In a recent interview, the baritone Simon Keenlyside
said that he had left Schubert’s great song cycle out of his repertoire
partly because each time he contemplated it he found himself going back
to all the other hundreds of great songs he wanted to do, and partly
because he did not like the kind of comments bestowed upon young singers
to the effect of ‘oh well, think what he’ll do with it when he’s forty.’
Well, Keenlyside is now 42 and clearly considers himself ready to take
it on, and this performance revealed him as a mostly sensitive interpreter,
frequently alive to textual and musical nuance, but without once demonstrating
the true greatness of either Goerne (28 when he first sang it in London)
or Quasthoff (34). His is an attractive, rather than beautiful voice
in terms of Lieder, and his interpretation of ‘Winterreise’ could hardly
be said to touch the soul. No one who heard Quasthoff at Schwarzenberg
and Goerne at Glyndebourne last year could possibly say that Keenlyside
was in the same league, but his singing is mostly faithful to text and
music without being in any way remarkable.
‘Gute Nacht’ was a rocky beginning; his voice sounded
as though it was in need of warming up, with a few insecure low notes
,but by the time he reached ‘Will dich im Traum nicht stören,’
he seemed to have got into his stride, and produced some lovely soft
singing, with the words of ‘Sacht, sacht, die Türe zu!’ being caressed
with real delicacy. Keenlyside’s diction is exceptional throughout,
indeed he frequently makes the songs sound as though they are being
sung by a native German speaker for whom the poems have real meaning,
and this was especially evident in ‘Die Wetterfahne’ and ‘Gefrorne Tränen,’
where he also produced some superbly resonant fortes.
The latter song illustrated perfectly what seem to
me to be his strengths and weaknesses; the diction is sharp, the phrasing
musical, the tone pleasing, but he seems to lack that essential feeling
for rhythm, and, crucially, he does not move me in the slightest. It
is usually at this song that, in a great performance – and I have heard
and seen many – I am first moved to tears, not necessarily by the sentiments
being expressed but by the rise and fall of those major key phrases
such as ‘Dass ich geweinet hab?’ but here I received the lines with
matter-of-fact attention.
‘Der Lindenbaum’ is of course a sure winner in anyone’s
hands, and Keenlyside sang it sweetly, but without really suggesting
that contrast between grim stoicism ‘Ich wendete mich nicht’ and tempting
oblivion ‘Du fändest ruhe dort!’ His finest moments were ‘Rückblick,’
which he sang with real fervour, and ‘Frühlingstraum’ where he
rose to those heartbreaking repeated A minor phrases at ‘Die Augen schliess
ich wieder……….’ yet still without touching the real pathos inherent
in the music. The latter song was played with great delicacy by Graham
Johnson, but for much of the time I felt that singer and pianist were
not exactly thinking along the same lines, and there were many occasions
where Keenlyside seemed to be expecting the pianist to carry the major
part of the music’s rhythmic effect; this is natural in a few songs,
but in the majority there is a need for more intimacy of partnership
than I sensed here.
Johnson’s playing of the dance-like vorspiel to ‘Täuschung’
sounded so lilting that he almost turned it into a jolly little Ländler,
but his playing of the final songs was ideal in its unforced solemnity.
‘Das Wirtshaus,’ described by Johnson was ‘the grandest
vocal hymn that Schubert ever wrote,’ was perhaps the singer’s least
impressive moment; apart from the textual errors in the last stanza,
he did not quite make it up into the passagio on ‘matt,’ so the crucial
word sounded delicate rather than tortured, and his breath control and
ability to sustain a long legato line were really not up to the breadth
of tempo required. In contrast, ‘Die Nebensonnen’ was beautifully sung,
with firm tone and tender phrasing, yet still remained unmoving. In
sum, it is always wonderful to hear ‘Winterreise,’ especially when Graham
Johnson’s vast experience and unfailing love are brought to bear upon
the accompaniments, but this was not a performance to wring the heart,
despite all the hand – wringing that went on. Keenlyside’s is a fairly
dramatic rendition of the cycle, but ultimately, he relates the songs,
he does not inhabit them.
Melanie Eskenazi
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