Schubert Lieder: Matthias Goerne, Ingo Metzmacher, Wigmore Hall.  20.02. 2007 (ME)

 

 

‘Schöne welt, wo bist du?’  (Beautiful world, where are you?)

 

‘Ein leiser Ton gezogen,

Für den, der heimlich lauschet’ (One faint sound echoes, for him who secretly listens)

 

These first (of ‘Der Götter Griechenlands’) and final (of ‘Die Gebüsche’) lines seem to sum up both the content and mood of the distinct halves of this recital: in the first part, mainly settings of poetry concerned with Classical myth and civilization in which an heroic figure faces up to the often cruel world around him, and in the second, mainly songs of quiet introspection.

 

This is not material or interpretation calculated to please everyone, and those seeking either the dubious quality of ‘variety’ in a recital, or indeed the undoubted pleasure of direct communication between singer and audience, will not have gone home in the most ecstatic of moods, since Goerne seems to have taken on board the (to my mind, irrelevant) objections of some critics to his earlier style of raking the auditorium with his gaze, and is now adopting the stance of many other singers in having the words onstage with him. I’ve already been taken to task by another baritone for suggesting that constant referral to a score isn’t the greatest way to engage an audience, so I’ll shut up about it now and get on with the singing.

 

Four of the songs chosen here are amongst those for which I have the deepest affection, and all were given performances of the most absolute commitment and the most perfect tenderness: ‘Die Götter Griechenlands’ was the ideal introduction to this evening of nostalgia and reflection, with its statement ‘nur in dem Feenland der Lieder / Lebt noch deine fabelhafte Spur’ (only in the enchanted land of song does your fabled memory linger on) and ‘An die Leier,’ often used to begin a recital, allowed Goerne to display the dramatic power of his voice as well as its matchless legato, all ideally supported by Metzmacher’s fluent playing. 

 

The sublime ‘Frühlingsglaube’ is the very epitome of Schubert, and it is a song which Goerne has used in many other recitals with great success, often juxtaposing it with contrasting works such as one of Eisler’s bleaker reflections on the seasons: Schubert’s music and Uhland’s words perfectly evoke the ecstatic optimism of Spring, an optimism tinged with the awareness that ‘April is the cruellest month’ – the placing of the song here was finely judged, in that it seemed to highlight the linked themes of homesickness, ‘Sehnsucht,’ longing for the eternal and the isolation of the sensitive individual, which formed the subject matter of much of what had preceded it. The singing and playing of it touched heights of lyric grace which we are only seldom privileged to hear, every nuance, every subtlety noticed without ostentation, and the seamless legato at ‘Nun muss sich alles, alles wenden’ the epitome of the art of the Lied.

 

The evening’s final song, ‘Abschied’ (Mayrhofer) is the very essence of a sad farewell, and to me is equalled only by very few other songs such as ‘Die Taubenpost.’ So gentle and so slow that one has to almost strain to follow it, the music breathes sorrow and regret, the poet’s enumerations of what he leaves behind echoed by ineffably sweet piano chords: few singers can cope with this kind of expansiveness in phrasing, yet Goerne still makes you feel that he has breath to spare, and his solemn intoning of ‘Lebt wohl! Klingt klagevoll’ lingered long in the memory, as did Metzmacher’s sweetly hesitant, finely phrased nachspiel.

 

Interspersed with these gems were songs of often equal quality, but neglected owing to their length or difficulty. Such things of course do not trouble this singer, and pieces such as ‘Atys’ (Mayrhofer) and ‘Pilgerweise’ (Schober) were given performances of passionate advocacy. The former is not for the faint-hearted: telling the story of the shepherd who was unable to respond to the advances of the goddess Cybele and longed to go back to his homeland, it moves unhesitatingly through his despair, culminating in a suicide which prefigures Mayrhofer’s own, and its demanding phrases were superbly sung and played, the line ‘O Heimweh! Unergründlicher Schmerz’ startling in its intensity, and the final narrative of Atys’ plunge into the woods below sung with unbroken legato so that it merged perfectly into the consolation of ‘Meeres Stille.’

 

‘Pilgerweise’ is one of Schubert’s settings of poems by his friend Franz von Schober, and it is one of his most challenging works both for singer and audience: it expresses the singer’s gift of music and the poet’s of poetry, uniting these with a ‘Winterreise’ – like sense of a journey in which a poor wanderer goes from house to house, and Schober’s words, with their ambivalence and sense of hope in the face of despair, are wonderfully delineated in Schubert’s music. His best-known setting of this poet is of course ‘An die Musik,’ and it was with an intense performance of this, which Goerne thanked the Wigmore Hall and its audience for the award of the first Wigmore Medal, given to him on the 22^nd in recognition of his significance both to the place and to the world of music in general.

 

Melanie Eskenazi