Perhaps it was Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s scheduled
attendance at these masterclasses which meant five of the seven singers
were baritones, but in the event flu prevented him coming to London.
His replacement, the eminent mezzo, Christa Ludwig, took over and wryly
pointed out after the seven singers had performed their single lieder
for the audience how depressing the songs had been so early in the morning.
Well, that comes with the territory one could argue, especially when
so many of the baritones chose Wolf or Schubert.
There could be little doubt after their first songs
that all of the singers taking part possessed voices of a high calibre,
even if some impressed more than others, and even if some displayed
much greater artistic integrity than others. Matthias Haussmann, for
example, had already shown in Wolf’s ‘Wer sein holdes Lieb verloren’
a deeply resonant, almost scorched, sound, broad in both colour and
dynamics. Impeccable diction, allied with an equal tonal weight, gave
his performance a tender poignancy. Yet, as Ludwig demonstrated by bringing
greater expressive range to his diction, and by refining his use of
piano to crescendo at certain points, and, most crucially,
by developing the notes more, especially by lengthening the fermata,
Haussmann was able to interpret the moods of the song more convincingly.
His subsequent performance of the song was almost ideal.
Jared Holt’s performance of Schubert’s stark ‘Nachtstück’
was largely overburdened by the power of this baritone’s voice, almost
bordering on a bass. This New Zealander is capable of generating an
extraordinarily dark – and deep – sound yet the voice is somewhat lacking
in colour and intensity and his consonants tend to sound nasal rather
than natural. As Ludwig pointed out to his pianist, the top notes are
not always the most important and this also goes for Holt’s somewhat
pedantic phrasing which attempted to attach a greater significance to
the higher notes than the lower notes, as if compensating for the darker,
more granitic, tone of his voice. In part, his performance required
a better understanding of the language, but as Ludwig noted this could
be achieved by rounding the vowels better, using crescendos more judiciously
and developing the legato line.
Dorothe Ingenfeld chose Mahler’s ‘Wer hat dies Liedlein
erdacht?’ Like most of the singers, an unwillingness to use sufficient
rubato marred a performance that was vocally beautiful but interpretatively
unfamiliar. Whilst Ingenfeld has a poised, even tone, and the lower
voice is more stable than the upper voice, her concept of what this
Mahlerian ode to joy is about largely eluded her. Ludwig encouraged
her to sing with a greater rustic simplicity; the result was that Ingenfeld
brought out the folk elements which in her run-through had been largely
missing.
Christian Immler, by far the brightest toned baritone
of the five, sang Wolf’s ‘Der Tambour’ with impeccable phrasing and
a near-full understanding of the text. With a voice that borders on
a low tenor he had no difficulty whatsoever meeting the demands of Wolf’s
scoring yet if there was a fault with his singing it was that he missed
some of the more graphic elements of the song. For example, when Wolf
writes ‘schnarchen’ Immler was insufficiently gestural enough to convey
the picturesque sound quality required. A similar lack of drama, albeit
more magnified, inflected Anna Dennis’ performance of one of Schumann’s
‘Liederkreis’ Op.39. This soprano has a tendency to grab her notes and
above the stave her voice is rushed and insecure. Often too shrill,
often too loud, and often too emotionally cold her performance was both
forced and contrived (although only at the end of the morning did we
learn that she was a last minute replacement for an indisposed singer
which may have explained this). Ideally, these Schumann songs require
a richer, more opulent voice – their varied moods almost demand it –
and Dennis was, I think, ill advised to have chosen one of them. Ludwig
worked hard to encourage an extra degree of drama and mania from her
performance, and almost succeeded in encouraging the singer to float
the development from piano to crescendo more naturally
but ultimately Dennis didn’t show enough of her soul to make the performance
a convincing one.
The British baritone Adam Green chose two lieder from
Schumann’s Liederkreis Op.24 and gave extraordinarily mature and weighty
performances of both. Although his German is slightly inaudible (a problem
he shared with all the non-German singers, except the Swedish baritone,
Jonas Samuelsson), and there were clear problems with his diction, he
displayed an uncanny ability to grip the listener. The most beautifully
balanced of all the baritones, his voice has a weighty lyricism to it,
which combined with the velvety timbre of his tone, and intense legato
line, gave unusual colour to his interpretations. Ludwig worked on controlling
his crescendos, which had a tendency to be matched by an equally wide
vibrato, but by and large his was the most impressive performance of
the morning.
The final singer, the Swedish baritone, Jonas Samuelsson,
also happened to be the most charismatic. A lack of stage presence was
something which all these singers had in common, until Samuelsson appeared
on stage. Giving a rapt, and intense, performance of one of Schubert’s
Goethe lieder one was aware of a very expressionist timbre, although
it is possible to argue the voice was rather on the small side. Ludwig
achieved a minor miracle in making him lengthen the fermata on the word
‘blick’, encouraging him to make the voice reach the back of the hall
with thrilling results.
All in all, it should be said that Christa Ludwig succeeded
in getting all of these singers to yield to suggestions that improved
the quality of their singing. The results were audibly palpable. Her
manner – partly dry, partly humorous – worked well, and with the help
of a Wigmore audience schooled in German (in which other concert hall
would you get that?) communication between teacher and singer, and teacher
and audience, was never a problem. Unwieldy though these masterclasses
can sometimes be (and this one lasted almost 3 hours without an interval)
their value is unquestionable.
Marc Bridle
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