Tag: song recital

Impressive Kristallnacht commemoration in concert by Holocaust Centre and NZ School of Music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Kristallnacht Holocaust Commemoration Concert

Music by Herbert Zipper, Mieczyslaw Weinberg, Lori Laitman, Boris Pigovat, Viktor Ullman, Laurence Sherr, Richard Fuchs and Gideon Klein

St James Theatre, upstairs foyer

Wednesday 9 November, 7 pm

Two days short of the marking of the World War I armistice, on 11 November 1918, another event took place in the country that had accepted an armistice, but not defeat, and whose sense of humiliation found expression 15 years later with the take-over of Germany by Hitler and the Nazis.

Evidence of a policy of violence against the Jews arose within days of the Nazis taking power in 1933, and the Röhm Putsch or Night of the Long Knives in June-July 1934 against the SA which Hitler felt had gained too much autonomy, demonstrated his proclivity for murdering perceived rivals. It presaged the wholesale attack on Jews and their homes, synagogues and businesses in November 1938, given the curious title Kristallnacht.

This concert was organised by New Zealand’s Holocaust Centre with its headquarters in the Jewish Centre on Webb Street, Wellington. Its chief aim is to educate children and the public about the Holocaust in particular and genocide wherever it happens, in general. This was the fourth of the planned annual concerts devoted to this subject.

Professor Donald Maurice and Inbal Megiddo of the New Zealand School of Music organised and introduced the concert. It began with the audience being rehearsed to sing the chorus of a Dachaulied, composed for fellow prisoners to sing, by one Herbert Zipper. He had been picked up after the Nazis arrived in Vienna on 12 March 1938 (the Anschluss), and miraculously survived through Dachau, then Buchenwald, and was finally released only soon to fall into Japanese hands, surviving and eventually reaching the United States, where he died in 1997, aged 93.

The song was led by Cantoris under Thomas Nikora and there was some participation by the audience.

Mieczyslaw Weinberg was born in Warsaw in 1919 and he was persecuted by the Nazis but escaped to Minsk during the war; his life changed after he sent his first symphony to Shostakovich who took him under his wing. His early years in the Soviet Union looked promising but increasing anti-semitism through the later 1940s virtually cut off his chances of becoming a professional musician. Only Stalin’s death in 1953 probably saved his life. He remained in the Soviet Union where his works began to be performed by leading musicans such as  Gilels, Leonid Kogan, Kondrashin , Rostropovich and Kurt and Thomas Sanderling.

He died in 1996. By the 1980s some of his works were being performed in other countries – The Portrait in 1983 at the Janácek State Theatre in Brno and at the Bregenz Festival in 2010; by Opera North and at Nancy in 2011.

The Idiot in Mannheim in 2013.

My first awakening to him was through reviews in British and French opera magazines of The Passenger, in 2010, at the Bregenz Festival where it was videoed and released on DVD. The same production was presented in Warsaw by Polish National Opera in 2010, and its UK première, in 2011, was at the English National Opera, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. In 2013, its first German performance was at Karlsruhe; in 2014 in Houston and in 2015 in Chicago and Frankfurt.

In addition, much of his orchestral, piano and chamber music has been recorded.

So now, he is far from neglected. For a sample of recordings of his music, look at the Naxos catalogue: http://www.naxos.com/person/Mieczyslaw_Weinberg/18538.htm

Here Lucy Gijsbers, accompanied by Nikora played Weinberg’s Cello Sonata No 2 – the first movement. In spite of a certain meandering melodic obscurity, there was palpable emotional energy, momentum and a powerful sense of direction.

Three songs from Vedem, an oratorio by well-known American vocal composer, Lori Laitman, followed; it’s called a Holocaust opera. The songs were sung by Margaret Medlyn with Deborah Rawson on the clarinet and Jian Liu at the piano. Vedem means ‘We lead’ in Czech and it was the name of a magazine written by boys imprisoned at Terezin; the manuscripts were buried and retrieved after the war. Broadly tonal in character, the words and clarinet wove around one another, creating varied emotional experiences: unease, peacefulness, panic.

Boris Pigovat’s name is familiar in New Zealand through Donald Maurice’s friendship with the composer whose Holocaust Requiem for viola and orchestra got its second performance (world-wide) in 2008 in Wellington, from Orchestra Wellington and Maurice on the viola, cementing Maurice’s friendship with the composer. Atoll Records recorded it.

His Strings of Love was written specifically for Archi d’amore Zelanda, which consists of viola d’amore (Maurice), guitar (Jane Curry) and cello (Inbal Megiddo) – all principal tutors of their instruments at the New Zealand School of Music. The viola d’amore is a 14-string violin-sized instrument with seven playing strings and seven sympathetic resonating strings. Pigovat does himself a favour by writing in unpretentious, tonal language, in which the viola carried a big, aching melody, while guitar and cello move meditatively alongside, each instrument thus playing music that is idiomatic and natural to its character.

One of the concentration camp works that has had a notable, almost mainstream life is Viktor Ullman’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis oder Die Tod-Verweigerung (‘The Emperor of Atlantis or Death’s disobedience’); for example, there’s a production at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna in January. It was written in Teresienstadt; a biting caricature of Hitler, widely thought to have been composed in the full awareness that it would bring about Ullman’s murder. Four singers performed the Finale, a brief cynical deal struck between Death and the Emperor which allow the suffering people to be released through death. Truncated as it was, and involving the acerbic style characteristic of Weimar Germany, it was probably unrewarding for the singers (Shayna Tweed, Margaret Medlyn, Declan Cudd and Roger Wilson), as it was for the audience. In a complete, staged performance it presumably makes its impact.

Laurence Sherr’s Cello Sonata brought Megiddo and Liu back to play a piece based on Holocaust songs, at least two evidently from the Vilnius ghetto.

(Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, was grabbed by Poland in the fractious Russian-Lithuanian-Polish struggles after WW1 and so while Lithuania gained independence, with Kaunas the capital, Vilnius remained Polish till taken by the Soviet Union under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. In 1941 the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Lithuania again fell under German control, but with the final Soviet victory, Lithuania regained its integrity but it became a Soviet republic along with the other Baltic states, till 1991. Those traumas involved the almost complete massacre of Vilnius’s large Jewish population {around 1900 they comprised about 40% of the population}.)

The first movement echoed German music of the turn of the century, the second, overtly emotional, hinting at Bruch’s Kol Nidrei. A third movement was a set of variations: lyrical, energetic, ferocious, a martial episode, optimistic… Attractive music, splendidly performed.

Richard Fuchs lived from 1887 to 1947, was imprisoned in Dachau after Kristallnacht, but released, remarkably, after obtaining a visa to come to New Zealand: he travelled in 1939. Typically, he was interned by the New Zealand authorities as an enemy alien. His song, a setting of T S Eliot’s poem, A Song for Simeon, was composed in 1938 (even though Fuchs knew that Eliot was an anti-semite). It was the world premiere, typically revealing the disregard of Fuchs as a composer. The song had an air of high competence, of a composer of consequence, and baritone James Clayton and pianist Gabriela Grapska delivered a stunningly committed performance.

Finally, another Nazi victim, Gideon Klein’s String Trio, written just weeks before his transfer to Auschwitz and death. Klein was a Czech whose musical studies in Prague showed high talent, and Wikipedia shows an impressive number of compositions, several of which were written in Terezin where he was imprisoned from 1941. The trio was played by three NZSO principals: violinist Yuri Gezentsvey, violist Peter Barber and cellist David Chickering.  The trio had a strong folk music flavour, which seemed variously risky and untroubled, fateful, sombre, though the last movement offered little evidence of the time and place where it was composed. The performance was highly accomplished, appearing to reveal at certain moments, an unease, moments of hesitancy, but overall a determination to retain a degree of optimism.

This might have been an uneven concert in terms of real musical strength, though none was without merit. It achieved its purpose nevertheless, of marking one of the 20th century’s worst atrocities, through music produced by composers of rare talent and human resilience.

 

Mostly German folk songs: droll, dark, disassociative duets from Linden Loader and Roger Wilson

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Linden Loader (mezzo soprano), Roger Wilson (baritone) and Julie Coulson (piano)

Solos and duets by Brahms, Mahler, Farquhar and Elgar

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 2 November, 12:15 pm

The advertised programme was slightly modified in the absence of Lesley Graham. It was called A Concert of Conversations: some lovers, others indifferent, contemptuous or hostile. Perhaps the Brahms folk-song settings were much the same as originally planned but the inclusion of five of songs from Mahler’s cycle drawn from the huge folk song collection, Des Knaben Wunderhorn was a response to the change from three to two singers.

Brahms’s setting of folk songs, Deutsche Volkslieder, were collected as a work without Opus number, WoO 33 – there are 49 of them – published a couple of years before his death. Both his, taken from a collection published in 1840, and Mahler’s from Wunderhorn, published around 1810, undoubtedly included songs that were invented or embellished by the collectors. In both cases the songs are transformed from simple popular tunes into works of art.

Brahms: Deutsche Volkslieder
Roger Wilson opened with ‘Mein Mädel hat einen Rosenmund’ for him alone. His voice is in great shape and his gift for droll, laconic hints that sometimes distanced the singer from the song, sometimes involved him completely. It will probably embarrass him to confess that there were moments when I could hear Matthias Goerne.

The next five were duets, or at least taken by the two voices. Some are deliciously naughty, like the song in the Kölsch dialect, ‘We kumm ich dann de Poots eren? (Kölsch is a dialect found among many inhabitants of Köln {Cologne} and surrounding Rhenish areas). As the girl finally advises her lover to take his shoes off as he makes his way to her bedroom, Roger does just that. And the tone of the song and its performance tells us the rest.

Some of the songs reflected more conventional notions of fidelity and chastity like ‘Feinsliebchen, du sollst mir nicht barfuss geh’n’, which, though also involving bare feet, ends with lover taking a golden ring from his pocket.

‘Ach, englische Schäferin, erhöre mein’ Bitt’ had me wondering how Germans manage the different meanings of ‘englisch’ (‘angelic’, and the people who derived from the region on today’s German North Sea coast who were 8th century migrants in England). Anyway, endlessly melodic, it passed from one singer to the other in the most charming way.

The next song entitled ‘Schwesterlein’ brought a melodic interference from the lovely aria from Die Fledermaus – ‘Brüderlein, Schwesterlein’ (I have a shameful weakness for J Strauss II’s masterpiece). The Brahms setting, ‘Schwesterlein, Schwesterlein, wann gehn wir nach Haus?’, however, is a strange little song with a black ending, emotionally obscure.

‘Da unten im Tale’ is another enigmatic tale of the ending of love whose gentle swaying ¾ rhythm rather belies the sense that the singers captured as they might.

Finally, there was Linden Loader’s solo opportunity, with ‘In stille Nacht’, one of the more familiar songs in which her voice, true and unostentatious, was an attractive fit.

The set was a chance to hear songs that tend not to be much sung; it’s a conclusion one can draw these days, seeing that no performances have found their way on to YouTube. Yet the songs presented here and my recollections of occasionally hearing others in Brahms’s arrangements have generally delighted me at least as much as his original compositions do.

Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn
Mahler’s handling of an earlier collection of German folk poetry, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, alongside Brahms’s, demonstrate their kinship, not just in treasuring the folk song tradition, but in the humour and perceptiveness of the naïve element in the ‘non-artistic’ style common to both composers. Though all five songs are from Arnim and Brentano’s famous collection, two of songs, ‘Aus! Aus!’ (‘Heute marschieren wir’) and ‘Starke Einbildungskraft’, are in another of Mahler’s song collections, Lieder und Gesänge, though the poems themselves also came from Des Knaben Wunderhorn.

‘Aus! Aus!’ of course carries nasty associations with a latter-day version: ‘Raus! Raus!’, and indeed it’s an abrupt order that she get out; that he is going off with the army and will not be coming back. Wilson did the heartless bit very well. The other song from the same collection, ‘Starke Einbildungskraft’, features another arrogant Knabe: she has expected marriage but he simply announces that she belongs to him already, as in “what’s the problem?”.

The other three are from the collection that Mahler attributed directly to Des Knaben Wunderhorn. ‘Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt’ uses the fish as symbol of mankind which pays no attention to preaching. It’s quite strongly characterised, treating the matter with serious flippancy in disrespectful Ländler rhythm.  ‘Verlor’ne Müh’ (meaning something like ‘Love’s labours lost’, I guess) is another rough male response to feminine love and Wilson handles his friend somewhat contemptuously.

Finally, the folk poet and Mahler find a touch of gentleness in the yet worrisome ‘Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen’, a fine song, sung entirely by Loader, in which the young man is off to the wars amid dark presentiments expressed in a military march by the piano. And I must remark on the ever-faithful accompaniment by Julie Coulson that offered sensitive and vivid comment, colour, narrative embellishment for every song.

In English
The tone was not altogether changed by leaving German in favour of English as Wilson sang David Farquhar’s setting of Lord Randal, the much-composed border ballad, for here too the voice takes on a bleak, ironic note that reflected the enigmatic tale.

The last note was left to Linden Loader, in one of Elgar’s cycle, Sea Pictures, ‘Where corals lie’, in which we could leave the threatening darkness that seemed to dominate both German and Scot, for the pretty and sentimental settings. However, it was a lovely vehicle for the indelible ease of Loader’s voice.

 

 

Charming recital of French and English songs by Rhona Fraser and Richard Mapp at Lower Hutt

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Rhona Fraser (soprano) with Richard Mapp (piano)

Songs by Fauré, Debussy and Duparc; two by Quilter and two by Trad. arranged Britten

St Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 31 August, 12:15 pm

Rhona Fraser relaxed after the strenuous weeks of management and production of her opera at Days Bay over the weekend (Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi) by tackling a ¾ hour recital of varied and engaging songs in the generous and kind acoustic of St Mark’s church, Lower Hutt.

Though the opera had not, this time, involved her in a singing role, this recital gave us some reassurance that her voice is in excellent shape, and ready for involvement in another production perhaps next summer.

Nine were French and four in English. Most were somewhat familiar, and Rhona introduced each with a few words about the poem and/or the setting. And Richard Mapp’s lovely airy introduction to Fauré’s Clair de lune (Verlaine’s poem), where Rhona’s voice captured the calm moonlit atmosphere with pianissimo singing, presaged the discreet and supportive accompaniment that Richard would provide to all the songs.

Another Verlaine poem was En sourdine, a potted translation of which Rhona offered: reflecting nostalgically on a muted, twilit, half-perceived world.

Verlaine’s C’est l’exstase, in Debussy’s setting, though dealing with a world of similar, veiled imagery, seemed to create a more sturdy, strongly imaginative sound world, with the piano and voice reaching taxing heights with a bell-like quality.

And Leconte de Lisle’s Nell, as well as settings of less familiar poets: Après un rêve and Notre amour, mainly evoking misty, nostalgic, regret and longing, all found sympathy through Fauré’s music. Though Rhona’s voice might be more associated with the lyrical and dramatic areas of music, here she revealed a romantic sensibility, capturing a dim, fugitive world, often dealing with lost love.

Debussy’s Apparition, set to Mallarmé’s ethereal poem, also made demands at the top of the soprano’s range, though her ability to sing softly in that register was conspicuously sensitive; it captured the touching moment of the poet’s first kiss with such specific images as cobblestones, light in her hair, and ‘la fée au chapeau de clarté’. Throughout the song, the piano accompaniment is vividly specific.

The last of the French songs were a couple of Duparc’s small though exquisite repertoire. Baudelaire’s L’invitation au voyage is one of the best loved French melodies, particularly seductive, with more concrete imagery and a piano part that provides it with complementary emotion. However, Duparc’s Chanson triste, a poem by the little known Henri Cazalis, took us back to the more misty, evanescent poetry of Verlaine and Mallarmé,

The difference in tone between the French and English songs of comparable periods was striking. Quilter has a warm melodic vein, far from the ethereal character of the French symbolist settings. A more overtly conversational and unambiguous character that I suppose reflects the deep differences between the two languages and the poetry inspired by each.

Tennyson’s Now sleeps the crimson petal has been set by several composers; Shelley’s Love’s Philosophy  by Quilter and Delius. Voice and piano were beautifully integrated in both songs, flowing rhythms, regular meters, and conventional melodies, suggesting a more literal, perhaps concrete view of the emotional aspects of life.

Finally there were two arrangements by Britten of folk songs, The Ash Grove and Oh no John no; the latter one hears occasionally, but I don’t believe I’ve heard The Ash Grove since I was in Standard 5 (Year 7) when we had a teaching headmaster who led us in singing with his violin. I loved the song and still do. Rhona Fraser and Richard Mapp gave charming, idiomatic, affectionate performances of them.

So it was a happy recital. I was sorry not to see a bigger audience; the fine weather might have explained that, or it might have been used in the opposite sense. However, I hope soprano and pianist can be induced to play again at lunchtime concerts in Wellington or the Hutt Valley.

 

 

Maaike Christie-Beekman with Rachel Thomson in admirable song recital

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Wednesday Lunchtime Concerts

Maaike Christie-Beekman (mezzo-soprano) and Rachel Thomson (piano)

Debussy: Trois Chansons de Bilitis
Samuel Barber: Hermit Songs
Poulenc: Banalités

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 31 August 2016, 12.15pm

A recital entirely of song-cycles is perhaps a little unusual, but it made for a very satisfying concert.  Maaike Christie-Beekman introduced each in a lively and informative way, giving a summary of the words of each song.  Even though she was not using a microphone, most of what she said could be heard clearly.

The Debussy cycle used poems by Pierre Louÿs, which the latter claimed were translations of the Greek, but were in fact his own work, based on Greek styles and in some cases, sources.  The first, ‘La flûte de Pan’, was dreamy in character, with the enchanting flute written into both voice and piano parts in unmistakable French style.  It was a gorgeous song, sung by a gorgeous voice, with its very expressive, beautifully controlled range of dynamics.  ‘La Chevelure’ (head of hair), the second song, was livelier, with the French language pronounced with clarity.

The third, ‘Le tombeau des Naiades’ became quite excited, but ended in a quiet, contemplative mood.  The piano was always sympathetic and eloquent.

The performers turned next to the English language and Samuel Barber.  The poems were translations of Irish poems written from the 8th to the 13th centuries, and translated by W.H. Auden and others.  Most had religious themes, starting with a spiky ‘At Saint Patrick’s Purgatory’.  Here again, in English, Christie-Beekman’s words were for the most part very clear.  ‘Church Bell at Night’ was much more mellow, like the bell.  ‘St. Ita’s Vision’ followed.  I had never heard of this Irish saint, but apparently she lived a virginal life in the fifth century.  The song began in declamatory fashion, and then flowed into euphoria.

By contrast, ‘A Heavenly Banquet’ sounded like a very a jolly party. ‘The Crucifixion’ focused on the drama and pain, expressing grief.  ‘Sea-Snatch’ was fast and furious, like the action of a stormy sea, while the brief ‘Promiscuity’ was angular, questioning whether someone was sleeping alone.  ‘The Monk and his Cat’ contained delightful meows and other feline features, particularly in the lovely frisky accompaniment.  ‘The Praises of God’ was also short – and powerful.  Finally, ‘The Desire for Hermitage’ was solemn and flowing.  The sustained notes were beautiful.  All were characterised, and sung with appropriate feeling and clarity.

Banalités is Poulenc’s setting of poems by Guillaume Apollinaire (real name Wilhelm Albert Vladimir Apollinaris Kostrowitzky); this was the last in the tri-cycle.  Its opening number was ‘Chanson d’Orkenise’.  Not the Orkney Islands, but a village in France.  It was a fast, spirited song in a set all about love and heartbreak (but banal?).  The second , ‘Hôtel’, was more thoughtful, with a lazy mood.  The poem was about a young man who just wanted to stay in his room and smoke.  ‘Fagnes de Wallonie’ concerned a wander through the woods in Wallonie in Belgium – but sounded more like a quick trot.

‘Voyage à Paris’ was described by Christie-Beekman as ‘Carmenesque’.  It began with decisive chords from the piano, and the words confidently described ‘gay Paree’.  Finally, ‘Sanglots’ (sobs).  It was quieter and more introspective, but developed dramatically, having a sublime ending.

The singer conveyed lovely tone throughout a wide tessitura.  All the songs were sung in a thoroughly accomplished and comfortable manner.  Moreover, Christie-Beekman gave a lesson in fine presentation.

 

Renaissance of the song recital heralded with Poulenc and ‘Songbook’ at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Songbook: A breath of Poulenc

Songs and woodwind sonatas by Francis Poulenc

Barbara Graham (soprano), Rebecca Steel (flute), Deborah Rawson (clarinet, Bruce Greenfield (piano)

Adam Concert Room, New Zealand School of Music

Sunday 14 August 2016, 2pm

This time, pianist Catherine Norton, the promoter of Songbook, took a rest from the piano.  Seasoned accompanist extraordinaire Bruce Greenfield did the honours.

The concert was but an hour long, and concentrated on one composer instead of the many composers featured in April’s concert.  Despite the promoter’s title for the group, this concert featured woodwind music, beloved of a number of French composers, as well as song.  With top musicians performing, it was a pity the audience numbered not more than around 30.

A breath of fresh air Poulenc was (along with a number of his contemporaries), leaving behind the sometimes ponderous solemnity of Saint-Saëns and Franck.

Bruce Greenfield arranged the recital and its order, and included in the printed programme notes from Poulenc’s diary that gave some of his philosophy regarding his songs.  Applause was requested to be given only before the short break in the middle of the programme, and at the end; a great idea for allowing continuity of the music.

The songs were settings of poems by Louise de Vilmorin (1902-1969) and Louis Aragon (1897-1982), poets of Surrealism.  Several were very humorous.  Most of the compositions were written during World War II.  The recital began with ‘Violon’ from Fiançailles pour rire (Betrothals for fun?) by Vilmorin.  Through all her songs, Barbara Graham’s language was clear and beautifully pronounced.  Having words and translations printed for us made the songs so much more than ‘mere’ good singing.  The singing was in character with the words, e.g. ‘On the string of disquiet / to the chords on the hanged strings…’

This was followed by the allegro malinconico first movement of the composer’s Sonata for flute and piano.  I wondered what Poulenc would have thought of the silver flute, with its rather more brittle tone than that of the traditional wooden flute.  Poulenc’s writing for the piano was far from just being accompaniment; he gave much delicious music to the piano.

The next song from the same Vilmorin cycle was ‘Fleurs’.  This was no traditional sonnet in praise of flowers.  I loved the expression translated as ‘Flowers sprouting from the parentheses of  a step’.  I have a few of those.  The more sensitive, benign character of this song suited Barbara Graham’s voice better than did the first song.  The slower tempo allowed the words to be pronounced more fully.

Deborah Rawson now played the first movement, allegro tristamente, from the composer’s Sonata for clarinet and piano.  It was not easy to find anything sad in this allegro.  Some of the delightfully spiky accompaniment was in a minor key, but sadness was difficult to detect.

The third song from the cycle, entitled ‘La Dame d’André’, was mellifluous, with quirky touches typical of Poulenc.

The second movement of the familiar flute sonata followed, its description ‘cantilena’ very appropriate in this recital.  The pattern or structure of the work is classical, but the components, i.e. melodies, harmonies and rhythms were not at all.  The beauty of Poulenc’s writing here for flute is incomparable.

Another song from Vilmorin’s cycle was entitled ‘Mon cadavre est doux comme un gant (‘My corpse is as soft as a glove’).  Here again, Poulenc’s treatment of the words was wonderful.

The romanza movement from the clarinet sonata came up next.  There is no doubt about the skill of these musicians: they indeed allowed Poulenc to speak with his own breath.  This movement was like a song – I could almost imagine the words – yet Poulence traversed the range of the instrument, with taste and invention.

‘Paganini’ is a song from another of the same poet’s cycles: Metamorphoses.  With a title like that, it was obvious that this was another song about the violin.  However, the juxtaposition of the instrument with seahorse, mermaid and Mary Magdalen was surreal indeed – stream of consciousness stuff.  The setting matched the diversity of  poetic thoughts, with its various musical images.

The flute rejoined the piano in the final movement of the sonata.  The presto giocoso had a similar flighty, headlong character to the preceding song.

The last song from Fiançailles pour rire was titled ‘Il vole’, probably to be translated as ‘Thief’.  The song contained plays on the words from the verb voler, to fly, and voler, to thieve.  Some of this was lost in reading the English translation.  The sentiment of the last line ‘Je veux que mon voleur me vole’ reminded me of ‘Sweet thief’ in Menotti’s opera The Old Maid and the Thief.

The final movement of the clarinet sonata, allegro con fuoco, was indeed furious – a race to an exciting end.  This excitement was carried over into the final song.  Before it, we heard ‘C’ from Deux Poèmes by Louis Aragon (1897-1982).  The poem introduces images of war among its varied figures, beginning ‘J’ai traverse les ponts de Cé’.  The second poem, ‘Fêtes galantes’ was a fast and furious tongue-twister.  I could not read the English translation as fast as Barbara Graham could sing the French words!  The ironic text points to its having been written during the war, e.g. ‘You see [On voit] fops on bicycles/ You see pimps in petticoats/ You see brats with veils/ You see firemen burning their pompoms’.  It made a glorious end to the recital that illuminated the many-sided talent and innovation of Francis Poulenc.

I’ve long wanted, nay, needed lieder (or art song, if you prefer) in Wellington; the Songbook is the answer to that need, although I do not find this venue the most desirable; it is too resonant for loud solo singing or playing, in my view, and detracts from the beauty of the music.  I noticed that at long last the street-lamp-orange fluorescent lights have been replaced by normal-coloured ones.  Maybe this is not recent, but I haven’t noticed it before.  It’s certainly a vast improvement.

 

NZSO and Christiane Libor in wonderful Strauss songs and Mahler’s Fourth Symphony

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edo de Waart with Christiane Libor (soprano)

Strauss: Four Last Songs
Mahler: Symphony No 4 in G

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 6 August, 7:30 pm

It might have been possible to blame a rival entertainment or the wet and chilly weather for the rather loosely packed audience for a concert that I’d expected to have a ‘full house’ notice at the door. One might also wonder whether it’s a reflection on the slow decline of musical tastes, and that those of us who were brought up with a certain amount of great music in our ears as children are disappearing (and being replaced by, let’s say, generations with different tastes).

Has Wellington become blasé about the fact that we have one of the world’s great orchestras living here, conducted by an eminent conductor of the older generation, and the programme comprised a couple of what I’d have thought were among the most popular and best-loved classical works.

German soprano Christiane Libor’s reputation rests primarily on Wagner and Strauss and she is based largely in Europe with a few North American outings; none, by the look of her biography, in Britain or other English-speaking countries. While it would have been wonderful to have heard her in a substantial chunk from the Ring cycle for example, the Four Last Songs are a moving summation of the art of Richard Strauss.

Her gifts were evident within the first few bars of the first song, Spring, with a voice that was not just strong and opulent, but could also find the pathos and beauty in Strauss’s late music. The song’s themes however, are not uniformly elegiac, depicting life’s twilight years, capping a long, richly creative life. This first song is suffused with a calm happiness, the optimism of springtime. The second however, September, presages autumn, is a more elaborate song where Libor could demonstrate her vocal fluidity, ranging between glowing fortissimi as well as quiet.

The third and last of the three Hesse songs, Beim Schlafengehen, introduced by low stings, later featured a lovely solo from Vesa-Matti Leppänen’s violin, and then rose to an ecstatic climax. It sometimes seems to me the right place for the cycle to end (there were discussions about the most appropriate order of the four songs), for the spirit awoken by singer and orchestra seems a mixture of that ecstasy and a going out.

But the words of the last song, Im Abendrot, by Eichendorff, one of the most distinctive poems of the early 19th century Romantic poet, contemporary of Rückert and Heine, do make a more meaningful ending, Libor’s voice now in a warm vein of acceptance.

Though the huge size of Strauss’s orchestra makes possible occasional overwhelming effects, more often it’s the range of instruments used with finesse, that have evolved over centuries in western music, that allows an ever-changing chamber music quality to emerge, subtly reflecting the sense and emotion of the words, and supporting, almost never obscuring, the voice.

Mahler’s Fourth Symphony was, I think, the first live Mahler performance I heard, 20-ish, and I remember being at once captivated and baffled by its size and character. It employs a smaller, more discreet orchestra than the other symphonies: no trombones or tuba and only five horns, when some at the time, were using eight or nine (as in NZSO’s last Strauss plus Escher concert). Its character is perhaps defined by the poem used in the last movement, somewhat peasant-like, naïve; so it opens with sleigh-bells (I have an early recording by Bruno Walter where the sleigh-bells are deleted).

Its magic only deepens and expands with the passing years.

Which prompts me to reflect on the behaviour of some of those who ply my trade of music critic. This work attracted some nasty and cruel reviews at its first performances, and some were quoted in the programme notes; similarly it’s sad to read about the cruelly treated Bruckner, himself a somewhat naive figure, who was routinely attacked by the myopic Brahms-lover, Hanslick who seemed to regard music criticism as ablood sport.

It’s the fairy-tale qualities that endear this music to the listener, and De Waart, to help create that, encouraged woodwind players (in particular) to deliver keener, shriller tones, often by raising their instruments to a horizontal position, and making much use of the three flutes plus piccolo. And thematic fragments get passed around in a way that creates a sort of children’s game.

Another peasant-like feature appears in the second movement where Leppänen switches to a scordatura-tuned violin (typically tuning the G string down a tone or so) to capture that amateur fiddler sense, in music that moved between the Ländler dance (pre-curser to the waltz) and rough peasant tunes. The orchestra played along with it all in seeming delight.

The Ruhevoll (Adagio I guess) movement has always seemed to me is a kind of try-out for the Adagietto in the Fifth Symphony and I’ve wondered why it hasn’t achieved a similar life of its own. But it’s great length – round 20 minutes – would be against it. Its variety of mood is also greater than in the Adagietto, with its combination of splendour and delicacy and rough, peasantish passages.

The reappearance of Christiane Libor, walking in slowly during the opening bars of the fourth movement, felt like a home-coming – we needed to hear more of her. In some ways the last movement might seem something of an anti-climax after the splendours of the third. It’s a setting of one of the 700-odd folk poems collected by Arnim and Brentano and published as Des Knaben Wunderhorn between 1805 and 1808.

It was criticised from that time, not for additions through the nineteenth century, but for its lack of scholarship – the sources were not adhered to, some were subject to embellishment or addition, and some were simply inventions by the compilers themselves. But they are no less a rich treasury of folk poetry that helped inspire the many poets and composers of the Romantic era, from Heine and Eichendorff to Weber and Schumann.

The combination of the ebullient, colourful orchestral scoring with a voice beautifully equipped to blend their playfulness, naivete and spirituality. They rejoiced in the simple things of life, bringing about a subsiding, ‘glow of serenity and peace’ (to quote a quote the programme notes take from musicologist Hugh Macdonald).

The absence of a Beethovenish coda led initially to a somewhat subdued response from the audience, though it grew in passion as the minutes passed, as people understood what a wonderful performance they’d heard.

 

Beguiling concert of French chanson, torch songs, café and cabaret songs by Magdalena Darby and friends

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Lunchtime concerts at St Marks, Lower Hutt
Café Européen – Songs of Passion

Magdalena Darby (cabaret singer, chansonneuse) with Ian Logan (piano), Gary Stratton (accordion), Alistair Isdale (bass)

Torch songs, chansons, café music; French and derivative styles

St Marks church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 27 July, 12:15 pm

Magdalena Darby’s bio begins with her studies at the Conservatorium of Music in Utrecht, but shies away from dates, early education, or when she came to New Zealand; one assumes she was born in the Netherlands. Before coming to New Zealand she lived in Mexico and presumably Paris. Her bio refers to performing in Paris as well as London and elsewhere in Europe (can we still assume that ‘Europe’ includes Britain?).

Throughout, her career has been a combination of teaching and cabaret-style singing. Her publicity refers to ‘torch songs’, perhaps not very familiar to the musical generalist, but it describes songs of broken love affairs, of lost love (which tends, I suppose, to be a major element in music of all kinds). The expression to ‘carry a torch for’ someone relates to the word in this context.

Paris was the biggest element in her repertoire, even if there were songs from several other parts of the world. That tone was set as the instrumentalists played Michel Legrand’s theme song from the much-loved film Les Parapluies de Cherbourg featuring Catherine Deneuve (which you can find in the Wellington Public Library). The three instrumentalists were clearly very comfortable in music of this style and era (mostly the 50s to 70s) and lent sensitive support to the singer.

Nearly half of her songs were French, by French singers or sung in French: names that appear in my ‘other self’s’ collection of LPs and CDs, like Serge Gainsbourg, Sidney Bechet (the jazz, soprano saxophonist), and Jacques Brel, but also Piazzolla’s Rosa Rio which she sang in French.

What has always attracted me to the French chanson has been the intellectual, heterodox, often politically dissident, even anarchic quality of their subjects, in addition of course to the edgy, rebellious or pathetic character of the love-songs.

Darby’s voice, exploiting the microphone with finesse, didn’t express just the pain of lost love in Gainsbourg’s songs (Les amours perdues, Les yeux pour pleurer and Indifférente), but an awareness of a fractured, lonely world, with a warmth and seductiveness that seems unique to French singers. Though Indifférente was deceptively upbeat and Les yeux pour pleurer an unusual story of cruel loss and the sudden appearance of a new love.

So one enjoyed hearing echoes and tones of voices like Piaf, even Josephine Baker, Françoise Hardy and males like Yves Montant, Jean Sablon, Charles Trenet…

Bechet’s Petite fleur was of course written for himself and his soprano sax, but lyrics were put to it later, giving it a perfectly Gallic chanson character. Here and throughout, one was seduced by a voice and a control of that voice that captured the idiom of the languages and utterly belied her years.

Darby’s clarity of diction and ability to capture the style of other cultures became clear in Spanish songs such as Carlos Almaron’s Un historia de un amor and Nino Rota’s Theme from The Godfather (the love theme with words by Larry Kusik); she sang the latter in its English version, with some in Italian (if I wasn’t fooling myself).

Her singing of the Second World War song Can’t get out of this mood (words by Loesser, set by Jimmy McHugh) succeeded in demonstrating how deeply a European style of lyric and music affected American popular music: Nina Simone was one of the most famous interpreters of that song in the late 50s, and later, Darby sang her But remember me which displayed her warm, low register, that so perfectly leapt into a high head voice in dealing with the spread of the song’s melody.

There was a break for accordionist Stratton to take front stage with a Piazzolla song, Fiebre, where I suppose the idea was an approximation of the bandoneon; but nothing quite matches that unique Buenos Aires instrument.

The song by Cy Coleman, A moment of madness seemed to step aside from the Gallic spirit that ruled in most of the recital; a song in which the singer tries to persuade herself that she doesn’t care about the moment of madness that ended badly, expressed with its series of short, almost sobbing phrases; but the singer succeeded in planting it convincingly in Paris.

Then there was Jacques Brel, a really tough singer to impersonate with any success; happily she didn’t attempt things like La valse a mille temps, or Marieke, or Ne me quitte pas. But in English, If we only have love, (Quand on n’a que l’amour) was a classic Brel melody the spirit of which, even without that inimitable voice, Magdalena Darby caught with integrity and conviction.

And the three-quarter hour ended with a surprising step to the east, into Yiddish song, which she sang in English, with a short excursion into German (Yiddish is very close to German – derived from Middle High German). At her hands, and with the impeccably idiomatic backing of (especially) pianist Ian Logan, and Gary Stratton and Alastair Isdale, the words and music took root firmly at L’Olympia, Paris, to bring this most beguiling little concert to an end.

Two fine sopranos in rare, varied, Wigmore Hall-quality recital

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Songs by Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns, Brahms, Korngold, Schubert, Chausson, Delibes, Berlioz and Britten

Georgia Jamieson Emms and Megan Corby (sopranos), Catherine Norton (piano)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 29 June 2016, 12.15pm

Here was a recital that would have hacked it in the Wigmore Hall, London, or in any other suitably-sized venue, for that matter.  It was good to have a programme (mainly) of duets – so rarely heard these days.

The programme began with great panache, in ‘Herbstlied’ and ‘Maiglökchen und die Blümelein’ from Sechs Duette by Mendelssohn.  The voices were well-matched, and Catherine Norton, as always, was a reliable and sympathetic accompanist.  The pronunciation of German was throughout the concert uniformly very good.  The first song began the recital at a very high standard.  Meaningful facial expressions were employed by both singers, and some hand gestures – the latter a little excessively in Corby’s case.

Mendelssohn’s ‘Auf Flügeln des Gesanges’ (On Wings of Song) is a much-loved solo song; the poem is by Heinrich Heine.  Although it has received many arrangements, I do not remember hearing it as a duet before; it was delightful and charming.

The French love-affair with things Spanish in the latter part of the nineteenth century extended to Saint-Saëns writing a song in that language and idiom: ‘El Desdichado’ (Boléro).  Written originally for orchestral accompaniment, it was a sparkling song that I didn’t know.  There was plenty of scope for the voices, the Spanish character was communicated well, but the piano accompaniment especially was magical quicksilver.

A change of mood came with Brahms; ‘Wie Melodien zieht es mir” is a lovely song, but I would have liked more dynamic variety in this contemplative piece, which was a solo presented by Megan Corby.  Georgia Jamieson Emms followed with her solo, which was ‘Schneeglöckchen’ by Korngold.  This was a lovely rendition of an unfamiliar song.  Its style eminently suits this voice.  The singer gave it varied expression and dynamics most attractively.  I felt she was conveying the meaning of each word.

The greatest writer of lieder, Schubert, was represented by the duet ‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt’ a sombre, sad, dramatic song, quite difficult to perform.  The two voices go their separate ways much of the time.  Catherine Norton’s varying dynamics were superb.

Chausson’s  ‘ La Nuit’ and ‘La Réveil’ (Deux Duos) were much more harmonic in character than the Schubert.  The first was interesting and subtle; the singers’ vowels matched beautifully.  The second was enchanting and engaging; the French pronunciation was excellent.

Still in France, we had ‘Les trois oiseaux’ by Delibes and ‘Le Trébuchet’ from Fleurs des Landes by Berlioz.  The former was a mildly humorous song, in separate episodes for the two voices; depicting the dove, the eagle and the vulture, then the voices came together in thrilling conversation, before separate utterances again, but a unified ending.  The story was communicated brilliantly.

Berlioz’s song was even more amusing, about tentative lovers.  A sparkling accompaniment contributed hugely to a delicious duet performance.

Finally, it was almost strange to hear the English language, in another sparkler: ‘Underneath the Abject Willow’, by Benjamin Britten, a setting of words by poet W.H. Auden.

It would have been good to have had the names of the poets whose words inspired these songs printed in the programme, but it was very useful to have translations of the opening lines, and the composers’ dates.  Music scores were used throughout; in Megan Corby’s case, on an iPad.

With these two singers, there was never any question about intonation.  Both intonation and timing were spot on all the time.  To have such splendid accompaniment was a great bonus.

While not as many attended as at some recent St. Andrew’s lunchtime concerts, those who did were delighted with what they heard.

 

Wonderful Lieder recital ends Schubertiade at St Andrew’s, with powerful case for more

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Ein Liederabend
A score of Schubert songs

Barbara Paterson, Maaike Christie Beekman and Jared Holt and Bruce Greenfield (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 5 June 2016, 6:30 pm

I got to four of the five concerts in this splendid little Schubert Festival which I like to refer to as a Schubertiade. I know of no other such social/musical circle that formed spontaneously around a living composer; the sure sign that not only did plenty of people in the Vienna of the 1820s recognize Schubert’s enormous gifts, but they actually loved the guy.

The most famous contemporary version of the institution is in the small towns Hohenems and Schwarzenberg in the Vorarlberg province of Austria, close to Liechtenstein and Switzerland. The festival, growing bigger every year, moves between Hohemens and Schwarzenberg six times from late April to early November; there are about 90 concerts each year, and many are hard to get tickets for.

They feature song, piano recitals and all kinds of chamber music, and for many years the music has extended well beyond Schubert, and just occasionally reaches before 1800 and after 1900. Think of almost any prominent name and you’re almost certain to find him or her appearing at some stage each year.

Wellington’s version isn’t quite as busy. Five concerts involving about 22 musicians, with attendances at the concerts I attended between 40 and 70, at a guess; but the quality of the audience members was, naturally very high: quality, not quantity.

However, the series is a huge credit to the perseverance and judgement of Richard Greager and Marjan van Waardenberg.

All the earlier concerts were of solo piano or chamber music, but the Saturday and Sunday evenings were in part or wholly devoted to song. This one consisted of 19 songs, from three singers, covering the range of fachs from soprano through mezzo to baritone.

The opening songs were familiar and among the best loved; one with a melody that was used in a great string quartet, and ending with deep Angelegenheit with ‘An die Musik’.

The singers scattered their offerings throughout the programme. From high to low voice:

Barbara Paterson
Soprano Barbara Paterson began hers with one of the three popular songs that opened the recital: ‘Frühlingsglaube’ (Faith in Spring). Hers is a high, bright soprano which could not have matched the song’s spirit more successfully. She next sang three of the so-called ‘Mignon songs’, from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Schubert set the three Mignon poems several times; the group listed in Deutsch’s catalogue as No 877, published as Op 62 in 1826, included four songs, including the 5th and 6th settings of ‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht…’. There was more than one setting of the other two poems as well. There is also the famous ‘Kennst du das Land’, D 321

The first was ‘Heiss mich nicht reden’, which Paterson sang with a voice that alternated between timidity and boldness; though I’ve heard this sung by a mezzo with a different emotional result, Paterson’s high voice was convincing.

‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht…’ was also famously set, perhaps more famously, by Tchaikovsky and known in English as ‘None but the lonely heart’: the essence of longing – Sehnsucht, which I reflected on in my review of Saturday evening’s concert. Slender, pale, and with a tender though penetrating voice, she expressed the sentiment beautifully. And Goethe would have loved the singing of the third song, ‘So last mich scheinen’, as the music seemed to fit the words so well, both in their melodic shapes and in the way it reflected the poem’s emotion.

Paterson later sang three songs in successions: ‘Am See’, ‘An die Laute’ and ‘Die junge Nonne’.

‘Am See’ should be translated ‘On the lake’: Sea is Das Meer. Not to confuse with the Heine song, ‘Am Meer’ that Richard Greager sang the previous evening.

‘Am See’ responded beautifully to Paterson’s pure, lyrical voice, also exhibiting a resolute edge and holding her last note chillingly, without vibrato. ‘An die Laute’ (to the lute) was also in a swaying triple time, featuring a charming piano part. ‘Die junge Nonne’ is a poignant and dramatic song, with vivid Romantic character that depicts a storm and a chiming bell, clear in the turbulent piano part.

Maaike Christie-Beekman
Mezzo Maaike Christie-Beekman both opened and closed the recital: ‘Im Frühling’ at the start and ‘An die Musik’ at the end. Hers is a confident and accomplished voice that probably sits more comfortably with many of Schubert’s songs and these much loved songs offered her a comfortable setting, to be heard to her advantage.

Her second appearance was with the two Sukeika songs, based by Marianne von Willemer on a Persian love story. Though I’ve heard them before, I didn’t remember them. ‘Was bedeutet die Bewegung’ (what does this stirring mean?) starts quietly and weaves a song that slowly makes a strong case for itself. In ‘Ach um deine feuchten Schwingen’ (Ah, I envy your watery wings) a pulsating, repeated note gives the piano a strong presence, as it helps in the depiction of the West wind, echoing the East wind’s portrait in the first song. Shelley wasn’t alone in sensing the Romantic qualities of the winds (His Odd to the West Wind was written in 1819 while these songs were written in 1821: pure coincidence I guess. I can’t think of an East Wind poem in English though). The song seems to accelerate excitedly, suggesting a messenger on an urgent mission.

Maaike’s songs continued with two entitled Life and Art. ‘Im kalten rauben Norden’ (In the cold raw north) from Aus Heliopolis 1 by Mayrhofer, one of Schubert’s closest friends. It reads in English: “In the cold, rough north, I received word of a city – the city of the sun”; in the words of the intelligent programme notes, “the ideals of the Enlightenment reign supreme”.

In the same aesthetic vein, Goethe’s ‘Der Musensohn’ (Son of the muses), Christie-Beekman captured the feeling of ecstasy, her voice brilliant in racing delivery, with arms wide-spread, almost outpacing Greenfield’s piano in full flight. Here her smiles really meant something!

And she sang the last song in the programme, the beautiful masterpiece ‘An die Musik’, with aching emotion.

Jared Holt
Jared Holt continues to make fine contributions to Wellington’s music scene. His range of songs here was extensive, starting with the lovely ‘Auf dem Wasser zu singen’ (on the water at sunset), in register quite low and resonant. Then ‘Ganymede’ was another song drawn from Classical mythology, showing how the Romantic movement by no means set itself against Classicism in subject matter, or in fact in form as the ordinary four-line rhyming stanza is generally the shape of choice. Holt caught its monumental character, after the piano had subtly set the scene. And the third of this group, Goethe’s ‘Rastlose Liebe’ (Restless love) revealed a totally different, disturbing quality beginning with ‘Dem Schnee, dem Regen, dem Wind entgegen’ (against snow, rain and wind….); it’s short and dramatic. Early it certainly is, but ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade’ was written the year before, in 1814 (he was 17) and ‘Der Erlkönig’, ‘Heidenröslein’ and ‘Wanderers Nachtlied’, like ‘Rastlöse Liebe’, in 1815.

Later Holt sang ‘Gondelfahrer’ (The Gondolier), which I didn’t know; it’s in a slow triple rhythm, not quite the rhythm of a barcarolle which is suppose, literally, it really is. It had a mysterious quality, and lay rather high for a baritone, but it didn’t bother Jared. The song whose theme was used for the famous string quartet, ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’, is not as familiar as one would expect, with its sombre tone, in which the girl resists Death’s blandishments (story obviously echoing ‘Erlkönig’: is this a German ethnic stereotype?). ‘Auf der Bruck’ was Holt’s last song, powerful and urgent, and he seemed to identify confidently with its desperate spirit of pursuit; Greenfield’s piano once again made its indispensable, matchless, apparently untiring contribution.

A wonderful penultimate piece before the calming, quasi-religious ‘An die Musik’.

I remain convinced that if promoters were to present song recitals, carefully composed of enough thrilling masterpieces such as we heard today, the wearisome view that there’s no market for vocal recitals within a chamber music context would be dispelled.

Schubertiade Hohenems/Wellington at St Andrew’s: piano and song

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Schubert at St Andrew’s
(Wellington’s answer to the famous Austrian Schubertiade at Hohenems and Schwarzenberg)

Diedre Irons (piano), Richard Greager (tenor)

Piano Sonata in A minor, D 784; Moments musicaux, D 780
The Heine songs from Schwanengesang D 957

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Saturday 4 June, 6:30 pm

The weather assorted poorly with Schubert’s anguished, obsessional Sonata in A minor. It had been sunny and calm, though cold; but the music was penetrated with sudden squally gales and dark clouds, broken by only brief shafts of light and fleeting moments of repose. Diedre Irons understood, as her programme note made clear, how the tragic illness revealed in 1823 must have affected his music. Though she responded to the relative peacefulness in much of the enigmatic Andante, she understood Schubert’s black mood and handled it powerfully in the first and last movements: the emphatic fortissimo chords, punctuated by short gentler phases. And she maintained the compulsive pulse throughout.

While the Andante’s tone is generally more calm, a fearfulness, even despair, remains near the surface, and the relentless wind howling through the streets seemed to dominate the atmosphere of this great work whose nearest models must be heard among Beethoven’s sonatas.

The Moments Musicaux (oddly, Schubert’s French appears not his strongest suit as he called them ‘Six Momens musicals’) were in sharp contrast to the sonata, though one of Irons’s gifts is to give expression to the unease and pain that can be heard at times, as in the Andantino or the fifth Moment, Allegro vivace.

The last of the pieces, Allegretto, seemed to illustrate the word Sehnsucht (longing) that, as a student, I came to feel represented the prevailing tone of German Romanticism. It seemed to be the most used word in the Sturm und Drang and Romantic poetry from Schiller, Goethe and Körner onwards.
However, it was a rare treat to have them played in sequence, just as it was the sequence of songs that Richard Greager sang next.

Schwanengesang – the last collection
It was an imaginative stroke to lift the Heine songs from Schwanengesang (Swan Song) and present them in the order in which they are found in one of Heine’s early collections of poetry, Die Heimkehr, which a year later was included in the big collection, Buch der Lieder, published in 1827. So it was published only a year before Schubert set these six poems, showing how immediately Heine’s verse took root. However, they are the only Heine poems that he used and there is some opinion that Schubert did not find his poetry congenial, one critic suggesting that Schubert “rejected Heine’s ironic nihilism and would not have set more had he lived longer”.

It is probably tempting to feel that these Heine songs evoked music of more interest and depth than his settings of more minor poets, but I don’t think today there is much support for that, considering that almost all the best known and most loved songs are not set to great poetry, apart from those by Goethe.

Though in his introductory remarks Richard Greager suggested that some linkage between the songs was to be better observed in the original order, I must confess that I couldn’t detect any hint of a narrative or a theme in common, other than the afore-mentioned ‘ironic nihilism’. That did however, give these songs a tone in common.

The first song, ‘Das Fischermädchen’, made quite an impact, not on account of any high drama, but through the vivid piano part and with the unusual intensity of Greager’s tenor voice which seemed straight away to capture the edginess of the song with Heine’s typical message that nothing is quite as innocent or as blissful as it might first appear.

The next two, ‘Am Meer’ (On the sea) and ‘Die Stadt’ (The town), were touched by mystery, death, water, and when the sun does shine, it is to reveal the place where his love drowned; trembling, poignant. One noticed how careful was his phrasing and the refinement of his breath control; with striking support from Irons’s rushing arpeggios in ‘Die Stadt’.

‘Doppelgänger’ and ‘Atlas’
Then came a song with an arresting title, which has been engraved on my mind perhaps more than the sound of the song itself: ‘Der Doppelgänger’ (The Double). I’ve been watching a rather engrossing BBC TV documentary on the age of the Gothic revival, not just in architecture, but also in writing, music and the visual arts that dealt with horror and depravity, the daemonic, the supernatural, the irreligious, and here was a song that represented the supernatural in German poetry. The chilling bass piano chords illuminated the poet’s enigmatic loss of his love (‘mein Schatz’) in the vision of a pale ghost, his ‘double’, through the words, the music, and Greager’s singing, and most impressively Diedre Irons’s piano.

‘Ihr Bild’ (Her picture) is an elegiac piece with the poet contemplating his lost love, a calm, unhistrionic song. ‘Der Atlas’, about the afflicted Greek proto-god, of the race of Titans who were defeated by Zeus and his race, and punished with the task of supporting the heavens and earth. It’s pithy, but I have always felt it as a rather inadequate account of the monstrous fate of a giant. Schubert invested it with considerable weight and mythic significance and so did Irons’s big piano presence alongside Greager.

Finally, the un-Heine-ish poem, ‘Die Taubenpost’ (Pigeon Post) by Johan Gabriel Seidl, which is not only reputedly Schubert’s last song, but also the last in ‘Schwanengesang’. After the dubiously metaphysical creations of Heine, this is a plain, old-fashioned lyric by an ordinary and unpretentious poet, and Greager and Irons succeeded in lightening the atmosphere in the church with optimism and a belief in human goodness, in the face of climate change and the economic and social catastrophes facing today’s world.

Regardless of this reviewer’s irrelevant political preoccupations, this was a lovely concert, balanced between powerful and lyrical piano music and beautifully performed songs from the last days of Schubert’s life.