SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Schubert, Strauss, Britten, Duparc, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini: Ben Heppner (tenor), Thomas Muraco (piano). Barbican Hall, London 6.2.2009 (JPr)


The selection of music would have suited any number of recitalists and was entirely unexpected of someone who began as a lyric tenor and later embraced the Wagner repertoire to be hailed as the successor to Lauritz Melchior and his own Canadian compatriot Jon Vickers.

Ben Heppner shares with Vickers, whom I have seen  sing several times in opera and concert, a burly physique and, particularly now later in his career, a muscularity and grainy baritonal quality to his dramatic, if not necessarily heroic tenor voice. He also shares a number of roles with Vickers, most notably, Otello, Grimes and Tristan in which he has had notable successes. Unlike his predecessor he does sing Siegfried and now in his early 50s is singing this for Sir Simon Rattle in the Ring  that he is building at Aix-en-Provence and the Salzburg Easter Festival. Vickers, who like Heppner was a devout Christian and family man, once told me that he found Siegfried in Siegfried a morally repugnant character and refused to sing either this role or  Tannhäuser similar reasons. Vickers did say he would have sung Siegfried in Götterdämmerung, and I  whilst I'm sure that people must have asked him, as far as  I know he never did.

Heppner was born in Dawson Creek and studied at the University Of British Columbia School Of Music. In 1981, he made his opera debut as Rodrigo in Otello at the Vancouver Opera, and performed light roles such as Camille in The Merry Widow and Alfredo in Die Fledermaus with the Canadian Opera Company. However, in 1987, he returned to study, this time preparing for dramatic tenor roles, and won the first Birgit Nilsson Prize in 1988 in the Metropolitan Opera Auditions. He made his US debut at Carnegie Hall that same year and his opera debut was at the Lyric Opera of Chicago with  a small role in Tannhäuser. As part of the Nilsson Prize, he also made his Stockholm debut at the Royal Swedish Opera in 1989 in his first Lohengrin. His La Scala debut was in 1990 as Walther von Stolzing in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. He also stepped in that year to sing Walther at Covent Garden replacing Reiner Goldberg which is when I first heard him. Even though his operatic repertoire includes Verdi, Massenet, Mozart, Puccini and Britten’s Peter Grimes; at that time and especially after his role debut as Tristan in Seattle in 1998, he was being hailed as the best Wagner tenor of this generation. For a number of reasons however, his potential has never been really fulfilled;  there have been cancelled performances along the way and a tendency for the top of his voice to have some fragility when cutting through a loud orchestra.

With no Wagner on the programme there was the lack of many familiar faces in the audience who might have been there  if there had been. Perhaps it was the sheer eclecticism of composers and musical styles here that confused the potential audience and drew barely a few hundred paying customers to the barn that is the Barbican Hall. Even using some good sense and closing the circle and balcony, to  bring everyone together into the stalls the numbers barely filled the hall and there was unfortunately often no-one to sit next to to keep yourself warm on another bitterly cold London evening.

Mr Heppner came onto the platform moving quite gracefully for such a big man but with just the hint of a slight limp. He had a very relaxed easy manner throughout his recital that gave a sense of occasion to each song he sang and he attempted to communicate the poetic texts physically, as well as vocally, once he was perfectly relaxed.

He began with four Schubert songs which were perhaps the least successful of the evening as voice took some time to warm up; ‘Dem Underlichen’ came over as very Wagnerian and I am sure if sung by a true Schubertian would have had more elegance. Here it sounded like an audition for Lohengrin when he sang ‘Gott is es, den ihr preist!’ (‘God it is whom you praise!’). Given Mr Heppner’s religious beliefs you can imagine these Klopstock words would mean a great deal to him and  despite my reservations he sang this and the equally demanding ‘Die Allmacht’ with great conviction. There was evidence of some nice phrasing in the more contemplative ‘Im Abendrot’ and ‘Gott im Frühling’ was notable for bringing to the fore the part that his pianist, Thomas Muraco, would have in enhancing the vocal line with  his clear and subtle playing  - as here with the quick pulsating accompaniment.

The four Strauss songs concluding the first half of the programme suited Mr Heppner’s voice much better. The composer’s longer lines did much to make the voice seemed more relaxed and less effortful. Particularly ‘Das Rosenband’, another Klopstock text, drew a significant ‘performance’ from Mr Heppner who threw out his arms at the rapturous conclusion ‘Und um uns ward’s Elysium’ (‘and Paradise surrounded us’). The final Strauss song ‘Befreit’ found the voice in even more focus yet showed up the dichotomy that exists with Mr Heppner’s vocal state; there was a wonderfully held note for ‘weinen’ (‘weep’) but at the rapturous conclusion ‘O Glück’ (‘O joy’) he sustained the final word for so long that he cut it off only just before he entirely ran out of breath to support it.

The second half began with three Britten songs that came and went and were an acquired taste. Surely ‘Batter my heart’ to John Donne’s words that end with ‘Nor ever chaste, except you ravish mee’ is best left to sopranos.  It  had fast, almost neurotic music, like ‘Proud Songsters’ for which poetry was by Thomas Hardy as was the song sung in between, the elegiac ‘The Choirmaster’s Burial’ (or ‘The Tenor Man’s Story’). This was nicely characterised by Mr Heppner with his glasses on the end of his nose as he intoned the words of the vicar but yet again a long drawn out ‘seraphim’ was not sufficiently sustained. However, the unaccompanied ending of ‘Such the tenor man told when he had grown old’ was very poignant.

The French composer Henri Duparc left only 17 ‘art songs’ although they nevertheless have some importance as part of French vocal repertoire. Although never a full-time student he was a compositional pupil of César Franck and published his first five songs in 1868 with his last surviving song written in 1884. Thereafter, suffering from a nervous complaint, he gave up composition when only 37 and later in life having gone blind he destroyed most of the music he had written. Of the four sung here,  ‘Extase’ has a dreamy Tristanesque introduction in the piano beautifully realised again by Mr Muraco whose contribution as an equal in this recital partnership was illustrated further by the galloping accompaniment for the moving ‘Le manoir de Rosamunde’ and the onomatopoeic ‘hovering bees’ in the  left hand of  ‘Phidylé’. Here in this final song, Mr Heppner who had sung all four songs with grace and elegance and in careful French,  sang particular passionately at the end as the ardent lover demanding a kiss.

With the final group of songs, anyone would have been forgiven for thinking that they had wandered into a Juan Diego Flórez recital with songs by composers probably best known for their operas. Both the Bellini and Donizetti songs required a certain vocal flexibility, most of which has been stripped from Mr Heppner’s voice by his Wagner singing. Using a glass as a prop and acting drunk,  he brought a certain charm to Verdi’s early drinking song (Brindisi). Puccini’s Canto d’anime also showed that the voice is no longer very Italianate and even if I hadn’t warmed to Mr Heppner’s honesty as a song recitalist during the rest of the programme,  he won me over by rising (I think) to a high C on ‘soll’ at ‘Tutto è soll!’ (‘Everything is light’).

As is so often the case,  it was left to the encores to bring in some vocal fireworks. Bracketing a delightfully sung ‘Lauf der Welt’ by Grieg was a slightly tired yet, as a result, vocally compelling ‘Amore ti vieta’ from Giordano’s Fedora and a Dein is mein ganzes Herz by Lehár which he sang in German and English as ‘You are my heart’s delight’. In these encores he brought back memories for me of the great British heroic tenor of the twentieth century Alberto Remedios,  and that for me is truly sufficient praise. As this Lehár song brought theevening to a close with a moistening of my eyes -  because of the way he sang  and seemed to mean everything he was singing  -  Mr Heppner was worthy of the ovation he received> He certainly deserved a much – much - bigger audience.

Jim Pritchard


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