SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Mahler and Vienna in Song:  a recital of songs by Schubert, Berg, Schoenberg and Mahler, Monica Groop (mezzo-soprano) and Rudolf Jansen (piano), Jerwood Hall, St Luke’s, London 22.11.07 (JPr)

This was the second programme I had seen in this series, featuring the Finnish mezzo-soprano Monica Groop accompanied by the veteran Dutch pianist, Rudolf Jansen in a programme of Schubert, Berg, Mahler and Schoenberg.

Franz Schubert's remarkable gifts for melodic composition are most widely remembered today through his songs for voice and piano. He was much less successful when writing operas or duos for solo instrument with piano, and his ability to produce many songs in a very short time is the stuff of legend. So although he composed for every available medium, among his compositions that survive, his art songs or Lieder are by far the largest portions of his work. The lieder Schubert set with texts of Wolfgang von Goethe from his West-östlicher Divan are amongst his most inspired songs. A small number of these orient-inspired poems were written with Goethe’s secret love Marianne von Willemer, the Suleika of the songs I and II sung by Miss Groop. The world of brief physical encounters and great spiritual longing is never far from these songs and in Geheimnis (Secret) which she also sang, there is often great urgency to the accompaniment. In Suleika II, my first concerns about Miss Groop surfaced as the matchless contralto qualities her voice displays did not seem quite at ease with the joy and rapture needed for phrases such as ‘Freudiges Gefühl von beiden’ (A joyous sense of both).

In Berg's own opinion his Four Songs, Op. 2 (1908-1910), span the divide between tonality and atonality. The first three of them are usually considered to be just about tonal, while the fourth is considered to be Berg's first true ‘atonal’ composition. The first song (Schlafen, schlafen), with text by Friedrich Hebbel, is the first instance in Berg's music of what was to become a favourite technique of his - having a retrograde musical motion written here in ABA form where it reverses towards the end. In the second song, a new compositional method becomes apparent through the overlapping of motifs. The three Alfred Mombert songs each represent one way and another, an attack on tonality, with the third (Warm die Lüfte) being fully successful. There are many features of Berg's mature style in this final song: here among the despair, sorrow and death portrayed in these songs Miss Groop’s voice was ideal,  with the latter song standing out as the highlight of the recital so far.

Unlike his Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen or Kindertotenlieder, Mahler’s five Rückert Lieder do not form a true cycle. The poetic theme of each is underlined by its distinctly individual thematic content and accompaniment,  and Monica Groop performed three of them. As always, the music is strongly dependent on the poetry but Mahler, as to be expected, finds inventive ways to match the intricacies of Rückert’s verse appropriately. Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder warns the listener not to be too inquisitive about the process of creation, and suggests that the poet does not trust even himself to enquire too much as it is the finished work that counts, not how it was achieved. The analogy made with the work of bees in the second song, provides Mahler with the basis for some buzzing musical imagery. The most traditional of the songs was the last composed, Liebst du um Schönheit. The first three stanzas are clear variants of one another and the fourth begins as if it were to repeat the same pattern, but stresses here the words liebe (love) and immer (always) to emphasise that love must be for its own sake, not for beauty, youth or treasure. Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen is one of Mahler’s most beautiful and moving songs and evokes the peace achieved through the poet’s withdrawal from the everyday turmoil of the world and his absorption in the most meaningful and central aspects of his life;  his heaven, his life, and his song. Unfortunately here in ‘I am lost to the world’ words like ‘gestorben’, ‘Gebeit’ and ‘Lieben’ that I wanted just to float a little,  sank away rather too quickly because of the singer’s dark hues.

Miss Groop also sang an eclectic mix of early Mahler songs to conclude her selection including the romantic Erinnerung and the rustically quirky Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht? Here it became evident that, apart from being a fine singer Miss Groop is an outstanding communicator of a song's meaning, an essential feature of any Lieder recital. She adds important characterisation to whatever she is singing about to distinguish between the narrator  - whoever that might be – and between men and women conversing, as well as cuckoos, to find just the right mood every time.

Arnold Schoenberg's historical significance as the father of serialism (i.e. the twelve-tone technique) often obscures the breadth of his compositions. Nothing is more revelatory than his Brettl-Lieder (Cabaret Songs), which demonstrate his most basic musical instincts. Miss Groop sang four of the eight poems that Schoenberh  set to music in 1901; before he moved to Berlin to work as a conductor with Überbrettl, part of Ernst von Wolzogen's Buntes Theater. The original poems were taken in part from a collection, Deutsche Chansons (German Songs), first published in 1900 by Otto Julius Bierbaum. The contents of the volume were seen as being antithetical to the conservative literary trend at the time, and were immediately a success. The poets of the Brettl-Lieder performed by Miss Groop were Frank Wedekind, Otto Julius Bierbaum, Hugo Salus and Emanuel Schikaneder.

In Wedekind's Galathea a narrator describes the desire to touch a young girl, Galathea. He (or she) wants to kiss, in turn, Galathea's cheeks, hair, hands, knees and feet but not her mouth, which is left to the narrator’s fantasy. Schoenberg sets the six verses in a rondo-like fashion ABACAD and closes the song with new music that is similar to the fourth verse. The setting of Bierbaum's Gigerlette is lush and gently humorous and has Fräulein Gigerlette, dressed in snow-white clothing, inviting someone to tea in a room as red as wine and lit by candles. Later, the two take a carriage ride, wonderfully realised in Rudolf Hansen’s accompaniment, to the countryside with Cupid as their driver. In fact,  Mr Hansen was the ideal accompanist throughout , technically dextrous, unshowy but completely supportive through  the whole varied programme.

In Salus’s Der genügsame Liebhaber (Easily Satisfied Lover) a man tells us that his lady friend has a black cat with a soft, velvety coat, and that he has a shiny, smooth bald head. The woman spends all her time caressing her cat's fur, and when he visits her, the ‘pussy-cat’ is in her lap, and it trembles when he strokes it. Later, he puts the cat on his bald head and she strokes it and laughs. Schoenberg's setting has significant variation from verse to verse and is full of suggestive humour. Monica Groop’s gesture on the word üppigen (voluptuous) left not much to the imagination and her expression for ‘Eitschi’ (‘honey-bun’) was very cute.

The final song from ‘The Mirror of Arcadia’ (Dem Speigel von Arkadien) wonderfully and very simply captures in music the effect of a beautiful woman on a passionate man’s heart. Ms Groop's  repeated ‘Bum, bum, bum’ heartbeats were very appealing and a further highlight that brought her official recital programme to a close.
So here,  with black elbow length gloves and matching feather boa (not much good for the BBC Radio 3 transmission on 1 February next year) Monica Groop was in her element with contralto sounds and acting that revealed her even greater potential for opera – she's a firm favourite at Finnish National Opera - than for the concert platform to which she is most accustomed here.

Two encores closed this delightful concert and the first of them was Jeg elsker dig (‘I love you’) by Grieg to celebrate his centenary. I had heard this Danish version also as the encore at the previous Jerwood Hall Lunchtime concert I attended and it was followed by an equally radiant Var det en dröm (Was it a dream?) by Sibelius - the closest thing to an aria that we had in the entire engrossing recital.

Jim Pritchard

 
Picture courtesy of Ms Groop's personal Web Site Here.
 

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