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Shostakovich, Wolf and Brahms: Matthias Goerne (baritone) Alexander Schmalcz (piano) Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, 2.10.2008  (ME)

Shostakovich, Suite on words by Michelangelo Buonarroti, Op. 45
Wolf, Three Michelangelo Lieder
Brahms, Four Serious Songs, Op. 121


‘How beautifully Charity shines forth from the 3/4 time and how heartrending is the introduction of the 4/4 time! If only one could hear it sung once with all the beauty that one sees in it.’ (Josef Joachim, on the final song of the Four Serious Songs) One rarely hears the work sung with all its beauty, still less with the kind of magisterial authority with which it was invested last night. Goerne is of course the master in this repertoire, but here he surpassed even himself in a performance which gripped the audience from first line to last – what can at times seem a weary trudge through Biblical texts was here given with searing intensity, especially in the third and fourth songs.

‘O Tod, wie bitter bist du’ is about the uselessness of material possessions and the promise of solace which death offers to the needy, and its wonderfully consoling melody is often almost crooned as a relief from the drama of ‘Ich wandte mich,’ but here Goerne and Schmalcz brought out its sense of urgency in phrases which unfolded its drama rather than merely narrated. ‘Wenn ich mit Menschen’ deals with the most profound questions about man’s existence, and it was given a definitive performance, the glorious melodic arches of the long lines drawn out with fervour.

The second half of the concert began with Wolf’s Michelangelo Lieder, written for bass because, according to the composer ‘Of course a sculptor has to sing bass’ and it was indeed a quality of rough-hewn grandeur which we heard in them, most obviously in the first liens of ‘Alles endet, was entstehet’ and the furious intensity of the final part of ‘Fühlt meine Seele’ in which the line ‘daran sind, Herrin, deine Augen Schuld!’ was not  an avowal of love but a declaration of obsession.

Shostakovich’s choice of Michelangelo’s poems reflects his own preoccupations with creativity, the nature of inspiration, patronage and censorship, and this performance was at its most profound in ‘Tvorchestvo’ where the poet avers that ‘the block remains unfashioned for me / until the divine blacksmith – and only he - / lends his aid with a blow of full weight’  - superbly sung and played. The cycle’s final song, ‘Bessmertie’ (Immortality) has a remarkable piano part which always makes me think of Schubert’s ‘Tauschung’- Schmalcz played it with the self-effacing artistry which had characterized his performance throughout. You cannot help but imagine a vast, rolling Russian bass singing these songs, but it is certain that whatever extra sonority might thus be brought to the lines, they could not be performed with greater commitment or presented with more exalted musical values.

Interval discussion amongst friends revolved around the relatively small audience – the hall was no more than half full, which we assumed was due to the uncompromising seriousness and ‘no-lollipop’ nature of the programme, but we also wondered about the dearth of other critics present. Were they, and many of the target audience, over the river at the Wigmore Hall at the Christian Gerhaher recital? An unfortunate clash, which one hopes won’t be repeated in future evenings in the South Bank Centre’s excellent ‘International Voices’ series – future delights include David Daniels on October 15^th, Christopher Maltman on February 10^th, and Anna Netrebko and Dmitri Hvrostovsky on May 19^th.

Melanie Eskenazi


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