I’m sure that Graham Johnson
was referring to people like me when he wrote
in tonight’s programme that certain connoisseurs
might regret the presence of so many ‘plums’
in one evening, but of course even I recognize
that there are times when it’s right to assemble
a programme of beloved works, and this was
the perfect occasion – a celebration of the
anniversary of the composer to whom Johnson
always refers as ‘our beloved Franz Schubert,’
with the music chosen exclusively by the Friends
of the Wigmore Hall. I had no qualms about
letting go of my habitual desire to experience
new insights at a recital, although I did
wonder how some pieces managed to get into
the final cut (can a large number of Friends
really have voted for the Szene aus Faust
as opposed to, say, Im Frühling?
)
The singers were a contrasting
pair, and I do not mean that in the sense
of being a soprano and a baritone: Geraldine
McGreevy must be one of the least ‘hyped’
singers around today – her career seems to
be progressing quietly, without much glitz
about it, whereas Christian Gerhaher had barely
made his Wigmore Hall debut before one found
him popping up all over the place, copiously
endowed with lavish praise and, astonishingly,
making recordings of Schubert’s song cycles,
not to mention a forthcoming Schumann Dichterliebe.
Happily, he appears to have come through the
hype relatively unscathed, and he has lost
some of his rather irritating mannerisms,
but this is still not an especially remarkable
voice: he is one of half a dozen or so baritones
who make a very pleasing sound, but he does
not possess any special quality that would
make me want to listen to him in preference
to others. He opened the evening with ‘Sei
mir gegrüsst’ which would certainly be
high on my list of least favourite
Schubert songs: as Gerald Moore wrote, ‘…the
beloved sends greetings and kisses with awful
tedium about twenty times’ and it’s quite
a challenge for the singer to vary those expressions
of love – Gerhaher sang it with a smooth line
and confident projection, also much in evidence
during ‘Greisengesang’ with its taxing low
notes.
McGreevy’s voice is similarly
pleasing rather than exceptional, but she
has a freshness and directness of approach
which sometimes brings Elly Ameling to mind,
and her singing of ‘Lachen und Weinen’ was
unfussy and had just enough charm not to be
too cloying. The following song ‘Du bist die
Ruh’ is surely one of Schubert’s most challenging,
and it was here given a very fine performance,
maybe just lacking the perfect finish to ‘deinem
Glanz’ but shaping ‘Oh füll es ganz!’
beautifully – Graham Johnson accompanied her
with loving skill, although there were times
elsewhere in the programme where I found his
playing uncharacteristically percussive and
detached. The soprano’s most successful singing
came in the two ‘Suleika’ songs, where she
gave just the right note of enraptured bliss
at ‘Ach, die wahre Herzenskunde’ and conveyed
all the beloved’s breathless emotion at ‘Eile
denn zu meinem Lieben.’ Graham Johnson clearly
relished the brisk accompaniment in the second
song, but in the first I would have liked
a more sensitive transition at that wonderful
moment after ‘Vielgeliebten’ when the piano
part begins its devoted reflection.
Gerhaher’s ‘Erlkönig’
was workmanlike rather than frisson – inducing,
but he gave a fine performance of ‘Die Taubenpost’
showing how much he has grown in musical stature
since I first heard him sing it about eighteen
months ago. Seidl is not everyone’s favourite
poet, but he called forth from Schubert some
of his most perfect songs, including ‘Wiegenlied’
with its wonderfully evocative rocking accompaniment,
sung with warmth and tenderness by Geraldine
McGreevy, and ‘Im Freien’ which was given
a well judged performance by Gerhaher – ‘Durch
die blanken Scheiben sehn / Augen, die mir
gut!’ went particularly well.
‘Totengräbers Heimweh’
would definitely be high on my list of favourites:
I think it is one of the greatest songs in
the whole repertoire, and it was fitting that
it should be here as the penultimate piece:
Gerhaher gave it a stoically determined performance,
strong on commitment and ease of line but
weak on that essential sense of a journey
which this song must have. With similar appropriateness,
‘An die Musik’ concluded the scheduled programme,
sung with sweet devotion by the soprano, who
also gave the single encore, ‘Ganymed’ which
was apparently one of the ‘also – ran’ selections.
How could one do other than leave the hall
enveloped in a rosy glow, after being warmed
by so many perfect songs by the composer who,
as Johnson remarks in his programme notes,
knew how to reach his public and to keep them
enchanted for nearly two centuries.
Melanie Eskenazi
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