Seen and Heard Recital
Review
Haydn, Grieg, Brahms, Poulenc, Liszt: Angelika
Kirchschlager, Helmut Deutsch, Wigmore Hall, 23 April 2005 (ME)
Angelika Kirchschlager is now a much loved Wigmore regular, presenting
well thought out, quite challenging programmes which are mercifully
free of any whiff of dubious ‘nicky nacky noo-ness,’
otherwise dubiously known as ‘charm.’ She announces
her seriousness as soon as she takes the platform in a sombre
black dress perhaps as well suited to a postulant as a recitalist,
and her choice of music preserves this mood.
It’s quite brave for someone who is not a native English
speaker to begin a programme with a group of Haydn, since ours
is a notoriously difficult language in which to sing: she managed
the poetry, mostly by the composer’s friend Anne Hunter,
very well, save for some awkwardness with the word ‘away’
which was given various pronunciations, and the unfortunate substitution
of ‘with’ for ‘at’ in the line ‘Smiling
at grief’ in Shakespeare’s ‘She never told her
love.’ With the exception of the Shakespeare, these are
not great texts, but then neither are many of those set by Schubert,
and it is Haydn’s music which lifts them onto another level.
‘The mermaid’s song’ is the perfect opening
piece, with its intricate prelude – superbly played by Helmut
Deutsch – and its invitation to ‘Come, behold what
treasures lie…Riches, hid from human eye’ and Kirchschlager
sang it with her trademark open tone and sense of enjoyment. ‘She
never told her love’ is in my view one of the very greatest
of all settings of Shakespeare, and both singer and pianist gave
it the drama and power it deserves, especially in the ‘con
espressione’ piano introduction and the ineffable phrase
‘But let concealment, like a worm in the bud / Feed on her
damask cheek.’ ‘Fidelity’ is not as frequently
performed as it should be: this complex piece looks forward to
the Schubert of the ‘Suleika’ songs, especially ‘Was
bedeutet die Bewegung’ and it is the perfect vehicle for
this singer’s impassioned delivery and sense of drama.
Grieg’s Op. 48 followed, its chief interest for many of
us surely being the settings of poems which hare far better known
in their versions by other composers: works such as ‘Gruss’
(Heine) and ‘Dereinst, Gedanke mein’ (Geibel) are
so firmly associated with Mendelssohn and Wolf respectively that
it is difficult to grasp at once what special flavour Grieg gives
them, although the second of these is certainly harmonically original.
Debussy’s famous description of Greig’s music as ‘pink
bon-bons filled with snow’ seems quite apt for some of the
other songs, since they have a superficial sweetness yet are lacking
in warmth: to my ears, only ‘Ein Traum’ really holds
the attention in this group, and Kirchschlager sang it ardently:
it recalls one of Sibelius’ finest works, ‘The Jewish
Girl’s Song’ especially in its moving final lines.
Going from the mediocre to the great, Kirchschlager and Deutsch
ended the first part of the recital with a group of Brahms: ‘Spanisches
Lied’ may not be as distinctive as Wolf’s version
of the same poem (‘In dem Schatten meiner Locken’)
but it was finely sung, especially in terms of the phrasing of
such lines as ‘Schlief mir mein Geliebter ein’ –
and the immortal ‘Der Gang zum Liebchen’ and ‘Von
ewiger Liebe’ displayed the singer’s characteristic
urgency and vividness of expression.
If I have a cavil with this artist it is that her range of vocal
colour is a little limited: the voice is beautiful in tone and
the delivery undeniably striking, but the nuances in her vocal
palette are somewhat muted. This was well shown in the Poulenc
group: this is a composer whose works do not feature large in
my musical life (all right, I admit it, I never listen to him
if I can possibly avoid it) but even I know that a piece like
‘Hôtel’ needs a certain sultriness, a certain
languid quality in the voice, and a song like ‘Voyage à
Paris’ requires – perish the thought – a liberal
helping of the kind of archness which, say, Felicity Lott so amply
provides.
Liszt found her in much better style: her French is excellent,
and her elegant phrasing even made Alfred de Musset’s ‘J’ai
perdu ma force et ma vie’ which is the kind of stuff that
gives French lyric poetry a bad name, sound sinewy and meaningful
– of course Liszt’s restrained setting helps. The
writer of the Wigmore’s programme notes is very kind to
de Musset, but rather sniffy about ‘Oh! Quand je dors’
which to me is one of the finest songs in the repertoire, uniting
as it does a very fine poem by Victor Hugo with a sublime setting:
I think of it as a man’s song, and cannot imagine Fischer-Dieskau’s
recording of it being equalled, but Kirchschlager’s rendition
of lines such as ‘Soudain mon rêve / Rayonnera!’
was ideally fervent. The closing ‘Die drei Zigeuner’
was an ambitious choice for this stage of a recital, but they
brought it off wonderfully, with Deutsch’s playing of the
cimbalom and gypsy fiddle eloquently supporting the singer’s
vivid characterization. An enthusiastic audience brought them
back for two encores, of which ‘Es muss ein Wunderbares
sein’ (Liszt) was the more successful in its sense of intimacy.
Melanie Eskenazi
