SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Schubert, Winterreise:  Thomas Quasthoff, Charles Spencer, Wigmore Hall, 1.10.2007. (ME)

This was the first of three recitals to be given in Quasthoff’s ‘residency’ at the Wigmore Hall, and it showed him at his greatest in a work which is so much a part of him that no score is needed, and so much a masterpiece which you might be tempted to think that he ‘owns’ in the sense of stamping his personality upon it, that no other interpretation is possible. Yet it is surely part of this singer’s greatness that this was not yet another copy of previous performances, but a new, harsher, rawer interpretation which has grown with the years.

I first heard him sing the work at Schwarzenberg in 2001, and wrote then that Quasthoff “…does not merely relate the songs, he inhabits them, yet without undue histrionics; instead of show, we experience what can only be called ‘was uns im tiefsten inner bewegt.” I was far too uncertain of myself at that time to write something else that I really felt, and still feel today, that with 90% of singers in this music you often find yourself muttering ‘die, already’ but with this singer, you are completely gripped from first to last.

I am quite sure that this evening’s performance will have been too much for some; not in the sense of emotionally overwhelming (although it certainly was) but in that it was constantly daring, constantly pushing the boundaries of the possible both in terms of vocal technique and interpretation. Gerald Moore once wrote, finely, that Schubert had so little time given to him that he could not be expected to dot every musical ‘i’ and that it is up to us to follow the thread of his imagination - this Quasthoff did in every song. Of course, ‘Die Wetterfahne’ and ‘Gefrorne Tränen’ showed his exact diction and crystalline enunciation, but it was in lines such as ‘Dass ich geweinet hab’ in the latter song , and the final stanza of ‘Auf dem Flusse’ that we heard the fusion of the melancholy and the bleak, the despairing and the resigned. Sadly, the nachspiel to that last song was rather blandly played, and this tended to be the case overall: Charles Spencer plays lovingly and sensitively but he is not really an ideal match for this singer, and one can’t help wondering what the outcome would be if Quasthoff were to have as his regular partner someone with as strong a musical personality as his own – Julius Drake springs to mind.

‘Rückblick’ was one of the most daringly sung songs in the cycle – the contrasts between the fury of ‘Es brennt mir unter beiden Sohlen’ and the heartbreak of ‘Wie anders hast du mich empfangen’ were more marked than I have ever heard them before, and such was the no-holds-barred style of the singing that there were one or two almost-duff notes: that’s the risk you take, and sometimes, as in this case, it’s worth it. ‘Frühlingstraum’ was sung with wonderful tenderness throughout, yet avoiding any sentimentality, and both ‘Die Post’ and ‘Die Krähe’ were mesmerizing in their different ways.

In ‘Der Wegweiser’ we see the central tenet of this interpretation: when Goerne, for example, sings the lines ‘Habe ja doch nichts begangen / dass ich Menschen sollte scheun’ (Why should I shun mankind, when I have done no wrong?) you have the sense that this is the forlorn, touching figure of the outcast from whom every so often there breaks the cry, why was I of all men singled out for rejection, for such terrible loneliness? – however with Quasthoff you sense an anger, an outrage that is something else altogether. This is not to say that Goerne’s is a lesser interpretation – far from it, in my view – merely that at this level, and it is a level occupied by at most four singers in all, interpretation has become much more than a mere version of the score.

‘Die Nebensonnen’ was as bleak and despairing an evocation as I have ever heard, yet ‘Der Leiermann’ seemed to discover a new tenderness – ‘den alten Mann’ and ‘Wunderlicher Alter’ seeming to inspire the wanderer to some sense of hope after the desolation of ‘Im Dunkeln wird mir wohler sein.’ A notable performance, thankfully recorded by BBC radio 3 for broadcast on Thursday 1^st November.

Melanie Eskenazi

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