Intermezzo

a double helping of Matthias Goerne

Matthias Goerne / Helmut Deutsch - Wigmore Hall, 28 February and 2 March 2010

You never know quite what you're going to get in a Matthias Goerne recital. He can be great or unremarkable, surly or welcoming, engaged or indifferent - and he's not averse to switching round meticulously-planned programmes on the hoof. In these two, part of his ongoing 200-song Wigmore Hall Schubert marathon, a little bit of all of the above emerged.

Goerne's appeal has always lain in the rich velvety loveliness of his baritone as much as his artistry. But as soon as he began the first concert on Sunday night, it was obvious something was awry vocally. Whenever he pushed above the softest mezza voce, a tight, grainy, and frankly ugly sound was forced out. I assume tiredness or illness were to blame - the problem was gone by Tuesday.

Though I couldn't be a bigger Goerne fan, it was tough on the ears, and probably a blessing that he skipped one of the programmed songs. The only moment of real beauty was an extraordinarily slow Du bist die Ruh, spun out in such endlessly long-breathed, flowing lines that time seemed suspended. A slight waver as he crowned the stave on erhellt matched the limits of the voice perfectly to the climax of the song and proved that whatever his physical limitations on the night, his musical instincts were unerring.

On Tuesday his voice was back. Back too was his usual sheaf of crib notes, laid unashamedly on the piano's half-open lid. With sixteen songs on the programme, few of them in Goerne's (or indeed anyone's) regular repertoire, this much can be forgiven. What I found surprising though was how little he referred to them, and how much he simply made up as he went along. His substitutions were intelligent, not mere tongue slips - like schaut for the similar-meaning blickt. So it's possible even German speakers would have been none the wiser. In its own way, I suppose that's quite an impressive feat. But still odd. Simple memory lapses, or attempts to recraft the material in his own image?

Failing or not, it was easy to overlook in Goerne's otherwise beautifully-delivered programme. The sombre songs complemented his gifts for the reflective and introspective. The simplicity and sincerity of his Litanei auf das Fest aller Seelen made it the most affecting item of the evening. He rarely unleashed the full power of his voice, but when he did, in Der Zwerg, the air moved as people shot up in their seats. Even the meandering and overlong Viola and the saccharine Stolberg Stimme der Liebe were set out with care and love. 

The stalwart Helmut Deutsch proved the most attentive and least egotistical of accompanists, whether authoritative, as in the Der Tod und das Mädchen prelude, or simply framing the singing of the unpredictable Goerne.

28 February - Der Jüngling und der Tod D545, Das Lied im Grünen D917, Die Herbstnacht D404, Lied (Ins stille Land) D403, Der Herbstabend D405, Drang in die Ferne D770, An mein Herz D860, Der Wanderer D649, Über Wildemann D884, Klage D371, Am Bach im Frühling D361, An die Laute D905, Des Fräuleins Liebeslauschen D698, Augenlied D297, Du bist die Ruh D776, An die Musik D547, An eine Quelle D530, Der Sänger am Felsen D482, Abschied von der Harfe D406, Liedesend D473

2 March - An die untergehende Sonne D457, Der Tod und das Mädchen D531, Die Rose D745, Erinnerung D101, Litanei auf das Fest aller Seelen D343, Auf dem Wasser zu singen D774, Abendbilder D650, Nach einem Gewitter D561, Der Zwerg D771, Im Frühling D882, Stimme der Liebe D412, Die Blumensprache D519, Viola D786, An die Entfernte D765, Bei dir allein D866 No. 2, Ganymed D544

Gergiev's Elektra boils dry

Elektra - LSO / Gergiev - Barbican, 12 January 2010

 Starting on a high is one thing, sustaining it for two hours quite another. Gergiev's Elektra landed such a sucker punch in its opening bars that there was nowhere left to go. A cauldron of seething hormonal hysteria gushed out in an earsplitting tidal wave. Nothing was held back. If Gergiev had reined in his forces there and then, perhaps the climactic moments later on would have registered with full effect. But the same thrilling but ultimately wearing pace was maintained throughout. Even a rollercoaster's no fun if you spend all your time at the top of the ride. He seemed buried in his gigantic Russian-edition score throughout - was it simply a lack of full preparation? He had the temperature of the work down, no doubt, but a sense of form and shape eluded him.

Tellingly, the most gripping passage was the entrance of Orest. Here the drastically reduced orchestration literally forced a moment of quietude, a written-in contrast to the tumult around it.

But where dramatic light and shade was missing, colour was not. Though he recognised that the densely-carpeted score needs binding together more than transparency, Gergiev drew details out like flowers in a forest, not easy with the full orchestral complement of 112 on stage.

The vocal honours went to some of the briefest appearances. Felicity Palmer, a fabulous and terrifying Clytemnestra, was the only singer to consistently pierce through Gergiev's decibels. Matthias Goerne's velvet baritone created a world-weary, enigmatic Orest, riveting in his subdued recognition scene, less effective when he had to force his voice above the orchestra. 

Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet, for all her overbaked writhing, was an unpersuasive Elektra. Serene and lyrical, more concerned with tone than text, the impassivity of her singing contrasted with her constantly flailing body. She sang attractively but without either the power or the vocal expressivity for Elektra's matricidal hysteria to register in all its horror. And she didn't quite have the stamina for this very demanding uncut version of the score, flagging noticeably in the final minutes.

Angela Denoke's Chrysothemis wasn't quite right either. Though she matched her resources intelligently to the demands of the role, ultimately there's too much steel and not enough lyricism in the voice to convey girlish innocence. I don't believe the title role is in Denoke's repertoire yet, but it's the direction her voice is headed. Ian Storey completed a less than perfect cast, singing Aegist efficiently but almost totally without inflection, like a brilliant sight reader who'd just been handed the score. Mariinsky soloists of varying quality were shipped over for the bit parts - no doubt a perk of Gergiev's position, but surely an expensive one?

 

  

 

*****   more photos on next page   *****

Prom 65: Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester live and recorded

Prom 65: Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester / Nott / Matthias Goerne
Prom 66: Nash Ensemble / Masson / Hilary Summers / Claire Booth - Royal Albert Hall, 4 September 2009

Radio and TV Proms broadcasts can offer a very different experience from the live performance, and I don’t just mean in the most obvious way. Technical ‘enhancement’, especially with vocalists, can change the sound entirely.

Take Matthias Goerne in the first Prom of Friday night. On the iPlayer, the first few seconds of his performance are just as I experienced it in the Royal Albert Hall. He sounds distant, muffled, subdued. Then suddenly – switching to a closer mic? – his voice is thrown into crystal clarity, riding above the orchestra. The experience is like being in the first few rows of the Wigmore Hall. The tiniest vocal inflexion tells. It is clear that his Kindertotenlieder cycle was not the half-hearted, under-projected sketch that it seemed from halfway back in the Arena, but a minutely-nuanced portrait, all the more shattering for being drawn on such an intimate scale. Which is the ‘real’ performance? And are the BBC flattering the performers, maximising the broadcast audience’s enjoyment, or simply being dishonest? I’d love to know what standards are applied, and what the BBC are aiming for.

The broadcast couldn’t quite capture the soul of Ligeti’s Atmosphères in the same way, mainly because its dynamic contrasts are so vast. It starts from nothing, but halfway through there’s a buzzing like a billion flies, so loud, so overwhelming, it seems to draw in the walls around it. Jonathan Nott steered the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester expertly through its microtonal textural complexities. Scrappy and tentative playing made Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces and Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra less convincing orchestral experiences

The late night Prom celebrated the 80th birthday of George Crumb, a composer who has slipped under the radar in recent years. The treated piano, megaphones and whale sounds had a sweetly dated air – and surely the accompanying theatrics of masks and movement and offstage playing were designed for a more intimate space than the Royal Albert Hall. But the unassertive playfulness of Night of the Four Moons, Vox balaenae and Ancient Voices of Children - all fortyish years old - spoke of simpler (and better?) times.

What's on in London in September

Summer is nearly over, and at last the concert calendar is filling up.

Proms and alternatives
The Proms seem to have gone on forever, but it'll all be over for another year on 12 September.

Remaining highlights include Mariss Jansons with the Concertgebouw, Riccardo Chailly with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Vienna Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta and Franz Welser-Möst (replacing the scheduled Harnoncourt).

On 4 September there's an unmissable double header - first Matthias Goerne and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester in Mahler, Ligeti, Schoenberg and Strauss, then a late-night George Crumb special.

Incidentally, operatic highlights for the 2010 Proms - you heard it here first - are expected to include Die Meistersinger with Bryn Terfel, Glyndebourne's Don Giovanni, and a substantial chunk of Tristan und Isolde from the Orchestra of the 18th Century with Ben Heppner.

If you want to skip the ghastliness of the last night - something I cannot recommend too highly - alternatives include the Wigmore Hall season opener which is Die schöne Müllerin from Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis.

Or there's a FREE screening of the 1929 silent movie Piccadilly on an outside wall (don't blame me if it rains) of the Royal Festival Hall accompanied by a new score from composers Suki Mok and Ruth Chan. Following the screening, the score "will become the lynchpin of a cross-artform work incorporating dance, drama and video against a backdrop of the original silent movie".

Opera
The Royal Opera House season opens on 7 September with two concert performances of Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix conducted by Mark Elder and featuring Alessandro Corbelli alongside the hotly-tipped Eglise Gutiérrez and Stephen Costello.

Don Carlo has started rehearsals and promises to turn out even better than first time round. Semyon Bychkov conducts, Jonas Kaufmann is in the title role, and the rest of the cast is much the same as it was first time round, with Marina Poplavskaya, Simon Keenlyside and Ferruccio Furlanetto reprising his definitive Philip.

Don't expect much on stage except the singers in born-again minimalist Christof Loy's new production of Tristan und Isolde. Tristan is Ben Heppner and Isolde Nina Stemme, with Matti Salminen, Michael Volle and Sophie Koch completing the cast. Pappano conducts.

English National Opera's season opens with the much-travelled, highly-praised production of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre by La Fura dels Baus.

The Arcola Theatre's variable but occasionally brilliant (and cheap) Grimeborn opera festival continues until 5 September. Handel, Poulenc and Mozart are included amongst the mostly contemporary works.

There's an opportunity to hear Rossini's rarely-performed Il Signor Bruschino and La Scala di Seta as well as The Rake's Progress from British Youth Opera between 4 and 12 September.

And Valery Gergiev conducts the LSO in a concert performance of La Damnation de Faust on 22 September, with a cast including Joyce DiDonato, Michael Schade, Thomas Quasthoff and Florian Boesch.

Concerts
The LSO's season opener is on 20 September, with Gergiev conducting Debussy, Dutilleux and Ravel.

At the Royal Festival Hall, Bernard Haitink conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on 23 and 24 September. And on 25 and 26 September Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO tackle Mahler's 2nd Symphony. Anne Sofie von Otter visits on 30 September with songs from her Theresienstadt CD.

At Wigmore Hall, Matthias Goerne continues his Schubert marathon on 18 and 20 September (a different programme on each night).

And on 28 September it's Imogen Cooper's bus-pass birthday concert. She'll be joined by Wolfgang Holzmair, Mark Padmore, Sonia Wieder-Atherton and Paul Lewis.

Matthias Goerne's Schubert at Wigmore Hall - part 1

Matthias Goerne / Christoph Eschenbach - Wigmore Hall, 15 June 2009

It's Matthias Goerne week at Wigmore Hall. The World's Greatest Singer and his distinguished sidekick Christoph Eschenbach kicked off their three Schubert cycles with Die schöne Müllerin on Monday night (Winterreise follows on Wednesday and Schwanengesang on Saturday). They recently recorded the cycle together - you can listen to the Amazon track previews here.

Goerne can sometimes present an introspective front at recitals, his head dipped over the piano's innards, the audience all but ignored. But here his mood was outgoing, and his curiously graceful squirming and swaying turned the little patch of stage in front of the piano into his own personal ballroom. 

Goerne's protagonist is a man, not a boy. And not just because he's a baritone rather than a tenor - there's an assertive quality to his voice that shades every one of its many colours. While he can give every emotion an adolescent strength of feeling, here is none of the hesitancy of youth. He exploits extremes of tempo and dynamics without histrionics or striving for effect. From his super-slow Des Baches Wiegenlied to his breakneck Der Jäger, all had the inevitability wrought by certainty. 

Goerne never underplays, but even by his standards, this was an incredibly intense performance. Even at the finest lieder recitals, I confess I can drift now and then, but Goerne had me pinned to my seat for the full 80 minutes or whatever it was. He sang mostly in very beautiful and finely controlled mezza voce. Explosions into full voice for passionate outbursts like Mein were sparing and properly shocking, not just digging into the individual words, but shaping the dramatic structure of the whole cycle.

Christoph Eschenbach was not so much an accompanist or even a partner as an extra limb. I didn't see him so much as catch Goerne's eye, yet their symbiosis was total. I can't recall ever hearing a lieder duo quite so well-paired. Eschenbach's contribution was always understated, but never mere background, and responsive to Goerne's every twist and turn.

Standing ovations are few and far between at the Wigmore - quite frankly many in the typical audience are no longer sufficiently sprightly to leap to their feet - but a fair number stood up at the end to show their appreciation.

Only one thing spoiled the evening. I am not a cough nazi and I don't normally bang on about it here, but the amount of coughing between songs was just ridiculous. And it didn't sound like real illness, either, just mass throat-clearing. Do people in a specialist audience like this really not know that the silent moments between songs are part of the cycle, not a rest break? And they were all old enough to know that you should cover your mouth if you really have to cough, so why didn't they? It was quite clearly annoying the artists, and perhaps that was the intention, but ruining everybody's evening is a remarkably selfish and vulgar way to express disapproval. Has it reached the point where venues need to give coughing instructions along with the now-traditional mobile phone announcements at the start?
 

Goerne's Mahler; Mahler's Beethoven

LPO / Jarvi / Matthias Goerne - Royal Festival Hall, 4 February 2009

The Thames from the Royal Festival Hall, 4.2.09

Why did Mahler's arrangement of Beethoven's Ninth arouse hostility in its early Vienna performances? Hard to tell from Neeme Jarvi's LPO presentation - the differences from Beethoven's original score weren't glaring. As Jeremy Barham's very helpful pre-concert talk set out, most of Mahler's changes involved doubling up wind and brass lines, with a few dynamic variations here and there. He added a tuba (unknown in Beethoven's day); he transposed some string lines up an octave. Hardly fundamental stuff. It's easy to suspect any controversy arose more from Mahler's idiosyncratic conducting style than from his subtle tinkerings.

In contrast Neeme Jarvi seemed reluctant to impose himself on the music at all. The Scherzo was lively enough, but the surrounding movements were flabbily anodyne, and the final movement more panicky than joyful. 

A few lapses of ensemble hardly helped, and flute intonation was excruciatingly inexact. At least the choir and soloists did a reasonable job.

The first half's Kindertotenlieder were more successful. The barn-sized Royal Festival Hall seemed to shrink around Matthias Goerne as he confided the painful intimacies.

His voice wasn't quite 100 percent - the traces of a cold perhaps - but he still managed a beautifully nuanced and moving performance, despite some graceless support from the LPO.

  

A double helping of Matthias Goerne

London Sinfonietta / Martyn Brabbins / Matthias Goerne / Thomas Larcher - Queen Elizabeth Hall, 30 September 2008
  and
Matthias Goerne / Alexander Schmalcz - Queen Elizabeth Hall, 2 October 2008

Toru Takemitsu Rain Coming
Thomas Larcher Die Nacht der Verlorenen
Thomas Larcher Antennas...Requiem for H
Toru Takemitsu Tree Line
Thomas Larcher Bose Zellen (Piano Concerto)

Dmitry Shostakovich Suite on poems by Michelangelo Buonarroti, Op.145
Hugo Wolf 3 Michelangelo Lieder
Johannes Brahms 4 Serious Songs

I can only assume London wallets are feeling the credit squeeze. Perhaps that surefire audience repellent 'new music' had something to do with the small turnout for Matthias Goerne's concert with the London Sinfonietta on Tuesday, but I was shocked to see the Queen Elizabeth Hall barely a quarter full for his lieder recital later in the week. Of course many of the target audience hit Wigmore Hall instead for the crazily-scheduled competing attractions of Christian Gerhaher, but even so.....

The centrepiece of the first concert was the world premiere of a song cycle specially written for Matthias Goerne by Austrian composer Thomas Larcher. The perfectly-titled Die Nacht der Verlorenen ("the night of the lost") links fragments of unfinished poetry by the Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann in a single dark stream of song running through a shifting musical landscape.  Modern if not especially novel textures like high whiny violins, rumbling fundamental brass and damped piano are applied to even older forms.

So its not revolutionary, but Larcher's gift is to hug the text to the music with such extraordinary sensitivity that it is both completion and response. It's so exquisitely crafted to Goerne's dark, melting baritone that it's impossible to imagine anyone else singing it, and he delivered it with utter security and searing commitment.

Larcher is also a pianist. Dressed ninja-style in a long black shirt and pants with little skippy rubber shoes, he performed a couple of his own works, Antennas, a short solo piece, and Bose Zellen (sic) a piano concerto. Both involved poking around in the piano with lumps of metal and stone, something I grew out of at the age of about 7, and still pains me to watch trained and talented musicians doing. Although the results were more melodic and less purely percussive than most work of this type, I'm not in a rush to hear either again. I'd rather have had an immediate repeat of Die Nacht der Verlorenen, a work I fear that despite its quality is not going to get many outings (any info about future performances anywhere in Europe, please let me know).

In the middle of the concert, Fraser Trainer interviewed Thomas Larcher, who came across as rather sweet and humble. He covered much of the same ground in an earlier interview, recorded at Larcher's stunningly beautiful alpine home, below:

Matthias Goerne was on top form again for his recital with Alexander Schmalcz at the piano two days later. His Shostakovich Michelangelo suite was a little effortful - technically secure but lacking that last ounce of connection with the Russian text.

But the second half's Wolf and Brahms saw him on firmer ground. Such was the intensity of the first group of songs that the audience, instead of bursting into applause at the end, sat there transfixed and silent, and the Brahms Serious Songs launched without a break. Gripping and thoroughly inhabited, every bit as 'godless' as Brahms would have wished, and a million miles from the dull piety of most interpretations, it was a performance almost embarrassing in its intensity. What a shame so few people got to hear it.

World's greatest singer hits Wigmore Hall. Twice !

Matthias Goerne / Pierre Laurent Aimard - Wigmore Hall, 7 and 9 June

Schumann Tief im Herzen trag ich Pein Op. 138 No. 2; Gebet Op. 135 No. 5; Requiem Op. 90 No. 7; Liederkreis Op. 39; Kernerlieder Op. 35

Originally there were different programmes on each of Matthias Goerne and Pierre Laurent Aimard's two nights at the Wigmore Hall. But a message arrived a couple of weeks beforehand - would I like a refund because both nights would now be the same? Would I hellz! The point of going to see Matthias Goerne is that it's *Matthias Goerne*. He can sing the telephone directory for I care. And one day he may even he do that. He's already given us such perplexing evenings as Die Schöne Magelone complete with an extensive narration - in German and his take on the woman's-view cycle Frauenliebe und -leben - a conception dismissed by no less than Fischer-Dieskau as "ridiculous, stupid and wrong" (nope, both were, in their own ways, enthralling and entirely worthwhile).

The programme this time, Schumann's Eichendorff Liederkreis coupled with the Kernerlieder was staid in comparison. And it was much more conventional in execution. In contrast to Goerne's most recent Wigmore appearances (again, two identical recitals), which were spent largely with his head behind the piano lid, this time he surfaced and pointed audience-wards for most of the evening, making eye contact, acknowledging the presence of life forms beyond the stage. His restless pacing and corkscrewing suggested something, if not quite ease, then at least not the discomfort he can often project. Seated near the front (I've learned from experience the Matthias magic fades with distance) I was completely drawn in.

The awkwardness was left to his accompanist du jour, one of my favourite pianists, Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Uncharacteristically ill at ease, Aimard barely scraped through the first performance, and was little improved for the second. Schumann is a speciality of his, and I've heard him play much more demanding work much better, so I don't know what was going on. But fistfuls of smudged notes and an overreliance on heavy pedalling to smooth and conceal indicated more than just an off night. Whatever was going on, I wish him a speedy recovery.

Aimard's problems may have accounted for the bizarrely lugubrious tempos selected for some of the songs. Or perhaps they were interpretative choices. Whatever, their half-speed Mondnacht is the oddest version I've heard since Barbra Streisand's. And they artistically rearranged my tune (Intermezzo from the Liederkreis)by performing stretches quite out of sync.

But nothing could take away from Goerne's supreme artistry and technique. It's not just that he has possibly the most beautiful voice out there, deep, dry and viscous as a pint of Guinness. Without ever seeming to strain for effect, he can find every nuance in every song and shape it perfectly. He has the chocolatey velvet bass, the lighter floated sound, the full operatic boom, the lot, and it's all intelligently deployed. On the first evening, he (uncharacteristically) pushed a little too hard, took a few too many risks, and was rewarded with the odd cracked or wide note. With a less full-tilt performance on the second, it was all CD-perfect.

The Kernerlieder were the highlight each night, displaying Goerne's ability to look beyond the words as text and find in them what the composer found. The connection between the songs here is a subtle one, more musical and emotional than verbal, and was delicately teased out. It's the musicality that really marks Goerne out from so many of his colleagues.

Despite all this, I sensed not all of the audience were drawn in. On both nights there seemed to be a core of believers (probably the large number who attended both shows) and a residue of perfunctory applauders. These were performances that required a certain level of attention to be fully appreciated - Goerne is hardly an easy sell, and nothing if not subtle - was that the reason?