Schumann, 3 songs Op. 138 no 2, Op. 135 no. 5, Op. 90 no. 7; Frauenliebe und Leben Op. 42: Berg, Vier Lieder Op. 2: Wagner, Wesendonck Lieder: Matthias Goerne (baritone), Alexander Schmalcz (piano), Queen Elizabeth Hall, 20.4.2006 (ME)

This was a brilliantly constructed, daringly chosen programme: not only were the majority of the songs concerned with the most profound states of joy or despair, but they were also pieces which until now have been seen as almost exclusively for the female voice, a feature which of course presents problems for some, but which was made triumphantly irrelevant here by the sheer greatness of the singing and the universality which Goerne brought to the emotions. If Lotte Lehmann could sing Dichterliebe, then Goerne can surely get away with the Wesendonck songs: Frauenliebe und Leben however might be seen as a bridge too far by those of a more susceptible nature, although I found it a totally compelling and enlightening performance of music I thought I knew almost too well.

Tief im Herzen trag ich Pein set the sombre tone: this wonderful song, written for soprano yet rarely attempted even by possessors of that voice, is so full of dissonance and so deeply melancholy that it has to be the absolute antithesis of the usual light ‘warmer-up.’ Gebet is one of the Maria Stuart Lieder, in fact the final song in which the Queen begs God to save her, in phrases of increasing desperation which Schumann sets at correspondingly higher pitches: nothing more heartfelt than Goerne’s singing and Schmalcz’s playing here, and in the concluding song of the first group, Requiem, could possibly be imagined.

Frauenliebe und Leben is often regarded as cloyingly sentimental, with Chamisso’s poems dismissed as dilettante musings: as Richard Stokes points out in his excellent notes, little could be further from the truth, since the poet daringly depicted in these poems something which had received little or no attention – namely, the right of an ordinary woman to express her feelings: Chamisso had himself married a girl many years his junior, as indeed Schumann was about to do at the time of the work’s composition. Half of the songs in the cycle are marked innig, which as Stokes says ‘denotes something akin to ‘fervently and tenderly’ – a term that is reserved for some of his most intense moments of rapture.’

Innigkeit is of course one of Goerne’s most characteristic qualities, and it is greatly to his credit that he managed to remove from these songs all their accretions of gooey varnish, accumulated over decades of presentation by maternal mezzos and would-be ingénue sopranos, often breathlessly clasping their hands together in the third song, dreamily fingering their wedding rings in the fourth or, God forbid, lightly touching a nipple in the seventh. Goerne simply made it irrelevant that the sentiments spring from the mouth of a girl; such feelings as being blind to everything around you save the beloved (Seit ich ihn gesehen) are universal, and the idea of being so happy that you imagine dying, is hardly the exclusive preserve of women (Shakespeare has Othello voice something very similar.) Ich kann’s nicht fassen was wonderfully sung and played, totally lacking in artifice yet touching in the extreme, and Du Ring an meinem Finger was admirable in its directness and simplicity.

The sixth and seventh songs are probably those which the squeamish about such things, found most challenging to hear sung by a baritone, but such was the beauty of the singing and the restraint of the narration that you simply accepted lines such as ‘Und daraus dein Bildnis / Mir entgegen lacht’ (And your image will laugh up at me [from the cradle]) As for An meinem Herzen, it seems to me perfectly feasible for a man to understand that the most intense love is felt by a woman feeding her baby – Goerne certainly convinced me of his sincerity, and what a joy it was to hear this and the preceding song given without the slightest hint of sentimentality. A superb performance, the singing equalled by the playing, especially in the sublime nachspiel.

How could they live up to this? They surpassed it, with performances of Berg’s Opus 2 and Wagner’s Wesendonck songs which it would be difficult to imagine being equalled by any living singer – male or female. The truth of Schoenberg’s phrase about Berg’s ‘overflowing warmth of feeling’ being evident in even his earliest works was amply shown here, with the most profoundly expressive singing in the third song and throughout the final, ‘Warm die Lüfte’ – the latter was, for me, along with the ‘encore,’ the evening’s most remarkable performance. Berg’s first atonal piece presents many challenges for the singer, all of them here met with confidence: the girl’s despairing cry of ‘Er lässt mich warten…’ and the final enigmatic ‘Das macht die Welt so tiefschön’ (That makes the world so profoundly beautiful) were given in the most melancholy yet tender way imaginable.

And so to Wagner’s settings of Mathilde Wesendonck’s poems, of which the composer famously wrote ‘I have never done anything better than these songs, and few of my works will bear comparison with them.’ Although one associates them with the mezzo-soprano voice, there is a perfectly good case to be made for their performance by a bass: after all, lines such as ‘Wie ein stolzer Siegesheld!’ (Like a proud conquering hero) lend themselves to a deeper register, and the sentiments in general are mostly universal ones, if expressed in occasionally flowery terms. ‘Der Engel’ was the ideal song to display the richness of Goerne’s tone as well as his renowned virtuosity, with the final line ‘Meinen Geist nun himmelwärts!’ (My spirit rises to Heaven) soaring into the auditorium. This was not the usual comfortable view of these songs, in which Schmerzen just touches on despair: indeed, that song was as deeply melancholy as anything in the Berg or Schumann, the final ‘Solche Schmerzen mir Natur!’ (Nature gives me such agony) suggesting the ironies of death and rebirth.

Finally, given as an encore but so much a part of the whole, an inspired choice – Beethoven’s ‘An die Hoffnung’ (Op. 94) which the composer wrote at around the time of his final revisions of Fidelio and which has some echoes in the opera (Komm, Hoffnung, lass’ den letzten Stern). This deeply serious, dramatic work would test most singers in the first half of a recital, never mind at the end, and it received a magisterial performance. Goerne and Schmalcz managed to show that this is where all the rest comes from, in that this song prefigures, both musically and emotionally, the anguished expression of the previous works: in its fervent questioning of the existence of God and its final, forlorn appeal to Hope, it also embodies the sense of irony and wistfulness inherent in much of what preceded it. A tremendous recital: none of these works will ever sound the same again.

Melanie Eskenazi