SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Mendelssohn, Liszt, Dvořák and Brahms: Angelika Kirchschlager (mezzo-soprano), Julius Drake (piano), Middle Temple Hall London 15.3.2008 (ME)


The eminent Sirs and Queen’s Counsels responsible for the Temple Festival declare in the brochure that ‘…the Temple is not an exclusive legal preserve, but it is a jewel that can be widely shared.’ A jewel it certainly is – Twelfth Night was first performed here and despite the ravages of WWII it continues in daily use as the place where members of the Bar and students are privileged to have lunch and dine. ‘I wonder,’ said the lady next to me, ‘what proportion of the audience is from the Bar?’ – ‘Oh, the vast majority’ opined her husband, casting a sideways glance in my direction as so clearly being in the minority, and his point was delightfully proven when one of the festival’s organisers spoke to the audience about how strange the Inner Temple must look to them on a Saturday. The place is set up so as to provide a comforting sense of continuity for those, mostly male, who proceed from Prep School to Private School to Oxbridge and thence to the Bar, but a recital such as this one temporarily unites these chosen ones with outsiders such as the present writer.

This was Kirchschlager’s only London recital in 2008, and the brochure had promised that she would be singing ‘…her favourite songs by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Wolf,’ but in fact the programme was rather more unusual in that it included Mendelssohn’s settings of Eichendorff poems and Liszt settings of Heine both better known in versions by Schumann, as well as a highly individual interpretation of Brahms Zigeunerlieder. The opening Mendelssohn group provide a showcase for all that we expect from this partnership: warm, passionate vocal tone, exact phrasing and collaborative playing were evident throughout, most vividly in Pagenlied where the piano delicately evokes the mandolin, and in the noble, canon-like Nachtlied where Kirchschlager sang lines such as ‘Frisch auf denn, liebe Nachtigall’ with understated fervour.

Whereas Schumann’s Im Rhein, im schönen Strome dramatically evokes Köln Cathedral, Liszt’s version depicts the movement of the river, wonderfully suggested in the liquid tone of the voice and in the rippling nachspiel, played with faultless grace by Julius Drake. Despite the inevitable distraction of one’s inner ear expecting to hear Schumann, these settings have a beauty of their own, especially in the wonderful ‘O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst!’ with its expansive melodic line and ardent emotion, both qualities ideal for the burnished tone of this voice.

The Lieibeslieder are infrequently performed so it was good to hear them given with such commitment – Todt ist’s in mancher Menschenbrust (Death dwells in so many a heart) being sung and played with characteristic fervour. Just when you begin to think that Kirchschlager’s tone is becoming too uniformly mellow, or that Drake’s playing is perhaps a little too gemütlich they surprise you with an almost-spoken final line like ‘Mich wieder zum leben weckt’ or a rousing Lasst mich allein with its combination of folksy inevitability and romantic passion.

I don’t care much for the Zigeunerlieder (or for Brahms in general, come to that) but I’m sure this is because they are usually given as though Brahms had wanted to compose genuine Gypsy music, which of course he did not, as the excellent programme notes (by the ever-erudite Richard Stokes) remind us – ‘They are about as authentically Hungarian or Gypsy as Under Milk Wood is Welsh.’ The second song, ‘Wisst ihr, wann mein Kindchen’ typified Kirchschlager and Drake’s approach – where many singers take this song as, frankly, quite nauseatingly precious, this mezzo chooses to sing it as inviting rather than wincingly winning, and this pianist chooses to see the music as song rather than folksong. The final song, ‘Komt dir manchmal in den Sinn’ which is often sung with somewhat raw tone, as though it should somehow be accompanied only by a torn tambourine, was here given a performance of subtle expressiveness.

The first of two superb encores was a wonderfully appropriate choice, Haydn’s setting of Viola’s lines ‘She never Told her Love,’ from Twelfth Night, reminding us of that fateful day in 1602 when the work which is, to me, Shakespeare’s greatest play, was performed. The concluding Brahms did nothing to dispel the sense of history and place created by the Haydn, and by this unique hall with its ideal setting for this most evenly matched of Lieder partnerships.

Melanie Eskenazi


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