SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Wolf, Alma Mahler, Gustav Mahler, Berg: Bernarda Fink (mezzo-soprano), Roger Vignoles (piano) Wigmore Hall 28.1.2008 (JPr)


This Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert drew a full-house to Wigmore Hall for these songs from late nineteenth and early twentieth century Vienna.

There is an intriguing connection that Hugo Wolf had a Slovenian background mirroring that of the singer, Bernarda Fink who was born in Buenos Aires of Slovenian parents. After a short stint as a music critic in 1887 Wolf had 12 of his songs published and only then decided to devote himself full-time to song composition. Basically, his entire life as a composer was just the nine years that followed. Periods of feverish creative activity were matched by those of mental and physical exhaustion, during which he could not even listen to music. By the end of 1891 he had composed 43 Mörike Lieder, 20 Eichendorff Lieder, 51 Goethe Lieder, 44 Lieder from Geibel and Heyse's Spanish Songbook, and 22 from Heyse's Italian Songbook (a further 24 songs he added in 1896). Besides these there were 13 settings of lyrics by different authors, a few choral and instrumental works, and an opera Der Corregidor. Finally,  he composed settings for three Michelangelo sonnets in March 1897. However in September of that year his fragile mental state overwhelmed him and he was put in an asylum where he basically remained until early death at 42 in 1903. The Wolf songs were two Lenau settings,  ‘An ****’ and ‘Frage nicht’ and two from the Spanish Songbook ‘Die ihr schwebet’ and ‘In dem Schatten meiner Locken’. If anything was to produce any sort of theme for Miss Fink’s programme it was love, unrequited or deeply passionate (plus there were quite a few nightingales thrown in). Here in the Wolf songs ‘Frage nicht’ revealed Wolf’s feelings for Vally Franck, his first love.

While the Gustav Mahler songs that Ms Fink sang (‘Frühlingsmorgen’ and three Wunderhorn songs) are frequently performed in recitals,  those of his wife Alma certainly are not. She had to give up her own song-writing early on as Gustav infamously compelled her to stop composing when they married as there was only room for one composer in the family,  and so she was fated to have her potential unrealised. She left illuminating letters and diaries (heavily edited to cast her in a more favourable light for posterity), some rather self-serving memoirs and 16 surviving songs (not 14 as stated in the recital leaflet), most written before her marriage at 22. These are all that remain of apparently more than 100 she wrote. (All 16 were given their UK première in 2002 by the Mahler Society at Wigmore Hall in fact.)

Each of Alma’s compositions has some defining feature: for instance, the ‘Laue Sommernacht’ that Miss Fink sang.  finishes on the precipice of a dominant chord. Overall,  the exploration of a specific tonality is subtly aligned with the texts. Alma approached the poems she set  with marvellous sensitivity and understanding and her songs depict mostly a general atmosphere or emotion. Predictably love is the  ever present theme and it appears in all its guises: in ‘Laue Sommernacht’ it is sensuous, in ‘Bei dir ist es traut’ (also sung here) it is secret. Perhaps she was mourning for something she did not possess and was attempting to fill the void through her music. Alma was heavily influenced by Zemlinsky (her teacher) and – like Wolf – also by Wagner. Only too late in their marriage did Gustav discover her compositions and help to get some published after working on them himself.

The final set of songs were Alban Berg’s Sieben frühe Lieder (1928.) Berg, a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, wrote these seven songs between 1905 and 1908, scoring them for piano accompaniment. The writing reflects his movement away from tonality and towards a new twelve-tone musical language, most notably here in ‘Nacht’. They were composed at a time when Berg was deeply in love with his future wife Helene, and he drenches the songs in a lyrical sensuality, that is simultaneously strange, disturbing, and captivatingly beautiful. They too have  deeply-rooted  Wagnerian influences.

In a further link between Austria and Slovenia, Bernarda Fink  is now the wife of the Austrian ambassador to that country. She is now only a rare performer in opera but remains an experienced concert singer and this was the first time I had heard her in recital. I must believe that she was suffering from an undisclosed cold,  as her voice was a little tentative and with a vibrato that did not always serve the songs in the best way. For me,  there was too little drama in the songs - for instance there was not enough irony in Mahler’s ‘Lob des hohen Verstandes’ his payback to his critics. Here the donkey must judge between the cuckoo and the nightingale, and eventually he picks the cuckoo of course. It was difficult to distinguish the cuckoo from the nightingale or even the donkey in Miss Fink’s account. These Mahler songs did seem to be better interpreted than  others in  the programme, which had a certain sameness to them. What made me think that she might have been under the weather was that the top of the voice was a little restricted in certain climaxes such as  at ‘Jesu Christ, des Herrn’ in Alma Mahler’s ‘Licht in der Nacht’ and ‘Die Rosen aufgesprungen’ in Berg’s ‘Die Nachtigall’, both of which fully tested her. However, there were many quiet moments when her seemingly delicate mezzo voice was conversationally at one with the text and where she made her own music with the words such as in Wolf’s ‘In dem Schatten meiner Locken’ - when the girl’s lover has fallen asleep and she wonders whether she should wake him  - and also in Berg’s ‘In Zimmer’.

For me the star moments of the recital were Roger Vignoles’ wonderful accompaniments which painted the musical background of the songs so strongly that at time that at times there was a danger he might unbalance the partnership -  as in the stormy tremulous undercurrent to Wolf’s ‘Die ihr schwebet’.

In fact the best was left to the encore. There and trangely only after 19 other songs,  everything came perfectly together in a delightful rendition of Gustav Mahler’s ‘Rheinlegendchen’.

 Jim Pritchard


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