Christian Gerhaher at the Wigmore Hall

29/10/13

I have already been twice humbled by too high expectations for Wigmore hall recitals this season. After the wondrous Anne Schwanewilms lunch time recital I attended and gushingly reviewed in September, I greatly looked forward to her recital a couple of weeks later where she stood in last minute for an indisposed Angelika Kirchschlager. Though Schwanewilms did some gorgeous things that evening, including a beautiful performance of the Wesendonck Lieder, she didn't overall live up to my own hype - this time the same Debussy set felt blanker, her Strauss op.69 were inconsistent, and some of those mannerisms had crept back. My disappointment was my own doing entirely - having such high expectations going into a concert is rarely conducive to having an enjoyable evening.
Unfortunately I repeated my mistake with this Christian Gerhaher recital. (My lesson is now fully learned). I really admired Gerhaher's wonderful Olivier at the ROH's Capriccio in concert last season, and have also enjoyed many of his CDs - the unpressured naturalness of the tone, and the sensitive expression have made a strong impression in the past. But this recital was a hard slog.

The recital comprised almost 30 Schumann songs, 6 by Fauré and then 5 contemporary songs by Jorg Widmann excerpted from a cycle of six entitled "Das heisse Herz". I yield to few in my admiration of late Schumann, and cringe when his late music is dismissed off hand as it so often still is. The op.107 songs are not easy going fare, depressive, introverted miniatures that they are, but they were bizarrely approached by Gerhaher, who in his incisive, clipped delivery seemed keen to impress upon us the precise rhythmic values of every note, as if rhythm was the most interesting and important aspect of this music. The word in string playing would be "portato", and the effect here was of very self consciously metric speech. A sfz on every high note began to disconcert also - I think I simply couldn't understand the interpretive choices he was making, and found the eschewal of legato difficult to countenance.

The dour mood of these was continued into the Dichterliebe, which had none of the humour, youthful schmerz and ardour that many artists have traditionally imbued them with, and instead were dispatched as if they were Mahler or Wolf at their most dejected and hollow. The fast songs became bristling and irate, the slower ones grimly pained and often on the verge of speech rather than melody. A unique take, but there was just not enough variety of approach for me, either emotionally or technically in terms of vocal colours. The vocal apparatus is very polished indeed, but it becomes very predictable also (every "o" for instance sounds absolutely identical, as the mouth snaps forward into a tight ring so that the vowel can be perfectly separated from the other vowels) and there's no enjoyment of the immense expressive or colouristic potential of the German language. Above all everything is just so serious, so stolidly lacking in charm - Heine's irony emerges here embittered rather than laughingly parodic, and Schumann's vocal lines languish undernourished and uncared for. It's not bad singing, but it's not enjoyable singing either.

Another set of Schumann songs in the second half unfortunately brought to mind the thought that however wonderful the songs might be, Schumann's range is so narrow when compared to Schubert's. My personal favourites are the op.39 Eichendorff Liederkreis, whose fresh vernality seems inexhaustible, but though I do admire most of the rest of Schumann's song oeuvre very much indeed, a recital this length of Schubert would be hard to make so dutiful and stern.

The Fauré set contained in the second half should have been an opportunity for lightness, contrast, grace, fluidity, and certainly Gerold Huber's piano playing lifted here, but neither artist gave into the smiling sensuality of these songs, and again, Gerhaher seemed embarrassed to truly enjoy the text and beauty of the words. More successful were Jorg Widmann's songs, a heavily Ivesian homage to the entire German Lied tradition, mocking sobreity interspersed with gawky jokes, and moments of real lovelyness.

Anne Schwanewilms and Roger Vignoles at the Wigmore Hall

09/09/13


Anne Schwanewilms is one of the most accomplished and distinctive sopranos on the international circuit today, and this lunchtime recital, the first of the Wigmore Hall's new season, revealed all of her very best qualities. It seems to me that her strengths lie in lieder singing - the endlessly varied vocal timbre, the nuanced approach to text, the quietly shining vocal colours. It's a voice of great beauty with virtually perfect intonation, but it's very unusual too - the bottom is mezzoish, slightly grainy, cross hatched, with developed chest tones which are however never used forcefully. There can be a suggestion even of androgeny as she moves into the middle register but she's also capable of seductive womanly warmth and girlish gleaming. The radiant top is the only place in the voice where we got a blast of the raging torrent that seems to course behind the good humoured charm and elegant quietude of the surface of most of her singing. Her hands held in front of her, she remained relaxed and eschewed large movements throughout this recital, and dared to sing very quietly indeed, but was always audible and engaging because the sound is so well produced, and the life of each song is so clearly expressed in the sound and in her face.

Debussy's early Proses Lyriques (1892-3) are a relative rarity in the concert hall, though as always with this composer one is hard pressed to give a reason why - he is amongst the most talented and ingratiating song writers of the fin de siècle. These songs sit quite low, and for Schwanewilms they became a patchwork of glimmering moments, a mosaic of vocal colour, always matched thoughtfully to the text. The texts for these songs are by Debussy and all read as highly descriptive, poetic stream-of-consciousness reflections on some scene or other. Schwanewilms with Roger Vignoles her sensitive partner at the piano, managed to capture this improvisatory quality whilst simultaneously evoking the strong moods that Debussy asks for, and in a performance such as this, the much debated literary quality of Debussy's verse was simply never in question.

In her recordings from the naughties, Schwanewilms often did this thing where she'd sing entirely without vibrato in her angelicly pure upper middle register, which was an arresting effect, but could sound mannered, disjointed and very strange in some contexts. It seems that she has left this habit behind, to the enormous benefit of her legato and expressivity - the sound still shimmers, but there's the warmth and glow of a (narrow) continuous vibrato which seems to allow her access to a more consistent airflow too. None of the vocal apparatus seems to move extraneously - the sound is made as effortlessly as if it were speech.

The first phrase of "In der Fremde" from Schumann's Eichendorff Liederkreis op.39 (1840) emerged as a ribbon of perfect legato, disarming in its simplicity and emotional directness. But it's not just the silvery, hushed beauty of this song and others like it ("Mondnacht" was also exceptionally special) that came naturally to Schwanewilms - the funnier, lighter songs were dispatched with character and wit too - "Waldgespräch" was a genuinely exciting piece of storytelling for instance. To be able to hear this great masterpiece afresh was a great gift. Again, the importance of Roger Vignoles's truly excellent piano playing cannot be overstated - this was a true partnership of exemplary and imaginative music making.


If there is a better currently performing female lieder singer, I haven't heard her. An artist fully in her prime: truly exquisite.

Susan Graham at the Wigmore Hall

29/06/12

So glad I went to this. Such brilliant singing and a real treat for me - I don't expect to hear singing of this quality live more than a handful of times a year. You can listen on iplayer, but it sounds so different - it's still very nice, but the voice is even more beautiful in the hall.

Anyway, I reviewed it for Bachtrack. The Bachtrack editor changed some of the "One"s to "I"s, which looks a bit jarring to me, but maybe it reads better for other people. I realise it's purely a taste issue, but for me, "one noticed how well preserved the voice was" puts an objectifying distance on it, whereas "I noticed how well preserved the voice was" just seems like a story, or a stream of consciousness observation. Interesting to be challenged on it, and I might bear it in mind and change my style in the future to omit either "one"s or "I"s. Also this is not my most elegant prose, but it basically communicates what I felt about the thing.


Here it is:

http://www.bachtrack.com/review-wigmore-hall-susan-graham-malcolm-martineau

Margaret Price memorial concert at the Wigmore Hall

21/04/2012

Price in 1985 as Fiordiligi. Source: Telegraph

Margaret Price (1941-2011) is an oddly overlooked singer in the recent history of singing. Odd because she possessed one of the most ravishingly beautiful lyric voices of the last half century, and one of the finest techniques too. To my ears the sound is somewhere between Janowitz's purity and Te Kanawa's warmth; I often prefer her to either of her contemporaries, especially in song repertoire. Not that she didn't have a major career - she sang at all the opera houses that these two artists did, but just with less frequency, and her recordings aren't as ubiquitous or wide ranging.

The reasons are probably two fold. First because she was never a particularly physically glamorous singer, and nor was she disposed to showy vocalisms - it's an extraordinarily pure and even sound which borders almost on the bland if the repertoire doesn't suit. The repertoire that did suit was Mozart, lighter Verdi, and Strauss though she didn't sing any operas of the latter on stage, and with Verdi she often strayed larger than she could reasonably handle. So the second reason is because she limited her repertoire so much - she wouldn't sing anything that didn't have a long line, which meant 9 Mozart roles were essayed, a few bel canto ones, and as mentioned some Verdi too. Just before she retired she did record Ariadne in its original 1912 incarnation, and one realises quite what an opportunity missed it was that she didn't sing more of these roles. Famously she sung Isolde on recording only with Kleiber, and it remains the most radiantly beautiful account of the role on disc. She turned down Rosenkavalier after looking at the score for Kleiber because there was "nothing to sing" - too much parlando for her. Her favourite thing was always song, and there is quite a bit of recorded material in this category, some excellent, some not so good, all of it with an exquisitly beautiful sound allied to a superlative technique.

The Wigmore Hall produced an excellent tribute concert here with the expected career overview (lamenting her lack of Covent Garden appearances, but not mentioning why this was: Solti proclaimed after an audition that she "had no charm"), and lots of anecdotes from a very visibly moved William Lyn (ex Wigmore Hall director) and Sir John Tooley (ex ROH director) who both extolled her virtues at length concluding that she was one of the greatest singers and artists of the last fifty years.

We also heard from several youngish singers all singing repertoire that was closely associated with Price during her career. Sally Matthews sang Dove Sono (she'll be singing the Countess at Glyndebourne this summer) and Morgen and Cacilie by Strauss. She's a very impressive vocalist, with an excellent technique, but I found the voice far too dark in all of these (over covering? Or is it just the natural tone of the voice?), and the passagio was not completely ideally navigated in Dove Sono, the aria which is the ultimate test of this. Dare one say it, it's not a very feminine sound, but it is very full and rounded and shiny. The top is almost shockingly intense and powerful. It all just didn't seem quite limpid or delicate enough for Morgen. I love her as Fiordiligi here, which is the best I've seen her: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufPHmCeStpM I want so desperately to like her, due to these amazing youtube videos (though it was 5 years ago), but I haven't yet seen quite the same beauty in live performances. Still greatly looking forward to her Countess in the summer.

Mezzo Leigh Woolf sang a perfectly decent but slightly dull Voi, che sapete also from Figaro, but followed it up with 3 very beautifully sung songs from Schumann's Frauenliebe und leben. The voice is light, very sweet, with a slightly husky edge which gives it a nicely distinctive character. Very unshowy singing, but intelligent and completely secure.

Jonathan McGovern actually is "a young singer" unlike many who are described like this and already is a very interesting and individual talent. His technique sound strange to me, and up close with a mic as the clips on youtube show, the vibrato sounds like it's "added onto" the sound rather than being an integral part of it - very often there's almost no vibrato whatsoever and it seems like he's not singing "on the breath". But he is extremely communicative (despite some OTT facial expressions) and really draws you in, the hall completely silent during his four songs from Schumann's wonderful Eichendorf Liederkreis op.39. I can't see how he could sing opera the same way opera, but he was so full of surprises that I'm sure he will, and dazzle everyone.

Stephan Loges has a very appealingly masculine baritone voice that is beautiful and even, if not particularly distinctive, and he sung Schubert's Der Winterabend with more maturity than McGovern could muster, though less interestingly. Gerard Collett seemed very nervous as his lips trembled on every note and the voice sounded unvibrant and slightly unsettled in his two Britten folk songs. Nervewracking to do the largely unaccompanied I wonder as I wander though! The last rose of summer was better.

The diminuative Dennis O'Neill was the last singer on stage and basically stole the show with Ah fede negar potessi ...Quando le sere al pacido from Verdi's Luisa Miller. He's 64, but the voice is still huge, superbly produced, with a truly ringing, truly Italianate sound and great legato. There's a touch of wobble up high (only a touch), but it was such a treat to hear him, aged 64, basically outclassing everyone else and showing them how it is done - not that it felt mean or self aggrandising. Just pure class. The audience exploded into applause.

The concert opened and closed with two gorgeous pieces of singing from Price from two key recordings. To start, Gretchen am Spinnrade from her first ever Wigmore Hall recital, and to finish, Beim Schlafengehen from the Four Last Songs, which just soared out over us, particularly moving after William Lyn's emotional tribute. A truly superb singer, and a beautiful tribute concert.