SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Schumann, Tief im Herzen trag’ ich Pein, Gebet, Requiem, Liederkreis Op. 39, 12 Kerner-Lieder Op. 35 : Matthias Goerne (baritone), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano), Wigmore Hall, London, 7. 6.2008.  (ME)


‘Er fasst die Texte so schön auf, so tief ergreift er sie wie ich es bei keinem anderen Componisten kenne, es hat keiner das Gemüt wie Er!’ (He interprets the texts so beautifully; he grasps them like no other composer I know, and no other composer has a soul like his!). Thus Clara Schumann, writing about her husband’s settings of the Kerner Lieder, and similar comments might be applied to Mathias Goerne’s interpretation of both poetry and music. This uncompromising recital provided ample opportunity to hear this voice at its best, although sadly, Pierre-Laurent Aimard was struggling with a shoulder injury which meant that his playing was less assured than usual – however this was still clearly a partnership ideal for this music.

Any recital where the first group begins with a song called ‘Deep in my heart I bear my grief’ and ends with one entitled ‘Requiem’ is not going to be for the faint-hearted, yet there was no sense of wallowing in misery since the nobility and intensity of the performances carried the audience with them. Better known in Wolf’s setting, ‘Tief im Herzen trag’ ich Pein’ sets an atmosphere of profound introspection, with lines such as ‘Den geliebten Schmerz verhehle / Tief ich vor der Welt Gesicht’ rendering it as appropriate an introduction to a recital as ‘An die Leier’. Both here and in ‘Requiem’ Goerne’s tone was revealed in all its burnished glory, nowhere more so than in the challenging ‘Hörst du? Jubelsang erklingt’.

The Eichendorff Liederkreis, during the composition of which Schumann famously said that he wanted to sing himself to death like a nightingale, was given a performance of almost frightening intensity. ‘In der Fremde’ is often taken at a moderate pace, but here the lines were sustained with such melancholy slowness that you wondered how the rest of the cycle was going to develop. Aimard delivered a superb vorspiel in ‘Waldesgespräch’ where Goerne displayed his ability to characterise speakers with gripping dramatic effect whilst avoiding any caricature, and ‘Schöne Fremde’ was sung and played with exactly the right balance between breathless expectation and rapture. The highlight of this cycle, appropriately, was the final song ‘Frühlingsnacht’ with its sense of abandon only just held in check, Goerne’s powerful tone startling the audience at ‘Mit dem Mondesglanz herein’ and Aimard managing to give a gripping account of the nachspiel.

Despite Fischer-Dieskau’s advocacy, the Kerner-Lieder remain the least performed of all Schumann’s song cycles, for the very obvious reasons that the songs are difficult to sustain and almost unvarying in their melancholy. ‘Stirb, Lieb’ und Freud’ tells the story of a young girl for whom ‘heaven has pervaded her heart’ in the shape of taking the veil, and the final stanza reveals that she is the poet’s ‘Herzallerliebste’ – Goerne characterised both speakers superbly, the girl’s ‘O Jungfrau rein’ floating above the stave yet still retaining its richness of tone, and the young man’s final lines movingly evoking his heartbreak. ‘Erstes Grün’ is possibly Schumann’s finest depiction of the contrast between the pain of life and the joy of nature, the exquisitely hesitant piano in every sense the partner of the words, both in this case given with sublime expressiveness.

‘Auf das Trinkglas eines verstorbenen Freundes’ is one of my favourite Schumann songs, and it was the highlight of the evening, the grandeur of its melody, the long-sustained lines and the nobility of its expression all finding their perfect interpreter in Goerne. It is difficult to imagine a more desolate ending to a song cycle than ‘Alte Laute’ – perhaps only ‘Der Leiermann’ is on quite the same plane – yet strangely, as with the latter song, the feeling you are left with after a great performance of it is not one of despair but of the sweet consolation of Art. The final lines, ‘Und aus dem Traum, dem bangen / Weckt mich ein Engel nur’ (Only an angel can wake me from my anxious dream) were sung and played with a hushed reverence, the pause between them as eloquent as any silence I’ve ever heard.

Melanie Eskenazi 


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