This event was the first in a series of some 40 concerts celebrating
William Lyne’s 36 years as Director of the Wigmore Hall, an era which
will end with his retirement in May 2003, the month of the final Gala
which will bring down the curtain on a unique career as the Hall’s guiding
light: those 40 or so concerts, in addition to the Wigmore’s ‘normal’
programme of song recitals and chamber music of the highest quality,
will feature some of the greatest musicians of our time, including Peter
Schreier, Andreas Scholl, Ian Bostridge, Anne Sofie von Otter and Matthias
Goerne, all very strongly associated with the Wigmore either through
having first made their names there or simply through having developed
a mutually affectionate relationship with the place and its audience.
It is fitting to refer to the coming events on this occasion, since
it has been typical of this venue under this leadership that the outlook
is to the future, not only in the sense of fostering the careers of
young artists but also in taking a 21st century approach
to access to the concerts in terms of educational activities and inspired
use of media opportunities.
The present evening could hardly have provided a better
example of what the Wigmore is about; a programme of great music, programmed
with inspiration and performed by singers and pianists who have very
few equals in the world. That, simply stated, is what this Hall is for,
and its packed houses for such events are ample demonstration of the
fact that there is no need for the incoming director to import incongruities
such as ‘World Music’ or in any way ‘dumb down’ what it offers – it
is unashamedly elitist, in the non-pejorative sense of that word, and
that is part of its very strength.
Schubert wrote of his performances of the ‘Ellens Gesänge’
with the baritone Michael Vogl, that ‘The way in which Vogl sings and
I accompany, and how we seem in such a moment to be one, is for these
people something quite new…’ and whilst such perfect union is hardly
‘new’ for Wigmore audiences, Angelika Kirchschlager and Julius Drake
sang and played with such unanimity of purpose and intimacy that the
songs themselves sounded as fresh as though we were hearing them for
the first time. Kirchschlager is one of those very rare singers who
are able to arrest your attention at once, on both an intellectual and
an emotional plane; she shares with Matthias Goerne a level of focus,
control and intensity which enables her to become at one with the song
in an instant – there is no sense of warming up, since you are immediately
there with her in the words and music. Both ‘Raste Krieger!’ and ‘Jäger,
ruhe von der Jagd’ were superbly characterized and full of attention
to detail; in the former, her variety of tone colours in such lines
as ‘Die im Zauberlande blühn’ was masterly, and she fined down
her voice to the merest thread at the end to stunning effect, with Drake
providing exquisitely delicate accompaniment in the final stanza, just
as exactly as he had evoked the galloping steeds of battle in the sixth
stanza.
‘Ave Maria’ was entirely free of the cloying sentimentality
which it often acquires; this was edgy singing, not at all ‘gemütlich,’
and of course not without risks – the attack on the first phrase was
not quite clean, but it was more than compensated for by the superb
legato of ‘Jungfrau mild’ and the heartfelt plea of ‘Ave Maria! Unbefleckt!’
The same level of passionate commitment was found in the next group,
Wolf’s ‘Mignon Lieder,’ where a slightly thin tone at the end of ‘So
lasst mich scheinen’ detracted hardly at all from a deeply committed
performance. The highlight of the first half of the concert was ‘Kennst
du das Land,’ which displayed Drake’s wonderfully empathetic, fluid
playing and Kirchschlager’s intense, superbly varied response to the
text; her voice has about it a tremulous quality, without at all suggesting
any lack of steadiness, which is deeply affecting, and it was heard
to great advantage in the anguished ‘Geht unser Weg; O vater, lass uns
ziehn!’ They were joined by students from the Royal College of Music
for the part-song setting of ‘Ständchen,’ once again highlighting
the value placed by this Hall on looking to the future, and providing
those who had not previously heard this side of Schubert with a new
and delightful experience.
The second half belonged to Ian Bostridge and Mitsuko
Uchida, who gave highly individual readings of Schumann’s ‘Liederkreis’
Op. 39 and Britten’s ‘Winter Words.’ As with Kirchschlager and Drake,
these artists give performances which are not cosy and predictable but
risky and thought-provoking, and so it was with the ‘Liederkreis,’ which,
as Richard Stokes reminds us in his learned and readable notes, ‘is
no idyll.’ True, and Bostridge’s approach was angular, bitter and disquieting,
with most of the expected beauty being provided by Uchida’s delicate,
intensely romantic, supple playing. There was little sense, at least
in the singing, of Schumann’s ecstatically fervid state of mind when
he wrote the cycle – ‘I want to sing myself to death like a nightingale.’
– instead, we experienced a melancholy and sometimes highly sardonic
reading, with the high points coming in the more dramatic songs such
as ‘Waldesgespräch’ rather than the more usually rapturous ones.
Indeed, rapture was in short supply here; Bostridge sang such lines
as ‘Und meine Seele spannte’ (Mondnacht) and ‘Zu mir, phantastische
Nacht’ effortfully rather than passionately, and the final ‘Frühlingsnacht’
was not the usual release of idealized bliss.
‘Winter Words’ was a different story altogether; if
‘Liederkreis’ had seemed cool at times, this was as committed a display
of singing as could be imagined – indeed, I cannot recall a finer performance
of these marvellous songs. Hardy’s poetry called forth from Britten
some of his most exact and inventive settings, and this music catches
uniquely that characteristically Hardyan sense of the conflict between
man’s vulnerability and Nature’s (or God’s) indifference. Bostridge’s
diction, expressiveness, phrasing and characterization here were all
exemplary, nowhere more so than in those little, seemingly casual phrases
such as ‘as if incurious quite’ and ‘The baby fell a-thinking’ and his
astringent tone and swaggering phrasing at ‘This life so free is the
thing for me’ caught the authentic note both of Hardy’s irony and Britten’s
austerity. Uchida accompanied with unobtrusive virtuosity, such touches
as the piano’s echoing of a train whistle in ‘Midnight on the Great
Western’ and the imitation of a violin in ‘At the Railway Station, Upway’
being exactly done, and the whole perfectly capturing Britten’s directness.
‘The Choirmaster’s Burial,’ sometimes known as ‘The
Tenor Man’s Tale,’ is one of Hardy’s most moving poems, and Britten’s
setting of it is one of his greatest achievements, combining the grand,
canon – like tune of ‘Mount Ephraim’ with a vocal line that is at once
intensely lyrical and nobly sparse, and Bostridge’s performance of it
would be enough to convince anyone that every word of the lavish praise
that has been heaped upon him is justified. His open, engaging tone
in the beginning of the narrative, his deeply moving ‘As soon as I knew
/ That his spirit was gone,’ his almost vicious characterization of
the Vicar’s prosaic point of view and his gripping telling of the tale’s
conclusion, with the ghostly band singing over the grave, all represented
singing of true greatness.
The musical part of the evening concluded with two
encores which were as graceful a tribute to William Lyne, and as loving
a hymn to Franz Schubert, as could possibly be imagined; I assume they
had been chosen because they are particular favourites, and they were
given performances which were amongst the finest I have heard. Bostridge
sang ‘Nähe des Geliebten’ with beautiful tone, impassioned phrasing
and perfectly judged rubato, each ‘Ich denke / Ich höre…’ leading
to a lovingly shaped, exquisitely shaded stanza, and Uchida accompanied
him with eloquent warmth.
Kirchschlager’s singing of ‘Der liebliche Stern’ was
the epitome of everything that great Schubert singing should be; she
gave just the right amount of pathos to ‘der Busen so bang und schwer’
without overloading the phrase, she spun out the most perfect legato
throughout, and both she and Drake scrupulously observed the marking
of ‘Etwas langsam’ so that instead of the jolly little rocking rhythm
one so often hears in this song, it was given the most earnest slowness,
making ‘Es zittert von Frühlingswinden’ so poignant that I’m sure
I cannot have been the only one to feel a furtive tear coming.
John Tusa, one of the Hall’s Trustees, made a graceful
closing speech in which he referred to the Wigmore’s ambitious plans
for the future, including acquiring the Hall’s lease and pressing on
with the aim of making concerts available to audiences other than the
privileged 450 or so who form the regular attendees. Such an aim would
certainly prove worthwhile if the feedback which I regularly receive
after reviewing Wigmore concerts is anything to go by, with message
after message, from all over the world, saying that for the few minutes
during which they were reading about the concert, they had felt as if
they had been present, and wished that they too could enjoy the ‘live’
experience of concerts such as those given on this evening.
Melanie Eskenazi
Return to:
Music on the Web