Gerhaher/Huber - Holliger, Wolf, Schumann, and Schoeck, 12 February 2023

Wigmore Hall

Holliger: Elis
Wolf: Abendbilder
Holliger: Lunea
Schumann: Vier Husarenlieder, op.117
Schoeck: Elegie, op.36: ‘An den Wind’, ‘Herbstgefühl’, ‘Verlorenes Glück’, ‘Das Mondlicht’, ‘Herbstentschluss’, ‘Welke Rose’
Schumann: Sechs Gedichte von N. Lenau und Requiem, op.90

Christian Gerhaher (baritone)
Gerold Huber (piano)

Any recital from Christian Gerhaher is likely to be special; offering a range of quite unusual repertoire, Heinz Holliger’s Lunea written for and dedicated to Gerhaher, this was no exception. It opened, though, with a rare solo spot for Gerhaher’s long-term collaborator, pianist Gerold Huber, and early (1961, revised 1966) Holliger. Gerhaher reading the three Georg Trakl texts on which Elis’s three short piano pieces, ‘Verkündigung des Todes’, ‘Todesangst und Gnade’, and ‘Himmelfahrt’, are based, even providing his own English translation for the programme sheet. Strikingly post-Schoenbergian harmony characterised the first, though its musical gestures worked differently. The soundworld of the second sounded later, more post-Webern, if you will, indeed surely marked by Holliger’s contemporary study with Boulez, albeit with a Germanic accent. ‘Himmelfahrt’, as its name might suggest, seemed in some sense both to reconcile and to go beyond. These aphoristic nocturnes emerged pregnant with emotion, gesture, and – who knows – perhaps ‘meaning’ too. 

Hugo Wolf’s Abendbilder (again early, 1877) followed, without a break. In context, the piano prelude to the first of the three sons sounded Romantically consoling, yet not unrelated: an excellent starting point for our Wolfram von Eschenbach, sorry Gerhaher, to sing, the sincerity as well as beauty of his delivery striking from the outset, likewise command of detail without pedantry. All three Nikolaus Lenau ‘pictures’ rightly formed part of a greater whole, whilst happily going on their own, sometimes pastoral, ways. It was difficult not to marvel at the different shades and colours of Gerhaher’s voice, poetically deployed, an sinking wanness as the sun set (‘Bald versinkt die Sonne’, an example in point. Shades of Schumann and Liszt in language and performance contextualised without overwhelming.

We remained with Lenau for Holliger’s Lunea, written from 2009-10, though only premiered at Zurich’s Opera House in 2013 (also venue five years later for the premiere of Holliger’s opera of the same name, featuring Gerhaher, reworking these settings ‘like chorales in a Bach Passion’). Notably more gestural than what we had previously heard, it yet remains – and, in performance, remained – within the noble Lied tradition. Twenty-two Lenau sentences and a short poem, ‘Einklang’, in memory of Johann Baptist Mayrhofer form a striking cycle that must surely have won the composer new admirers here in London. Gerhaher’s acuity of verbal and musical response seemed ideally suited. That range of colour was now married to a greater range of general delivery, sometimes unabashed song, sometimes recitation, often somewhere in between; extended piano techniques such as bowing the strings acted similarly. Searching melismata unsettled, lit up, even amused, as instances of wordpainting (‘Ein Tropfen im Stein’) worked something like their traditional magic of recognition. Wonderfully nomadic harmony illuminated Lenau’s Wüstenwanderer, prior to that neo-Schubertian postlude of ‘Einklang’.  

I struggle to find Schumann’s Lenau Husarenlieder among his more compelling work, but they received stylish, commanding performances, with a fine degree, where required, of Schwung. Rhythms were well-pointed, and Gerhaher, rightly, I think, permitted a word-driven approach. A selection of six songs from Othmar Schoeck’s Elegie, four to texts by Lenau, Gerhaher imparted a strong sense, even in the others’ absence, of its character as a whole, yet equally individual character to individual songs. Musical process was clear, courtesy above all of the piano, in ‘Das Mondlicht’. The performance as a whole was subtly surprising: no shocks, yet deeply satisfying provided one offered musical attention.

The final Schumann set showed the composer, at least some of the time, the recapturing the infinitely touching spirit of his youth. Gerhaher and Huber offered plenty of variety in the opening, strophic blacksmith’s song, but it was the ensuing ‘Meine Rose’ that played on the heartstrings. Was that perhaps a sense of Schumann influenced by Wagner, or simply memories of Gerhaher’s Wolfram? At any rate, it brought tears to my eyes. So too did the sense of youthful anticipation in ‘Die Sennin’, whilst ‘Einsamkeit’ and ‘Der schwere Abend’ both turned from disquieting ambiguity to ultimate sadness. The final ardour of the strange ‘Requiem’, offered us flame that flickered both in defiance and reconciliation, perhaps like the Lied tradition’s persistence unto Holliger (and beyond?) ‘Zweifeldner Wunsch’ from Schoeck’s Elegie made for a fitting encore, concluding and continuing a line of subtle questioning.

Prohaska/Gerhaher/Bushakevitz - Wolf, Mörike-Lieder, 30 June 2022

 

Wigmore Hall

Verborgenheit; Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchen; Das verlassene Mägdlein; Lied eines Verliebten; Bei einer Trauung; Ein Stündlein wohl vor Tag; Zitronenfalter im April; In der Frühe; Er ist’s; An den Schlaf; Im Frühling; Auf einer Wanderung; Um Mitternacht; Peregrina I; An eine Aölsharfe; Peregrina II; Begegnung; Denk’ es, o Seele!; Auf ein altes Bild; Auf eine Christblume I; Schlafendes Jesuskind; Auf eine Christblume II; Karwoche; Seufzer; Wo find ich Trost?; An die Geliebte; Gesang Weylas; Der Tambour; Die Geister am Mummelsee; Der Jäger; Nixe Binsefuss; Der Feuerreiter; Lied vom Winde. 

Anna Prohaska (soprano)
Christian Gerhaher (baritone)
Ammiel Bushakevitz (piano)

A decidedly superior Liederabend, in terms of verse, musical setting, and performance. Hugo Wolf remains a connoisseur’s composer: slightly perplexing, perhaps, but then there is no playing to the gallery, no folkish dalliance, nothing that might strain toward the evidently popular. This is song born above all in verse and perhaps, especially for a non-German audience, that will never vie with the more obvious, which is not to say lesser, charms of Schubert or even Schumann. Be that as it may, it is difficult not to imagine Wolf—and Eduard Mörike—gaining a few converts among audience members who may initially have been attracted by the starry pairing of Anna Prohaska and Christian Gerhaher. Many, the present writer included, will have been equally impressed by the performances of the sensitive, comprehending pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz. 

There is all manner of ways to programme such a selection, most with something to recommend them. This was intelligently ordered to provide coherence and contrast without didacticism. Gerhaher’s opening Verborgenheit came recognisably from the Wolfram we know and love, albeit definitely song rather than opera, even in the more dramatic second stanza. Wolf’s Lisztian harmonies were relished by Bushakevitz, again setting up expectations and prospects for subsequent development. A breathless (in mood, not technique!) Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchens introduced Prohaska in impetuous contrast, her subsequent Das verlassene Mägdlein offering piano (and pianist) the opportunity for something more Wagnerian, whilst the Lied eines Verliebten that followed gave Gerhaher a counterpart to that Liebesleid, in neo-Schubertian vein. Moving from a love-song to a wedding, Prohaska was able to ‘tell it as it is’ in a sardonic Bei einer Trauung: ‘Denn leider freilich, freilich, keine Lieb’ ist nicht dabei’. Whether there were a note of bitterness here remained fruitfully ambiguous.

Ambiguities arising from the text, be that verbal, musical, or both were frequent, whether in the complex, ambiguous peace with which Gerhaher and Bushakevitz left us at the close of Um Mitternacht, the day now ended, the springs murmuring on. We heard—and felt—eery darkness, progressing to relative light (Gerhaher, In der Frühe), which led in turn to a spring-like Er ist’s (Prohaska), full of life, even hope. Though commendably detailed, as Wolf performances must surely be, there was no missing the wood for the trees; this was a pictorialism of the spirit rather than mere tone-painting. Wolf—and his interpreters—could be ardent too: take Gerhaher’s ecstatic climax in Peregrina I, the invitation to ‘consume us both in fire’ and to partake of the ‘chalice of sin’ followed by a splendid pianistic afterglow. Haunted, rich in potential meaning, Gerhaher’s Auf ein altes Bild, which opened the second half, was nicely open to interpretation, as if ‘reading’ that old painting itself. 

Shaping of individual songs, whether short or ballad-like (e.g. Prohaska’s Der Tambour and Die Geister am Mummelsee) was a particular strength; likewise their integration into a greater recital whole. Phrasing, such as that of Prohaska and Bushakevitz, in a beautiful Zitronenfalter im April, told without exaggeration. Variety within unity was certainly present between, but in many respects also within, songs. Bushakevitz knew where to lean into dissonances, for instance in the extraordinary, brief Seufzer (‘Sighs’). Harp-music, verbally explicit in An eine Äolsharfe, and implicit in Gesang Weylas, offered another set of strings to the pianist’s bow. A final trio that brought other-worldliness (a post-Mendelssohn Nixe Binsefuss, Prohaska), urgent vehemence and much else (Gerhaher), and windswept virtuosity (Lied vom Winde, Prohaska) was shaped at least as much by Bushakevitz as his partners: truly collaborative music-making.

‘A New Divan’: WEDO/Barenboim and friends – Schumann, Wolf, Mendelssohn, Palomar, and Brahms, 20 November 2019

Pierre Boulez Saal

Schumann: Myrthen, op.25: ‘Talismane’, ‘Lied der Suleika’

Wolf: Erschaffung und Beleben, Phänomen
Mendelssohn: Suleika, op.34 no.4
Wolf: Hochgeglückt in deiner Liebe
Guillem Palomar: Im Ocean der Sterne (world premiere)
Brahms: String Sextet in B-flat major, op.18

Dorothea Röschmann (soprano)

Waltraud Meier (mezzo-soprano)

Michael Volle (baritone)

Members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (piano)

Ben Goldscheider (horn)

Michael Barenboim, Mohamed Biber (violins)
Miriam Manasherov, Sindy Mohamed (violas)
Astrig Siranossian, Assif Binness (cellos)

Two hundred years since Goethe published his West-Eastern Divan and twenty years since Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said, among others, founded the orchestra that bears its name, we heard in this concert a celebration that, rightly, looked forward as well as back, the culmination of three days of events at the Barenboim-Said Akademie and Pierre Boulez Saal. It did not disappoint; indeed, it inspired hopes for the future of these projects, an anthological ‘New Divan’ from twenty-four poets included, that they should be anything but a creative culmination. To quote from Homero Aridjis’s poem for that collection, itself quoted in Mena Mark Hanna’s valuable welcome note in the programme booklet: ‘And life is re-created every day.’  

First, rightly, we looked to the past and present: to Goethe and his scandalously uncredited (by him, that is) co-author, Marianne von Willemer; also to Barenboim, a prince among Lieder-pianists, with three regular musical collaborators: Waltraud Meier, Michael Volle, and Dorothea Röschmann. Meier and Barenboim opened with two Schumann songs, one a setting of Goethe, the other of Willemer, both part of the Myrthen collection written as a wedding gift for Clara Wieck. Meier was declamatory yet variegated in ‘Talismane’, the ‘Lied der Suleika’ a confiding complement, just as communicative. Barenboim’s structural understanding proved just as enlightening as in any work for solo piano, likewise in all songs to come. Volle’s pair of songs were declamatory in different ways, his way with words—their sound, their meaning, their possibilities—a veritable master-class. The metaphysical intimacy of Wolf’s Phänomen was just the foil for the celebratory Erschaffen und Beleben. A different compositional as well as performative voice announced itself in Mendelssohn’s Suleika from Röschmann (Willemer again, of course). Line and sentiment were beautifully judged, neither performer remotely condescending to Mendelssohn, who rightly emerged as a full-blooded Romantic. A supremely vivid Wolf Hochbeglückt in deiner Liebe provided, in the best senses, a breathless conclusion to this section, Barenboim’s Lisztian exploits a reminder that his days as pianist may just be beginning.

We moved then to the evening’s premiere, Guillem Palomar’s Divan-setting, Im Ocean der Sterne. This was the first time I had heard music by Palomar, who studies at the Akademie with Jörg Widmann; I am sure it will not be the last. This was not only a strikingly accomplished song-cum-scena—why choose?—but an involving, affecting, and, much in the spirit of the evening as a whole, enquiring one too. Solo voice first—and in Volle, what a voice!—for the opening stanza: ‘Wo hast du das genommen? Wie konnt’ es zu dir kommen? Wie aus dem Lebensplunder erwarbst du diesen Zuner? Der Funken letzte Gluten von frischen zu ermuten?’ If one wanted a nutshell example of the difference between Goethe’s humanism and that of Schiller, familiar to musicians from, yes, that ode, one could do worse than start here. The music works up to the first line: first ‘wo, wo…’, and so on, and then up to the whole stanza, working with letter sounds as well as words, neither obscurely nor even enigmatically, but with a meaningful sense of joy in exploration. On ‘ermuten’ the instruments enter: first cello and horn, then piano. Performances from Ben Goldscheider, Astrig Siranossian, and Barenboim—mostly playing as a chamber musician, but just occasionally signalling an entry as primus inter pares—were not only excellent and tonally alluring, but spoke of understanding and the fondest of advocacy. Palomar’s setting showed as keen an ear for harmony as melody and word-setting, a surprising, post-Schoenbergian sense of tonality suspended rather than necessarily vanquished painting, even floating in an ocean of stars: captivating and enveloping in its instrumental as well as verbal drama. This was music, aptly enough, that seemed both to speak from a German tradition, not necessarily reducible to that, yet to look outward from that. Voice, piano, horn, and cello might not be the most usual of combinations, yet it sounded—however great the illusion—as the most ‘natural’ thing in the world. The closing horizon of illusory seas (‘Der Streif erlogner Meere’) edged us forward, so it seemed, even if we did not know to what. As Nietzsche put it: ‘We philosophers and “free spirits” feel, when we hear the news that “the old god is dead,” as if a new dawn shone upon us; … At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an “open sea”.’

Following the interval, we were offered the opportunity to sail once again in that sea, with a repeat performance: a lovely idea, which certainly furthered our acquaintance. Soloists all then took their seats in the audience, evincing the collegiality at the heart of this enterprise, for the final work on the programme. Something old, something new: what could fit that bill better than Brahms, in this case his B-flat major String Sextet, op.18? Six members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra demonstrated why chamber music should stand at the heart of any larger ensemble’s life and work. The Sextet’s movements proved varied yet coherent as a whole, the first flowing in Schubertian fashion, themes connected and characterised, structure ably yet undemonstratively delineated. The Hauptstimme, if one may call it that with hindsight, was especially noteworthy for its threading through different instrumental voices, Schoenberg meeting Schubert—which, after all, is not a bad approximation at all for Brahms. The recapitulation was a case in point: very much a second development, yet with no need to prove itself as such.

In the second movement, we heard a richer tone, something more defiant, fiercely compelling. Here were six Romantic voices coming together in the service of a greater whole, ethical implications abundantly clear for those who cared to consider them. Arresting sharing of lines alla Webern both harked back to the first movement and ventured forth to the unknown—in whichever way one cared to conceive of that. A good humoured scherzo wore neither its simplicity nor its complexity too light or heavy, even in the trio, which emerged as an heir to the simultaneous dances of Don Giovanni. For the grace of the finale, ‘Poco allegretto e grazioso’ after all, seemed to nod as much to Mozart as to Schubert, yet with an equally unmistakeable sense that those days were past. There were sterner, more passionate moments too, of course, all unfolding as it ‘should’ in a musical cosmos that encapsulated and unified the many strands not only of the evening’s concert but of the Divan project as a whole. Long may its voyage continue.

Katharina Kammerloher and friends - Wolf, Schoenberg, Brahms, Mahler, Wolf, Reutter, and Falla, 2 October 2019

Apollo Saal, Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Wolf: Auf einer Wanderung; Verschwiegene Liebe; Begegnung; Nimmersatte Liebe; Lied vom Winde

Schoenberg: Brettl-Lieder: ‘Galathea’, ‘Mahnung’, ‘Arie aus dem “Spiegel von Arkadien”’

Brahms: Feinsliebchen, du sollst mir nicht barfuß gehn, WoO 33 no.12; Da unten im Tale, WoO 33 no.6; Vergebliches Ständchen, op.84 no.4

Mahler: Des knaben Wunderhorn: ‘Trost im Unglück’; ‘Verlorne Müh’’; ‘Aus! Aus!’

Brahms: Zigeunerlieder, op.103: ‘Brauner Bursche’, ‘Röslein dreie’

Wolf: In dem Schatten meiner Locken

Brahms: Liebesglut, op.47 no.2

Wolf: Die Zigeunerin

Hermann Reutter: Tanz

Falla, arr. Christian Dominik Dellacher: Siete canciones populares españolas (first performance)

Katharina Kammerloher (mezzo-soprano)

Roman Trekel (baritone)

Klaus Sallmann, (piano)

Ensemble Monbijou: Dana Sturm (piano), Tobias Sturm (violin), Boris Bardenhagen (viola), Hannah Eichberg (cello), Kaspar Loyal (double bass).

With this recital, mezzo-soprano Katharina Kammerloher, joined by colleagues Roman Trekel, Klaus Sallmann, and musicians drawn from the Staatskapelle Berlin under the name of Ensemble Monbijou, celebrated her twenty-five years as a member of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s ensemble. From the past couple of years or so, I have heard her as the Ariadne Composer, Marcellina, and Eva (Meistersinger), and in a trio of roles from Schumann’s Szenen aus Goethes Faust at the Linden opera’s reopening, a good number of performances before that too. This, however, was the first time I had heard her in recital. This evening in the Staatsoper’s Apollo Saal proved most enjoyable, heightening the sense of a likeable, intelligent, and versatile artist.

The opening set of Wolf songs did not necessarily offer the easiest way to start, yet struck just the right tone. Attention to detail in Auf einer Wanderung was noteworthy: the floating first syllable of ‘Nachitigallenchor’ indicative of a world of song to come. Pianist, Klaus Sallmann’s piano introduction proved skittish and generative, for both parts. A sense of change, of transformation following the song’s Wagnerian interlude was palpable, Richard Strauss and his world no longer distant; ‘Ach hier, wie liegt die Welt so licht!’ A rapt Eichendorff Verschwiegene Liebe, and vividly communicative performances of the two following songs, prepared the way for a dramatic, unmistakeably post-Wagnerian reading of the Mörike Lied vom Winde, Sallmann’s nimble, directed fingerwork rendering him at least an equal partner. Here and elsewhere, Kammerloher’s collegiality shone through: this was clearly as much an occasion to celebrate the company as a whole as her contribution over the past quarter of a century.

Why Schoenberg’s Brettl-Lieder are not performed all the time, I simply cannot understand, although I suppose I would say that. It would doubtless be an exaggeration to say they are as indicative of the composer’s subsequent path as his Gurrelieder, but an excellent performance, albeit here of only three, can persuade one otherwise – as this did. One thinks, perhaps inevitably, of Berlin, but a sense of the composer’s travelling between Vienna and Berlin is, or should be apparent, and was in this case. (The songs were not, as has sometimes been claimed, written for Ernst von Wolzogen’s Buntes Theater, where Schoenberg served as Kapellmeister; Schoenberg had written them in Vienna, before leaving for Berlin.) Whatever Schoenberg may have had to say about style and idea, style is crucial here, and Kammerloher – Sallmann too – captured that Schoenbergian cabaret style, leading to Pierrot and beyond. Driven by words in a different way from Wolf, yet without loss to the melodic line, these witty performances were equally driven or, perhaps better, founded upon a rhythmic lilt it is difficult not to consider Viennese.

Brahms and Mahler concluded the first half, the former in folksong mode, the latter not a million miles therefrom, albeit with a distancing that comes necessarily with the Mahlerian territory. Perhaps there might have been a little more sense of alienation in those Wunderhorn songs, although, by the same token, it might in context have sounded overdone. Joined now by pianist Dana Sturm and baritone Roman Trekel, Kammerloher and her partners again worked with the lilt of dance rhythms, to bring out verbal as well as musical meaning, the lightly worn sadness of Brahms’s Da Unten im Tale a particular highlight for me. I was intrigued, moreover, by how Mahler sounded with reference not only to Brahms but to Schoenberg: interesting programming, which paid off handsomely.

Brahms reappeared after the interval, this time accompanied by Wolf (and Sallmann). A lively Brauner Bursche offered perhaps more refulgent vocal tone than we had heard hitherto, yet not at the cost of precision and verbal communication. Brahms’s Liebesglut offered a welcome instance of the composer in darker mode: turbulent and determined in both parts, in work and performance. Such richness here in a single song, wonderfully revealed! Wolf’s Die Zigeunerin offered an intriguing pendant: much more than a more pendant, of course, but again indicative of intelligent, meaningful programming, as was the inclusion thereafter of Hermann Reutter’s post-war Lorca setting, Tanz. One rarely hears Reutter’s music, doubtless partly on political grounds. This song suggested, however, that we should. Motoric, after Hindemith, it proved quite thrilling, both as song and scena, Kammerloher not afraid to make a rawer sound, yet within the bounds of song.  

An accomplished new arrangement, by Christian Dominik Dellacher, for voice, piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, of Manuel de Falla’s Siete canciones populares españolas, received its first performance as the final item on the programme: both well prepared and welcome in its contrast. Dellacher’s work was not overdone, yet helped lift or translate the songs into a new setting, the instrumental ensemble bringing an atmospheric sense, appropriate in context, of somewhere between the coffee house and the cabaret. In the most overtly ‘Spanish’ of the songs, such as ‘Nana’ and the closing ‘Polo’, the latter imbued with nervous energy by all concerned, Kammerloher seemed both possessed by and to possess the local idioms. The intervening ‘Canción’ proved, aptly enough, more conventionally songful, harking back to much of what we had heard before. It was a lovely evening, then, and a fitting tribute to Katharina Kammerloher as first among equals.

Röschmann/Martineau - Schumann, Wolf, and Brahms, 10 September 2018

Wigmore Hall

Schumann: Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart, op.135

Wolf: Mörike-Lieder: ‘An eine Äolsharfe’, ‘Das verlassene Mägdlein’, ‘Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchens’, ‘Begegnung’, ‘Denk es, o Seele!’, ‘Auf ein altes Bild’, ‘Verborgenheit’

Brahms: Alte Liebe, op.72 no.1, Auf dem Kirchhofe, op.105 no.4, Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht, op.96 no.1, Unbewegte laue Luft, op.57 no.8, Liebestreu, op.3 no.1, Meine Liebe ist grün, op.63 no.5, Wir wandelten, op.96 no.2, Nachtigall, op.97 no.1, Von ewiger Liebe, op.43 no.1

Dorothea Röschmann (soprano)

Malcolm Martineau (piano)

One should not judge a performance by its audience, but spying Mitsuko Uchida in the audience is unlikely ever to prove a negative sign. It certainly did not here, in a wonderfully involving recital of songs by Schumannn, Wolf, and Brahms from Dorothea Röschmann and Malcolm Martineau. The patent sincerity of Röschmann’s singing – not to imply anything other than sincerity about Martineau’s! – was evident from the very first of the late Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart, ‘Abschied von Frankreich’. Its deceptive simplicity was not exactly mirrored but perhaps paralleled in the figures almost, yet never quite, remembered from the piano music in Martineau’s part. These are not quite fragments, late though they may be; nor are they anything like so disturbing as the Gesänge der Frühe, op.133, for piano solo, which I find almost impossible to listen to. There is certainly something suggestive of the fragment too them, though, not least as a reaction to a bare-bones simplicity (sometimes) that itself proves suggestive of a (mis)remembered Bach as chorale writer. Certainly the tension evoked between ritual and expression in ‘Nach der Geburt ihres Sohnes’ brought Schumann’s Leipzig predecessor to mind, as did the rock-solid, continiuo-like piano part to the closing ‘Gebet’. If that were the church as rock of St Peter, Röschmann suggested a more emotional disciple: imploring, trustful, and in the last place visibly, audibly moved, just as she had been in the preceding ‘Abschied von der Welt’. Wagner, the only one of these three to have been born in Leipzig, came to mind not only in the vocal line, but also in the arioso-like piano writing – at least in this performance – of ‘An die Königin Elisabeth’, the colour of Röschmann’s lower range both lacerating and comforting; ‘Doch des Schicksals Walten zerriesst das Segel oft, dem wir vertraut.’

An expansive, almost Straussian vocal account of ‘An eine Äolsharfe’ opened the selection from Wolf’s Mörike-Lieder. Repetitions of the words ‘wie süss’ were operatic in the best sense, at least so far as Lieder-singing is concerned: alert to a drama that needed no stage. Ghosts of Schubert and Wagner – composers far too little considered together – haunted ‘Das verlassene Mägdlein’; indeed, Schoenberg, in one of his many synthetic not-quite-reconciliations came to mind too. Intervals proved properly generative, Webern within an aural stone’s throw. Relief and instability characterised ‘Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchens’. Each song was unquestionably considered on its own terms, yet formed part of a programme too: following on, contrasting, questioning. And so, when the opening of ‘Denk es, o Seele!’ seemed reminiscent of ‘Das verlassene Mägdlein’, it was equally important for it to proceed as it did, very much in its own way, albeit mediated by the experience so far. ‘Verborgenheit’ offered a dark, almost operatic climax to the set that yet offered something of necessary or at least anticipated reconciliation: again not entirely unlike Schoenberg.

The second half was given to Brahms. Alte Liebe’s simplicity was apparent – until one listened to the piano harmony: never exaggerated, yet ever so telling. A noticeably later (1888 to 1876) Auf dem Kirchhofe suggested that special vehemence one often hears in the late piano pieces, its Bach allusion poignant on many levels; we were reminded once again just how much the entire German musical tradition owes to the Lutheran chorale. Röschmann’s evocation of life surging through the veins as the moment of transformation in Unbewegte laue Luft suggested, not inappropriately, the ‘namenlose Freude’ of Fidelio, whilst the early Liebestreu (1853) sounded intriguingly close to a recollection of Senta’s Ballad that yet ended in soft-spoken (sung) tragedy. Meine Liebe ist grün and Wir wandelten both did – and expanded upon – what their titles and poems suggested, both seemingly preparing for the moments of frozen time experienced in Nachtigall. A final Von ewiger Liebe seemed to want to return to the earlier world of Schumann, yet could not, exploring instead its own, beautifully judged melancholic passion: echt-Brahms. And yet, was that just a hint of proto-Mahlerian irony? Or was that just me? We were left to wonder – and indeed to desire more, which we received in two finely contrasted encores: Schumann’s Die Lotosblume, in which a similar tension between the ironic (Heine) and the sincere (Schumann) was to be heard, and reconciliatory Liszt, in the guise of Es muss ein Wunderbares sein.

Damrau/Kaufmann/Deutsch - Wolf, 16 February 2018

Barbican Hall



Images: Mark Allan/Barbican



Italienisches Liederbuch

Diana Damrau (soprano)

Jonas Kaufmann (tenor)

Helmut Deutsch (piano)

Nationality is a complicated thing at the best of times. (At the worst of times: well, none of us needs reminding about that.) What, if anything, might it mean for Hugo Wolf’s Italian Songbook? Almost whatever you want it to mean, or not to mean. Wolf, one might say, was an Austrian composer, which is or at least was certainly to say also a German composer; yet he was born in Windischgrätz, now Slovenj Gradec. Both names for what was long a Styrian town refer to the Slovene or Wendish Graz, to distinguish it from the larger Graz. And so on, and so forth. Mitteleuropaïsch is more than a collection of disparate identities; it is an identity in itself. It certainly was in the Austrian Empire in which Wolf was born, and it certainly was in the Dual Monarchy in which he grew up. Moreover, northern Italy had long been part, to varying extents, and depending on who was, of that identity too. So too, however, had a romanticised German idea of ‘Italy’, of the Mediterranean, of the South. Look to Goethe and Liszt, for instance – or to Paul Heyse’s selection and translations of songs, as set by Wolf (not greatly, or indeed at all, to Heyse’s pleasure).

 

What one can say is that this idealised ‘Italy’, Tuscan rispetti and Venetian vilote could only have come from without the Italian lands. If ‘German’ constitutes at least as multifarious a multitude of sins as ‘Italian’, these songs remain very much a German evocation of lightness, of sunlight, of serenades, of a ‘love’ that is rarely, if ever that of German Romanticism, although it may well be viewed through that prism. All three performers at this Barbican recital understood that, I think: both intuitively and intellectually. At any rate, the tricky balance between Italian ‘light’, in more than one sense, and German ‘prism’ seemed almost effortlessly communicated – however much art had been required to convey such an impression.

 

The songbook is not a song-cycle, so to speak of ‘reordering’ is perhaps slightly misleading. At any rate, the ordering selected made good sense, grouping the book’s forty-six little songs into four groups, which, if not exactly narratives of their own, made sense as scenes or, if you will, scenas. One made connections as and when one wished; nothing was forced, much as in the music and the performances themselves. Diana Damrau and Jonas Kaufmann opted, boldly yet not too boldly, for a staginess alive to the humour, or at least to the potential for humour without sending anything up or otherwise trying to turn the songs into something they are not. Helmut Deutsch, in general the straight man, perhaps had the ultimate moment of humour, in his piano evocation of a hapless violinist (‘Wie lange schon war immer mien Verlangen), Damrau having ambiguously prepared the way, at least in retrospect, with a lightly wienerisch account. Deutsch provided an excellent sense of structure throughout: non-interventionist perhaps, but none the worse for that. Damrau and Kaufmann, after all, were intended to be the ‘stars’ here.

 

In general, but only in general, Damrau’s performances – roughly alternating, yet with a few exceptions – were knowing, whilst Kaufmann’s were lovelorn. Such is the order of things in this ‘German Italy’. Metaphysics, when they reared their head – more in Wolf than in Heyse – tended to be the tenor’s. Was he right to make relatively little of them? I am not sure that right or wrong makes much sense here. Perhaps it is all, or mostly, in inverted commas anyway. There were a few occasions when I found Kaufmann, especially during the first half, somewhat generalised, but such generality remains a very superior form: more baritonal still than I can recall having heard him, yet with an ardent, show-stopping tenor, even upper-case Tenor, that puts one in mind, just in time, of his Walther (‘Ihr seid die Allerschönste’) or his Bacchus (‘Nicht länger kann ich singen’). And Damrau was perfectly capable of responding, of singing about his singing, as for instance, in ‘Mein Liebster singt am Haus’, to which Kaufmann’s ‘Ein Ständchen Euch zu bringen’ came as the perfect response, and so on. Piano and voice together in the latter song conveyed to near perfection the shallow yet genuine sexual impetuosity of youth. (Or is that just what older people think?) The lightness of a wastrel’s self-pity in ‘O wüsstest du, wie viel ich deinetwegen,’ was likewise finely judged. So too was the cruelty of his beloved in ‘Du denkst mit einem Fädchen’.

 

Yet, as the two archetypes, stereotypes, call them what you will, drew closer towards the end of the first half, there was genuine affection too, or so one thought. The rocking piano in ‘Nun lass uns Frieden schliessen’ suggested, without unnecessary underlining, a peace perhaps all the more interesting, or at least characteristic, for its lack of interest in passing all understanding. For, as that half had climaxed with an acknowledged role for Wolf’s Lisztian Romantic inheritance, so the piano harmonies of the second half took up from that half-destination, taking us somewhere new, briefly darker (the austere Doppelgänger flirtation of ‘Wir haben beide lange Zeit geschweiegen’) and ultimately, once again, ‘lighter’, yet perhaps never truly ‘light’. Sweetness of death (‘Sterb’ ich, so hüllt in Blumen meine Glieder’) intervened, yet was it but an act, the commedia dell’arte perhaps, or, as the Marschallin would soon have it, ‘eine wienerische Maskerad[e]’. Increasingly, neither party wished truly to resist, whilst making great play of doing so: on stage as well as in music. An air of Straussian sophistication became more marked, without ever shading into mere cynicism. If the ‘girl’ were always going to win, that was as it ‘should’ be. There were enough qualifications, or potential alternative paths and readings, though, to make one wonder. And then to wonder – ‘lightly’ or no – why one was wondering at all.

 

 

Salzburg Festival (1) - Goerne/Trifonov: Berg, Schumann, Wolf, Shostakovich, and Brahms, 11 August 2017

Haus für Mozart

Berg – Four Songs, op.2

Schumann – Dichterliebe, op.48

Wolf – Three Michelangelo Songs

Shostakovich – Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti, op.145: ‘Dante’; ‘Death’; ‘Night’

Brahms – Four Serious Songs, op.121

Matthias Goerne (baritone)

Daniil Trifonov (piano)

This proved an outstanding recital, at least as much for Daniil Trifonov’s searching, protean pianism as for Matthias Goerne’s singing. Such a partnership, something beyond what one might ‘ordinarily’ expect during the concert season, is just what a festival such as Salzburg should be about. Likewise the programming: excellent in itself, yet also offering connections to broader themes on offer in the festival.

Goerne is singing Wozzeck here – on which, more later in the week – so Berg’s op.2 songs could, if one wished, be understood as anticipatory. More importantly, they made for a fine opening to this programme, the Hebbel setting ‘Schlafen, Schlafen, nichts als Schlafen’ drowsy, somnolent in the best way, emerging and yet never quite emerging from that state of half-awakedness. The languor one heard and felt had something of Debussy and early Schoenberg to it, yet could never quite be reduced to them or indeed to any other influence; this was Berg. Above all, it was founded in the piano part, above which words could then do their work. In its Parsfalian leisure-cum-torpor, one almost felt it to be ‘lit from behind’. ‘Schlafend trägt man mich’ continued in a recognisable line, yet initially lighter, soon more involved and questioning. Trifonov showed himself keenly aware of the importance of specific pitches and their repetition; later Berg beckoned already. ‘Nun ich der Riesen Stärksten überwand’ and ‘Warm die Lüfte’ continued the developmental idea, (re)uniting, intensifying earlier tendencies – and again the importance of specific pitch, here in the bells tolling and nightingale singing in the piano part.

Dichterliebe benefited from the alchemy of no clear break: Schumann’s song-cycle emerged from Berg’s songs and retrospectively announced that that was where they had always been heading. From the very outset, the opening ‘Im wunderschönen Monat Mai’, the limpidity of Trifonov’s piano playing was to die for, the delicacy of Goerne’s song also spot on. Magically slow, this was something to savour, without a hint of narcissism. ‘Aus meinen Tränen sprießen’ developed not only, it seemed from its predecessor, but from Berg’s songs too, not least in its nightingale song. Nothing here was formulaic, nothing taken as read: the voice took on the quality of something approaching an instrumental chamber music partner to the piano in ‘ich will meine Seele tauchen’, save of course for the words that both heightened and questioned that sense. The young Wotan seemed to appear on stage for ‘Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome’, his piano partner striking in dark, stark simplicity (however artful). The piano’s taunting cruelty in ‘Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen’ could match anything in Schubert: implacable, heartless, almost ‘objective’. It was, moreover, an unquestionably post-Schubertian agony here – distended, just a little, unerringly judged – that characterised the ensuing ‘Hör’ ich das Liedchen klingen’. ‘Am leuchten Sommermorgen’ brought that summer morning to refracted life courtesy of Trifonov, the piano part’s passing notes returning us to Berg, perhaps even going beyond him, whilst the piano chords in ‘Ich hab’ im Traum gewidmet’ spoke in almost Lisztian fashion, not unlike his Il penseroso. The strange tricks and consolations of dreams that followed (‘Allnächtlich im Traume’) seemed almost to prepare the way, following the weakened ebullience of ‘Aus alten Märchen’, for those two extraordinarily final postludes. They spoke at least as keenly as any words, even those of Heine.

Liszt, unsurprisingly, came more strongly and unquestionably to the fore in Wolf’s Drei Gedichte von Michelangelo. His harmonic language and its bitter self-destruction haunted ‘Wohl denk’ ich oft’. Quite rightly, words took the lead in ‘Alles endet, was entstehet’ and ‘Fühlt meine Seele’, seemingly inciting Wagnerian harmonies through what, in context, sounded most Schopenhauerian language. The two songs’ different character registered as strongly as what they held in common.

Trifonov’s quasi-verbal directness of utterance, especially in the bass register, struck me especially powerfully in the three Shostakovich Michelangelo songs that followed. It was as if the ability to ‘speak’ were being returned with interest. In ‘Dante’ in particular, Goerne brought to our attention Shostakovich the seer and the critic. That importance ascribed to particular pitches in Berg seemed to haunt the world of Shostakovich too, as if to remind us of what might have been. Once again, however incorrect this priority in the world of mere empiricism, the words of the following songs seemed to grow out of the piano’s wordless speech. ‘Night’ (Noč’) evinced an unfamiliar familiarity, musical and verbal. ‘Hush, my friend, why awaken me?’ Why indeed?

That illusory ‘timeliness’ – what could be more ‘timely’ – of Brahms in ‘archaic’ mode proved especially striking in the Vier ernste Gesänge. Trifonov’s understanding and communication of the piano parts was properly generative, even occasionally verging on a quasi-objective autonomy, an ontological frame within which the Biblical words might be intoned and considered. ‘Ich wandte mich und sahe an alle’ nevertheless spoke of subjectivity, of a late verbal Intermezzo that more than hinted at Webern. An earlier German Romanticism hung in the air, and yet clearly had passed: sad, perhaps, but Goerne’s Ecclesiastes Preacher would surely have understood. An almost Bachian embrace of death, albeit with a more Romantic sense of tragedy underlying it, characterised Goerne’s delivery in ‘O Tod, wie bitter bist du,’ flickering half-lights again very much from the world of the late piano pieces. ‘Wenn ich mit Menschen- und mit Engelszungen redete’ afforded a climax that was truly Pauline in its depth, complexity, and sheer difficulty. The best theologians will sometimes, as Brahms shows us, be agnostic, even atheist, albeit in a strenuous sense: more Nietzsche than, God help us, Richard Dawkins and his ilk. This was Brahms’s reckoning with how things were, just as much as that of the epistle writer. And so it was with the recital as a whole: a reckoning necessarily both final and not.

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.




 

Kožená/Uchida - Schumann, Wolf, Dvořák, and Schoenberg, 5 October 2015

Wigmore Hall

Schumann – Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart

Wolf – Selection from Mörike-Lieder: ‘Begegnung’, ‘Neue Liebe’, ‘Nimmersatte Liebe’, ‘Das verlassene Mägdlein’, ‘Elfenlied’, ‘Verborgenheit’, ‘Wo find ich Trost?’, Auf ein altes Bild’, ‘Lebe wohl’, ‘Nixe Binsefuß’, ‘Abschied’
Dvořák – Love Songs, op.83
Schoenberg – Brettl-Lieder

Magdalena Kožená (mezzo-soprano)

Dame Mitsuko Uchida (piano)

 

Magdalena Kožená seems to be an increasingly controversial artist. I did not hear the Proms Dream of Gerontius, conducted by her husband, Simon Rattle, but much comment focused upon her assumption of the role of the Angel. Some of what was said then seemed relevant to this recital, especially its first half. I was less troubled by the overt emotionalism of her singing; such matters are to a considerable degree a matter of taste. However, there was an unvariegated stridency to much, although not all, of this first half that I found it difficult to warm to, especially when contrasted with the unerring rightness of Mitsuko Uchida’s piano-playing.

 

Schumann’s late Geidchte der Königin Maria Stuart are unquestionably a case of ‘less is more’. Not, alas, so here, at least vocally, ‘Abschied von der Welt’ sounding more like a refugee from the opera house, although the declamatory approach to ‘Nach der Geburt ihres Sohnes’ had worked better. Uchida’s way with Schumann’s piano writing, however, was in quite a different class, as careful, as meaningful, as connected, as if she had been playing his solo music. Indeed, connections with earlier music – the C major Arabeske, for instance, or indeed, Bach’s 48 – announced themselves straight away. In the final ‘Gebet’, it was the piano harmony that told, encasing – not unlike Robin Holloway’s Reliquary for the same songs – the Queen’s plea to the Almighty, preparing the way for that dreadful, sombre close.

 

The selection from Wolf’s Mörike-Lieder opened in urgent contrast, at least so far as the piano was concerned, with ‘Begegnung’. To begin with, that was less in evident vocally, but Kožená captured its later cheekiness well. Planning of the sequence impressed too, with a weightier, more metaphysical note struck in the following ‘Neue Liebe,’ ‘Nimmersatte Liebe’ bringing together qualities from both of its predecessors. Moreover, the opening harmonies of the latter song seemed to prefigure some of those to be heard in Schoenberg’s Brettl-Lieder. Uchida’s piano chimes in ‘Elfenlied’ had one gasp for their melting tone as piano music at least as much as for their pictorial quality, whilst the combination of exquisite sadness and true strength in ‘Wo find ich Trost?’ seemed just right. Kožená by contrast, seemed too ‘public’, at times downright shrill. Musical continuity was once again very much the province of the piano part in the final ‘Abschied’, whose harmonies not for the first time brought Wagner as well as Schoenberg to mind.

 

Dvořák’s Love Songs and their simpler style seemed far better suited to Kožená. With respect to language, I can say little more than that it sounded right. Doubtless those with Czech would be able to say much more concerning what she did with the words, but my impression was a good deal, without it being too much. There was certainly a far more variegated vocal line in, for instance, ‘V tak mnohém srdci mrtvo jest’ (‘Death dwells in so many a heart’), its final line in particular. Uchida’s pellucid tone for the arpeggios and their variants in the closing ‘Ó, duše drahá, jedinká’ (‘O dear matchless soul’) would have justified attendance in itself.

 

Shorn of my favourite ‘Nachtwandler’, which requires additional piccolo, trumpet, and snare drum’, Schoenberg’s Brettl-Lieder nevertheless packed quite a punch. Again, Kožená seemed quite in her element, words, music, words-and-music full of incident, of fun, of ‘life’; Uchida put all of her Schoenbergian experience, lightly worn, to splendid effect. (I cannot for a moment concur with Misha Donat’s claim in his programme note that these songs ‘would be of no more than marginal interest were it not for the fact that out of them grew … Pierrot lunaire.’) The knowing heaviness in ‘Einfältiges Lied’ showed a true meeting of performers’ minds (and the composer’s too). ‘Mahnung’ tilted more towards outright cabaret, Kožená’s voice often coloured by tuning, and not afraid either to shun conventional ‘beauty’ or to speak rather than sing. That tendency was taken still further in the final Schikander aria, a highly ‘masculine’ rendition of certain stanzas and lines not the least of Kožená’s surprises. Janáček’s ‘Lavečka’ was the deceptively simple, profoundly moving encore.

 

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.