weinen, D 777
Sei mir gegrüßt, D 741
Mahler – Rückert Lieder

Christopher Maltman (baritone)
Malcolm Martineau (piano)

This recital, I am afraid, turned out to be rather less than the sum of its parts, lesser parts somewhat dragging down the rest. Malcolm Martineau proved a dependable pianist, often more than that. Christopher Maltman was generally an engaging soloist, though there were a few too many intonational problems to be able to disregard them as occasional slips. Nevertheless, the programme was the greater problem, not least in that we appeared to have two smaller recitals joined together; one pertained to impressions of Venice, the other to songs with texts by Friedrich Rückert, with Schubert’s Italian Metastasio settings offering a not entirely convincing bridge. Luca Pisaroni had recently employed those very same Schubert songs in a Wigmore Hall recital that was far more coherent as a programme – and often better sung too.

Fauré opened the recital with his five Verlaine settings, ‘de Venise’. Much of this composer’s output I stubbornly fail to ‘get’; others talk of his subtlety where I tend to find blandness. Popular favourites such as the Requiem and the incidental music to Pelléas et Mélisande continue to offer greater interest; perhaps I am destined forever, or at least for a while longer, to remain uninitiated. To be fair, not everything sounded bland here: the fourth song, ‘A Clymène’ certainly offered stranger harmonies, though I could not really understand them or where they were going, and they sounded a good deal stranger when Maltman’s tuning slipped. Moreover, Martineau’s evocation of the mandolin in the opening song that bears the instruments name was quite magical in its way; he also captured very well the (slightly) fragrant nonchalance of 'C’est l’éxtase', though Fauré seems to have a different understanding of ecstasy from mine. Maltman’s French was better than that of many, though word endings were not always perfectly sounded: what a difficult language this is for singers! The baritone also brought a fine sustained line to these mélodies, especially to 'En sourdine', whose closing nightingale song benefited from a touching use of head voice (an effect that was perhaps employed a little too readily in many of the songs to come).

Four gondoliers’ songs followed: two from Schumann, one from Schubert, and one from Mendelssohn. The Schumann songs proved a highlight to the recital, Maltman immediately sounding more at home with the Lieder-style, and not just in terms of language. From the first setting (both texts are by Thomas Moore, translated by Ferdinand Freiligrath), the beautifully shaded repetitions of ‘Leis’’ in the first stanza and ‘sacht!’ in the second could hardly have been better accomplished. Martineau’s command of rhythm securely underpinned the first, whilst the charming, almost Schubertian – in Taubenpost mode – manner of the second delighted. Mendelssohn’s Venetianisches Gondellied (again Moore-Freiligrath) bewitched with its barcarolle rhythm and evocative minor-mode harmonies whose implications extend further beyond the merely pictorial than one might expect. The better of Mendelssohn’s songs are better than many realise.

Reynaldo Hahn’s six songs in Venetian dialect were frankly tedious. Again, the subtleties of which some speak quite passed me by – and whilst I suspect that with Fauré, a lack of receptiveness on my part is a factor, I simply cannot imagine what might be of interest here to anyone. Gerald Larner’s programme note comparison with Poulenc seemed to me wide of the mark, to say the least. The opening ‘Sopra l’acqua indormenzada’ brought from Maltman a more operatic delivery, akin to a gondolier regaling his tourists. At least ‘La Biondina in gondoleta’ and ‘Che pecà!’ are less emoting, though the former seems merely bland – and prolonged. The latter has a jaunty rhythm in the piano interludes, of which Martineau made the most, and benefited from Maltman’s forthright, highly masculine tone, though he missed his first entry and had to re-start the song. A ringing final ‘ciel’ in the final song, ‘La primavera’, might have delighted devotees, but I was ready for the interval bar.

Schubert’s Metastasio settings opened the second half. ‘L’incanto degli occhi’ benefited from lightness of touch on the part of both artists, though the contrasting section was perhaps taken a little too operatically by Maltman. Certainly Pisaroni in the aforementioned recital had offered something more suggestive, less blatant. Richly-coloured accompagnato was evoked in the recitative section of ‘Il traditor deluso’; Martineau even managed to make the piano part to the aria sound as if it were a piano reduction from an orchestral original. High (melo-)drama marked Maltman’s once again operatic delivery. If not Mozart, then at least Rossini was pleasingly evoked in the buffo tone of ‘Il modo di prender moglie’.

Du bist die Ruh, the first of the three Schubert Rückert settings selected, received a rapt performance, along with the Schumann songs, perhaps the finest of the evening, Martineau’s piano part heart-rendingly limpid, Maltman using words as well as notes to touch. That magical final-stanza modulation truly opened up new vistas, setting an apt precedent for Mahler. The account of Sei mir gegrüßt was to be commended for not playing to the gallery, but I wondered if it was just a little too low-key.

If Maltman had arguably used the head voice to touch a little too much, it sounded apt indeed in Mahler’s ‘Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft,’ the first of his Rückert-Lieder. It finely matched the weaving of harmonic magic in the piano, though later on insecurities of tuning slightly marred the performance: I wondered whether the tessitura was less than ideal for Maltman’s voice. There was nevertheless just the right sense of wonder to be heard: I was put in mind of the ‘Forest Murmurs’ from Siegfried. Intonation again proved variable in ‘Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder!’ but there was a proper sense of something darker than a mere time of day being at stake in ‘Um Mitternacht’: a true midnight desolation of the soul. Here, though, whilst I had tried my best not to do so, I could not help but miss Mahler’s orchestra. Maltman showed a creditable willingness to harshen his tone where necessary, for instance when speaking of man’s afflictions, forsaking mere beauty. ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ again made one realise what one was missing in orchestral terms: not Martineau’s fault, but in what might seem the quintessence in miniature of Mahler’s variegated orchestral writing, the piano inevitably seems second choice. However, the stillness of the final stanza was judged finely indeed. To offer arias from Verdi’s I due Foscari and Amilcare Ponchielli’s La Gioconda might have fitted the ‘Venetian’ theme but seemed jarring at best after Mahler.