SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Robert and Clara Schumann, Mahler, Horovitz, Elgar, Gurney, Clarke, Nelson and Hoiby:  Catherine Wyn-Rogers (mezzo soprano), Roger Vignoles (piano) Wigmore Hall, London 22.4.2008 (JPr)


Great evenings seems to be following me around at the moment; after already perhaps hearing my concert of the year I can make the distinction and suggest this was finest ‘recital’ I have heard for some while. In two contrasting halves, thirteen Rückert poems set by Robert and Clara Schumann and Mahler  were followed by a scena and songs, which if not exactly British, at least were all in English and mostly from the twentieth century.

Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866) was born in Bavaria and studied classical languages and literature at the universities of Würzburg, Heidelberg and Jena. From 1811 he lectured at the University of Jena, and after 1819 devoted himself primarily to Oriental studies at the Erlangen University (1826-1841), and until he retired, at the Berlin University (1841-1848). His poetry, almost unrivalled in German literature, first attracted attention in 1814 when his Geharnischte Sonette (Demanding Sonnets) appeared. These were inspired by the War of Liberation against the French, a time when Napoleon’s military power was in decline, and these patriotic poems were hugely popular. Rückert's most popular love poems appeared in the collection Liebesfrühling (Love in Springtime, 1844), while Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children, 1872), published posthumously, contains 425 poems that are eloquent expressions of the grief of a father after two of his children die in only sixteen days. Among the best of Rückert's works are his aphorisms, Die Weisheit des Brahmanen (1836-1839; The Wisdom of the Brahman, 1882). About 1,100 of Rückert’s poems have been set to music, notably as sung here by Robert and Clara Schumann and, of course, Gustav Mahler.

Two of the finest of the Robert Schumann group were Mein schöner Stern! (My lovely star!) and Zum Schluss (At the last). The former is seemingly otherworldly but hints at dark forces at work within the composer,  whilst the latter has a soft elegiac quality to it. In all these songs Ms Wyn-Rogers’ excellent German diction and her ability to use the words to create the emotion of each songs, whether it is radiance, introspection, love or loss, was emphatic.

Robert Schumann famously wrote to Clara early in 1840 ‘Perhaps you think that since I compose so much, you can be idle. Come on write a song! Once you’ve begun, you won’t be able to drag yourself away. It’s far too enticing.’ Due to health reasons she could not comply with his wishes until about June 1841. Of the four sung in this recital the most interesting were Er ist gekommen (He came in storm and rain) which was agitated both in the accompaniment and vocal line. Here particularly,  the sensitivity and lightness of touch of her pianist Roger Vignoles was an essential ingredient of a beautifully interpreted song,  as it was often throughout the splendid evening.

In was interesting to compare Clara Schumann’s setting of Liebst du um Schönheit with the Mahler version that Ms Wyn-Rogers sang soon afterwards. Richard Stokes’s programme note claims that Clara's is ‘more than a match for Mahler's’. Whilst undoubtedly it is a fine song it is more reflective and questioning than Mahler’s more famous version. For Clara the emphasis is ‘I shall love you ever more’ compared to Mahler’s more insistent ‘I shall love you …’. (Richard Stokes writes that Mahler hid the poem for Alma to find in Siegfried; actually, according to Alma’s earliest recollections it was Die Walküre and its seems that she changed her mind later.))

Perhaps I did just miss a little stillness and repose that might be there in Um Mitternacht as Ms Wyn-Rogers made an incredible dramatic statement out of this doleful poem. Nevertheless, with a notably and dreamily, honey-toned, Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft (I breathed a gentle fragrance) and  in Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (I am lost to the world) she brought a spirituality to her singing that could only come from deep with herself. She is one of the best interpreters of Mahler’s songs currently available and this brought an emotional end to the first half of the recital.

In the presence of the composer, now in his eighties, the second half began with Joseph Horovitz's Lady Macbeth - A Scena sung as a showcase not so much for Ms Wyn-Rogers’ undoubted vocal art, burnished mezzo tones and exquisite breath control, as for her great dramatic gifts: and this undoubtedly set the scene, as it were, for what was to follow. Her depiction of mental fragility and a clear descent in madness just prior to singing ‘Out, damned spot! Out, I say!’ was worthy of the Globe and not just Wigmore Hall.

This unique mixture of convincing drama allied to the singer’s natural charisma and grace continued through many of the remaining songs on this programme. There was a poignant Speak Music,  a setting by Edward Elgar of a poem by A. C. Benson, once Master of Magdalene College  but now better known for writing the words of Land of Hope and Glory for Clara Butt, to the tune of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance No.1 This harked back more to the Schumann songs of the mid-nineteenth century than to the Mahler ones of 1901 barely a year before Speak Music was composed. There followed two songs by Ivor Gurney  who like Robert Schumann, spent time in a mental hospital. The first was Thou dost delight my eyes and the second,  a 1917 setting of the verses Even such is time,  reputed to have been written by Sir Walter Raleigh  on the eve of his execution in 1618. Ms Wyn-Rogers sang the concluding line ‘My God shall raise me up, I trust’ with ecstatic fervour and beauty.

The final three songs and the well-deserved encore were by four composers less well-known to me. First there were three very singular settings; Rebecca Clarke’s 1942 The donkey to words by G. K. Chesterton. This is an account of Palm Sunday and here there was that donkey heard hee-hawing in the piano and a very inward, almost spiritual, ‘And palms before my feet’ sung after a wonderfully sustained note on ‘ears’. Havelock Nelson's 1985 Dirty Work was delicately humorous and Ms Wyn-Rogers laughed as Maria Jane gave her neighbours poisoned tea and ‘watched them drink it down’. Lee Hoiby’s setting of Jabberwocky to Lewis Carroll’s words is full of theatricality  - both in the piano where you hear a skipping child  - and in the singer’s performance where she almost made those young-at-heart in the audience believe there was a Jabberwock in the Wigmore Hall. The outcome of this song was perhaps greater than the sum of its parts.

There was enthusiastic applause from the audience for the official end of the concert and the audience was rewarded with a final song, Thomas Dunhill’s The Cloths of Heaven sung with great sensitivity and an inner light that was a feature of Catherine Wyn-Rogers’ splendid recital.

In the Wigmore Hall programme there was a page about an appeal to be launched this summer for more funds to secure the future of this concert venue. Regrettably this evening given by one of Britain’s foremost singers was not a sell-out which begs the question of whether  audiences exist to sustain the sort of scheduling that Wigmore Hall currently offers. Perhaps like other smaller venues such as St. John’s Smith Square,  Wigmore Hall must face up to the realism that it cannot have something on every evening. It may also need  to make greater efforts to build up a new, younger, audience to fill its small auditorium most evenings. Only then will it actually have a future.

Jim Pritchard

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