An undeniable element of curiosity was probably the
most potent ingredient of the atmosphere, heavy with expectation, which
hung over Wigmore Hall in the minutes prior to this recital. I doubt
anyone had come simply to hear a lieder recital, well-programmed and
packed with great music though it was. While most of the audience had
come to renew musical acquaintance with Herbert von Karajan’s doyenne
of dramatic sopranos, and several simply to watch a diva and adore,
only those completely unstruck by stardom could help entertaining a
prurient curiosity about whether she would be embarrassingly past her
vocal prime. As though she were well aware of those who would gleefully
‘find her out’, Anna Tomowa-Sintow carried herself with elegance through
the published programme and then, once only the fans were left, reeled
off a series of encores that showed she could still throw the notes
around with abandoned joy.
Even so, the evening could have been a grisly experience
without that elegance and undimmed dramatic presence. Her last London
appearance to my knowledge was as the Marschallin at the Royal Opera
House two years ago, and in terms of control and production if nothing
else, her voice betrays a decline since then. The four Tchaikovsky songs
could almost have been written for the character of Strauss’s beautiful
but disillusioned grande dame, sighing as they all do over love lost
and remembered. Obvious breaks in her passagio – low and high registers
still project fully, if with extra wobble – did not hinder enjoyment
of her steady phrasing (though her breathing gained ragged edges over
the recital’s course) and musical intelligence. ‘To forget so soon’
had all the wistfulness of a latterday Tatiana, with authentically bright
tone; ‘He loved me so much’ brought more cherishable word-painting catching
the poem’s ambivalent girlishness and regret.
The occasional loss of pitch became rather more noticeable
in Wagner’s Wesendonck-Lieder (not Wesendonk: Mathilde, their dedicatee,
carelessly lost her C almost throughout the Wigmore’s programme): Tomowa-Sintow
seized the last lines of Stehe’s Still first two verses with apparent
relief that she had got that far. ‘Schmerzen’ was perhaps the most successful
from a purely vocal point of view, as its demands for melodrama rather
than moment-to-moment sensitivity are still well within her capabilities.
The cycle’s two ‘Tristan’ songs, ‘Im Treibhaus’ and ‘Traume’, carried
their heavy musical baggage with intensity almost despite the comparatively
prosaic original piano scoring. The opening to ‘Im Triebhaus’ eventually
became the Prelude to Act 3, and having heard the strings of the Royal
Opera tear open that music of raw wounds the previous night, Lemaire’s
relaxed way with the rising motif of pain was disconcerting to say the
least. Tomowa-Sintow’s fastish speeds for these songs were probably
chosen more from necessity than preference, but she was able to float
the lines rather than gasp them as a result.
True to her abilities in music which demands heft,
Tomowa-Sintow was most successful in the overtly Wagnerian setting by
Brahms of Heine’s poem ‘Death is cool night’. The text contains overtones
of Tristan which Brahms appears to echo in his setting, and she lavished
some of her most lustrous tone and controlled breathing of the evening
upon it. The other, lighter songs especially the folkloric ‘Sunday’
were often managed rather than sung, and were also afflicted by tempos
which suited the singer rather than the music: Lemaire was unable to
articulate the rushing undercurrent of notes in ‘Vain Serenade’ and
missed some out altogether in an effort to keep up with his singer.
The concluding group of Strauss fared better, if one discounts ‘Morgen’
which she would have done better to omit. I doubt that Tomowa-Sintow
could still sing a top C at nine in the morning as Karajan once enthused,
but she swept through the whirlwind declaration of passion that is Cäcilie
with an ardour that utterly eclipsed Reneé Fleming's recent po-faced
perfection at the Barbican and rekindled memories of Marschallins recent
and long gone. At least for the moment, Tomowa-Sintow is doing a pretty
good job of winding the clocks back.
Peter Quantrill
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