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Music by Schubert and Marx, a  BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert: Petra Lang (mezzo-soprano), Adrian Baianu (piano). Wigmore Hall, London 20.10.2008 (JPr)


In giving information about the music performed in a concert some composers need an introduction and some certainly do not. This lunchtime recital featured songs by two of Austria’s greatest composers; one very well known (Schubert)  and the other almost wholly unknown to concert-going public (Joseph Marx.)

Schubert was born near Vienna at the end of the eighteenth century and seems to have lived the typically nomadic, poverty-stricken, tragically short life of the bohemian artiste. He left us over 600 songs almost all immensely lyrical with a heightened dramatic sense and words and music that are equal partners such that his Romantic masterpieces are essentially duets for voice and piano. It is the singer’s role to provide the drama and the pianist has to create the appropriate ambience by adding colour and a commentary to the words and so enhancing the vocal line. Not for nothing is Schubert considered the ‘father’ of German Lied.

Joseph Marx was born in Graz in 1882 and is described as ‘the master of late Romantic impressionism’. His religious background seems difficult to establish. I must assume his ancestry was Jewish but at some stage there was a conversion to another religion probably Roman Catholicism. At Graz University he studied philosophy and art history although his father wanted him to read law and this caused a family rift. He also had a strong interest in music and continuously composed so by the time he was 34 he had written about 150 songs. In 1914 he was offered the post of professor of theory at the Vienna Music Academy and in 1922 he became director of the Academy, and he was rector (1924-27) when the institution was reorganized as a ‘Hochschule für Musik’. He then acted as adviser to the Turkish government in establishing a conservatory in Ankara (1932-33). From 1931 to 1938 he was music critic for the Neues Wiener Journal and after WWII he worked in the same capacity for the Wiener Zeitung. During the war he apparently was the most frequently performed composer in Austria which becomes apparent in the fact that he was later president, chairman or honorary member of many important Austrian music associations and societies for over two decades until he died in Graz  on 3 September 1964 at the age of 82. Quite what his relations were with the Nazis seems also difficult to establish but he appears to have been unstintingly, and often covertly, helpful to Jewish colleagues, as well as, Jewish families facing deportation.

Marx composed for most of his 43 years as a teaching professor in composition, harmony and counterpoint but most of his songs are from the early part of his life. It is believed during his life he had over 1200 students from all over the world many of whom later themselves became famous as composers, conductors, soloists, musicologists etc. Joseph Marx’s musical inspiration was nourished by a deep and spiritual love of ‘Mother Nature’ to whom he wrote so many glorious hymns of love. Although born a year after Webern and eight years after Schoenberg his music is rooted in tonality and its moods are often sensuous, optimistic and even hedonistic.

The singer of a programme of songs by Schubert and Marx needs to have a remarkable range, show fine dramatic interpretation and have a voice with a rich palette of colours and dynamics. The mezzo-soprano, Petra Lang is one of this century’s finest operatic and Lieder singers and one of the few voices today with precisely all those qualities. Ms Lang’s presence and dramatic instincts are immense, her diction impeccable and her voice an instrument of rare power with a rich, warm middle and laser-bright sound at the top. She is also capable of revealing, where appropriate, appealing sensitivity and finesse. In the Schubert how empathically she sang ‘Dort find ich bald den Vielgeliebten’ (‘I’ll soon find my dear beloved’) in his erotically-charged Suleika 1. She showed increasing ardour in the Faustian Gretchen an Spinnrade against the background spinning accompaniment of the piano. There were moments of outstanding breath control such at ‘Ein leiser Ton gezogen’ (‘One faint sound echoes’) in Die Gebüsche and ‘Ist die Seele, die liebt’ (‘Is the soul that loves’) from Klärchens Lied.

If the seven Schubert songs needed refined vocal control then the seven by Joseph Marx allowed Petra Lang to sing with operatic virtuosity at times. She is a natural stage animal and even if, as here, starkly dressed just in black she focussed the audience’s attention directly on her. In Waldseligkeit, a poem of intense longing that Strauss also set to music, she entered soprano territory for the final line ‘Ganz nur dein’ (‘Utterly and only yours’). Windräder was darkly ominous and there was a fitting poignancy to Regen. Ms Lang gave Nocturne a wonderfully rhapsodic conclusion and she brought the anticipation of a woman for her new love to Und gestern hat er mir Rosen gebracht taking out her impatience at the end of the rising phrase ‘Ach käm’ er zu mir’ (Oh would he come to me) with intense lyrical abandon.

Her encore was Marx’s eloquent ‘Valse de Chopin’ and with the long introduction only then did her accompanist get an opportunity to show-off. Elsewhere Adrian Baianu was the perfect foil for Ms Lang and he provided a wonderfully subtle accompaniment to all the songs. He allowed the wonderful soundworlds of the Schubert and Marx Lied to ‘speak’ for themselves; whether it was the ‘raging torrents’ of Schubert’s Sehnsucht, those spinning-wheel sounds for his Gretchen am Spinnrade or the underlying urgency he gave to Bei dir allein!. For the Joseph Marx songs his accompaniment was of equally impeccable timbral refinement; the woodland stirred in Waldseligkeit, there was a tinkling sound for the ‘Sweet fragrance of the lime-blossom’ in Nocturne and he had positively relished, as Marx apparently once did, the decrescendi and ritardandi of Windräder. It was a masterclass of how a great accompanist can accompany a great singer and an equal partner gives a compelling and emotionally engaging performance.

Jim Pritchard

For details of forthcoming masterclasses in November by Petra Lang and Adrian Baianu please see the Royal College of Music website HERE.


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