As I write this review, it is exactly two years to
the day since I heard Goerne and Schneider perform their revelatory
'Die schöne Müllerin' at the Wigmore Hall, and since then
it has sometimes seemed that hardly a month has gone by without one's
being presented with yet another would-be 'great Lieder singer' possessing,
one is assured, 'a beautiful voice,' so it is good to be able to write
that the real thing is here at last - the most genuinely beautiful voice
of his generation in the recording of this great cycle which puts the
music before the singer's own ego and leaves no doubt that these songs
do not need to be sung by a tenor in order to evoke raw and tender emotions.
Richard Capell famously wrote that Schubert's music '…suggests
a rippling movement and by the side of the rippling a flowering: it
has the variety and unsurprising naturalness of moving water and springing
herb,' and it is this naturalness and flowing quality which is first
apparent in Goerne's singing, which may surprise those who have come
to regard him as a cerebral, anxious interpreter. There is plenty of
anxiety here, when the music and poems call for it, but the singing
is of such matchless beauty that one is not as aware of this element
as one might be during a live performance. This is not to say that the
interpretation is merely pretty: Goerne and Schneider are not offering
us a pastoral idyll with a sad end, but a melancholy, introspective
evocation of a period in the life and death of a man who, to paraphrase
Graham Johnson, fails to live up to what is expected of him, particularly
in terms of the stereotypes of manliness and heroism.
'Das Wandern' is of course what any jolly miller boy is meant to sing,
and Goerne does it beautifully, with that sense of the voice arising
naturally from the innermost part of him, and the most perfect, golden
tone - yet you still sense that these hearty sentiments are all a pretence
for this character, whose preferred milieu is much more sequestered
and problematic. At the line 'Vom Wasser haben wir's gelern't,' the
voice acquires even more smoothness and a more marked flowing quality,
although, strangely, this is not echoed in the piano, which resolutely
strides on. The final stanza finds singer and pianist united in a sense
of innate rhythm, and in the voice, that sense of forced cheerfulness
which hints at trouble to come.
'Danksagung an den Bach' gives us beautifully judged playing, with
the voice naturally arising out of it; the phrase 'hab ich's verstanden'
finely suggests the wonder of the question, and 'für's Herze' is
ideally tender. The exquisite 'Der Neugierige' is sung and played more
beautifully than I have ever heard it, the delicately hesitant opening
bars so suggestive of a tentative questioner, and 'O Bächlein,
meiner Liebe…' is shaped like a devout prayer. 'Morgengruss' shows
that Goerne can astonish us with technique when he feels the need to,
the final lines 'Und aus die tiefen Herzen ruft / Die Liebe Leid und
Sorgen' being taken seamlessly and with a sense of powerful ease.
If any one song can epitomize what this interpretation is about, then
it is 'Pause,' which John Reed believed to be 'the most subtle and inspired
song in the cycle.' Schneider's articulation is a small miracle in the
vorspiel, managing to make the piano sound as near to a lute as can
be imagined, and when the voice emerges it is as though from a trance-like
state; the lover is too enraptured to be precise, and the singer captures
this hazy mood to perfection. 'Mein Herz ist zu voll' is deeply felt
but not overblown, and 'durchschauert' (shudder) is superbly onomatopoeic.
'Mit dem grünen Lautenbande' is not the pretty ditty we usually
hear, but an outburst of anger which seems to contain real desperation,
as though the lover already knows what is to come next. 'Die böse
Farbe' matches an angry, almost raucous accompaniment with singing of
searing intensity - this obsessed young man's loathing for his once-
loved green, his disturbing desire to lie forever at her door repeating
'Ade' and his reckless bravado at the end , are all presented with the
most burning conviction. 'Trockne Blumen' begins with a kind of numb
grief which brings 'Gefrorn'e Tränen' to mind, and the crucial
lines about tears being powerless to bring dead love to life are poignant
without being mawkish; the final stanza, with its thrusting repetition
of 'Heraus, heraus!' leaves the listener in no doubt that the miller
lad's repressed sexuality has emerged at last, if only in the stunning
climax of the vocal line.
After this, only what Johnson finely calls 'heavenly detachment' is
possible, and although the final songs may well be taken too slowly
for some, I found Goerne's rapt, intense mezza-voce and Schneider's
intimate, eloquent playing perfection, especially in the closing song,
where the mesmerizing pathos of the voice underlines the grim reality
of what the protagonist has done: 'ihr macht meinem Schläfer die
Träume so schwer' - and so our own dreams are troubled, by the
haunting import of Schubert's music as it is given to us in this deeply
searching interpretation.
Must comparisons be made? Of course, they are always expected if ultimately
pointless; if it has to be a tenor in this music, then the choice is
between Bostridge's sweet tone and beseeching manner and Schreier's
anguished, deeply word-sensitive interpretation. If not, then it's Fischer-Dieskau
or Goerne: the former has the inestimable advantage of the incomparable
Moore at the piano, but Schneider's playing is so much of a piece with
Goerne's singing that their performance has a very special singularity.
I could not be without any of the above mentioned (or, for that matter,
Wünderlich or Partridge) but if one choice has to be made I would
have no hesitation with the present recording, since it seems to me
that here Goerne and Schneider have achieved a performance of incomparable
tenderness, poignancy of feeling for the music and understanding of
the import of the narrative, which, as Johnson says, is not merely the
story of a young man who drowns himself because the girl he loves has
fallen for a hunter, but is a lament for all those who are simultaneously
enriched and damned by a poetic nature which cannot face the everyday
world.
Melanie Eskenazi
Matthias Goerne (bar)