Degout/Lepper - Fauré, Brahms, and Schumann, 5 June 2018

Wigmore Hall

Fauré: Aurore, op.39 no.1; Poème d’un jour, op.2; Automne, op.18 no.3; Brahms: O kühler Wald, op.72 no.3; Die Mainacht, op.43 no.2; Auf dem Kirchhofe, op.105 no.4; Feldeinsamkeit, op.86 no.2; Alte Liebe, op.72 no.1; Nicht mehr zu dir zu gehen, op.32 no.2; Willst du, dass ich geh? op.71 no.4; Schumann: Kerner Lieder, op.35

Stéphane Degout (baritone)

Simon Lepper (piano)

Another wonderful Wigmore song recital: this time from Stéphane Degout – recently shining in George Benjamin’s new operatic masterpiece, Lessons in Love and Violence – and Simon Lepper. We began with Fauré, whose songs alas often leave me cold. (I have little doubt the fault lies with me.) Such was not the case here, however. Perhaps I have at long last found the key to the door: I do hope so. That Degout was fully in command of an often elusive – and not only to non-Francophone artists – idiom might have been expected; that I was put in mind of the mastery, rather than any specifics, of a Gérard Souzay had me realise from the off that these would be no ordinary performances. Lepper, in the opening Aurore, captured just the right sort of ‘floating’ tone to the piano part too, the composer’s harmonic subtleties suspended. Surpassing elegance here and in the following Poème d’un jour did not preclude death (of the stars) at the close but rather proved its agent. Turbulence and torment naturally marked Toujours – the sequence was splendidly programmed – albeit within a similar yet far from identical framework. Lepper was permitted in its final stanza a hint at Lisztian pianism, which he gratefully took – and communicated. Fauré sometimes puts me in mind of Elgar; for me, it was an almost Elgarian dignity that characterised the prelude to Adieu, even though chronologically that was the wrong way around. Automne offered a nice link to Brahms, the music darkening, the crucial role for the piano bass line brought out without exaggeration. A perfect sadness in its final line – Où jadis sourit ma jeunesse! – sounded not un-Wagnerian. Is it fanciful to hope for an Amfortas some day…?

There is certainly no problem with Degout’s German: clean and meaningful as his musical line. The dark simplicity of Brahms’s O kühler Wald mirrored that forest itself. Darker shadows (‘dunklere Schatten’) were sought and found in Die Mainacht, providing relief for its premonition of the soprano solo movement in Ein deutsches Requiem. Brief, unmistakeably late, inner tumult characterised Auf dem Kirchhofe, even before its chorale reference: ‘O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden’. It is a different, yet not entirely unrelated Einsamkeit – and certainly was in performance – that we heard in Feldeinsamkeit. As ever, Degout’s reserves of breath seemed endless. Alte Liebe seemed almost to reminisce about Schubert, retaining consciousness that reminiscence was now all that was possible: old love indeed. Darker, still more Romantic, Nicht mehr zu dir zu gehen seemed almost – whether I am sentimentalising or not – to speak of Brahms’s passion for Clara Schumann. And it was a Brahmsian echo of Schubert’s Winterreise crow that seemed to hover over Willst du, dass ich geh? It may have ended in the major mode, but it was hardly affirmative. Brahms’s ‘lateness’ spoke for itself, here and elsewhere; it neither needed nor received underlining.

Schumann (Robert, that is) had the second half: his Kerner Lieder, op.35. It was a stormy night indeed with which the set opened, thus picking up tendencies from both Fauré and Brahms, yet also turned us towards new paths – or Neue Bahnen, as someone, I believe, once put it. The ambiguity of its close seemed almost to open a new door for us; there was certainly no reason not to follow its hint. An illumined quality to the following ‘Stirb, Lieb’ und Freud’!’ proved spellbinding, never quite permitting one to put a finger on the source of that light: artistry indeed.  Muffled bells sounded not only on the line in question (‘Alsbald der Glocken dumpfer Klang’), but subliminally throughout, prefiguring in context the ambiguous swagger of ‘Wanderlied’. Schumannesque sadness was captured to a tee in ‘Erstes Grün’, nowhere more so than in Lepper’s piano rubato, although not only there. A forest path took on metaphysical meaning too in ‘Sehnsucht nach der Waldgesang’, whilst ‘Auf das trinkglas eines verstorbenes Freundes’ seemed already to revisit past joys: the song of travel heard, as it were, through the aural lens of ‘Erstes Grün’, prior to the magical moonlight of the final stanza. It seemed as if the question of ‘Frage’ was posed without ever having arisen. Be that as it may, ‘Stille Tränen’ quite rightly offered the emotional climax. Relief and repose of a sort, in ‘Wer machte dich so krank’, again hinted at a hushed awe not so distant from Parsifal, an impression of holy ground furthered in ‘Alte Laute’. If only an angel might have woken the narrator (‘Und aus dem Traum, dem bangen, weckt mich ein Engel nur’), what if that angel were actually singing? Such perhaps was the thought that made the appreciative audience so reluctant to break rapt silence at its close.

Brahms’s Lerchengesang, op.70 no.2, seemed very much to come ‘after’ Schumann’s set. Degout and Lepper offered it as an encore that was beautiful in the very best sense: rare, painful, the opening of a new path to something else, something deeper.

Arcayürek/Lepper: Schubert, 28 January 2018

Wigmore Hall

Frühlingsglaube, D 686; Lied eines Schiffers an die Dioskuren, D 360;  Rastlose Liebe, D 138a; Abendstern, D 806; Der Jüngling and der Quelle, D 300; Am Flusse, D 766; Der Jüngling auf dem Hügel, D 702; Der Schiffer, D 536; Der Doppelgänger, D 957; An den Mond, D 193; Über Wildemann, D 884; Nachtstück, D 672; Der Einsame, D 800; An die Laute, D 905; Der Musensohn, D 764; Sehnsucht, D 879; Schäfers Klagelied, D 121; Die Liebe hat gelogen, D 751; Romanze aus ‘Rosamunde’, D 797/3b; Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergibt, D 478b; Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen ass, D 480c; An die Türen will ich schleichen, D 479b; Schwanengesang, D 744.

Ilker Arcayürek (tenor)

Simon Lepper (piano)

The first thing that struck me in this Wigmore Hall recital was the palpable sincerity of Ilker Arcayürek’s artistry. Sincerity is not everything, of course; what we think of as such may even be carefully constructed artifice, although not, I think, here. Stravinsky may or may not even have been correct to call it a sine qua non (before, in imitable style, demolishing the claim that it was in anyway enough). Whether there is sincerity in the deliberate presentation of insincerity and in irony is, perhaps, a dialectical question for another day. (For what it is worth, I think the answer is probably ‘yes – probably’.’ Artistic sincerity is surely, however, a good starting-point, a fine way to draw the listener in. And so it was here from Arcayürek, ably accompanied by Simon Lepper, in a wide-eyed (wide-voiced?!) Frühlingsglaube, properly vernal.

 

The programme’s progression made sense too. Without overt didacticism there were paths, musical, verbal, thematic to follow, to make one’s one way through this Schubert recital. Musical – in this case, rhythmic – discipline enabled Mayrhofer’s song to the Dioscuri to take us further on our way, whilst the sadness of his Abendstern shone through in voice and piano alike. In between, a rastlose (restless) account of Goethe’s Rastlose Liebe likewise relied upon the freedom born of such discipline. The same poet’s – and, of course, composer’s – Am Flusse flowed nicely, without a wearisome attempt to make it into something it is not.

 

The Jüngling auf dem Hügel (youth on the hill) could then look down upon what we had seen, heard, experienced so far, the music the key to the words and vice versa, Schubert and his present-day collaborators winningly attentive to the alchemic balance of Lieder-performance. The death knell rang out on the piano perhaps all the more clearly, at any rate movingly, for the lack of underlining. We were trusted to listen for ourselves. Impetuous relief, then, came at just the right time with Der Schiffer, prior to a wan and worldweary Doppelgänger, Arcayürek’s voice rising to encompass fear, anger, and defiance, although never to the neglect of more ‘purely’ musical values. That such moonlit drama could shade into reminiscences of Beethoven’s moonlight in An den Mond spoke well not only of that particular performance but of the thought that had gone behind its placement. Winds and mists brought the first half to a Romantic close, vocal tone and mood their agent, yet precision too. It takes art to evoke rather than fall into the imprecise.

 

Der Einsame brought piano onomatopoeia (the crickets at night) from Lepper and an apt lightness of approach from Arcayürek, making me think he would be a dab hand at first-rate operetta: Offenbach, or occasional Johann Strauss. There was nothing tedious to the performance of a song which, in the wrong hands, can sometimes become just that. Pristine neoclassicism and a little second-stanza naughtiness enlivened Die Laute and its solitary lamp: a different yet related vision of night-time. Likewise Sehnsucht: another well-judged change of mood. A well shaped account of another Goethe song, Schäfers Klagelied offered typically Schubertian smiling through tears, as well as the vivid drama of actual (and metaphorical?) storm. One began to appreciate the sadness that had underlay even the earliest songs in the programme, in part retrospectively.

 

It may sound obvious, but to perform the Romanze from Rosauunde as, well, a romance, offered the key to its success, especially as relief after a darkly romantic indictment of ‘love’ in Die Liebe hat gelogen. Again, the clue proved to be in the title for Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergibt, Schubert extending, as perhaps only music can, Goethe’s conception of loneliness. Particularity of mood characterised both of the following Goethe songs too; so did able voice-leading: in piano, tenor, and both. The quiet dignity of Schwanengesang – the 1822 song, not the song-cycle! – and its unforced Unheimlichkeit brought genuine, not contrived silence at the close. Which returns us to sincerity: an ideal for us as listeners too?