Ian Bostridge / Dorothea Röschmann / Thomas Quasthoff / Julius Drake - Barbican
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Ian Bostridge / Sophie Daneman / Julius Drake - St Luke's, 14 January 2008
Aller guten Dinge sind drei
This was an interesting idea I'd like to see the Barbican repeat more often. One evening, two concerts, a short walk apart, and just enough time in between to grab some of London's finest sushi. The common link - Ian Bostridge - both were part of his year-long series of concerts at the Barbican.
For the first, an all-Schubert affair, he was joined by Dorothea Röschmann and Thomas Quasthoff. Schubert's duets and trios are not his strongest work, and the programme wisely majored on solo settings, mostly of Goethe.
It's probably true to say that there aren't that many people in London who attend lieder recitals on a regular basis, so with a 2,000-ish audience in the Barbican, there must have been a fair number of newcomers present. So it was a brave decision to begin with the heavy stuff, as Bostridge took on the three rarely-heard Gesänge des Harfners, the desolate outpourings of a blind and destitute old harper. Though his awkward twitching and lurching was barely watchable, hands fighting to levitate from pockets, the voice in contrast was pure and immaculately controlled, the tone simply beautiful.
Instead of the mannered enrobement of each and every syllable which has detracted from some of Bostridge's previous performances, there was a real sense of poetry asthe lines flowed, with consonants accented selectively and judiciously. OK, some of his technique, the flicked notes, the portamento, wasn't technically 'correct', but they were choices that worked. I was riveted; some other audience members weren't, but the coughing was boldly and effectively reduced by Thomas Quasthoff with a loud shush and an angry look.
The logical follow up was a little light relief, the lovely if slight duet Mignon und der Harfner, which introduced Dorothea Röschmann. Her presence is direct and assured, her tone bell-like and lyrical, and she complements Bostridge perfectly. Going it alone in the three following Mignon Lieder and Kennst du das Land, her artless simplicity transformed her into the sad child of the songs.
Thomas Quasthoff lightened the tone with the rollicking Normans Gesang and the familiar Ganymed. Grenzen der Menschheit rather overstayed its welcome, but the compensation of a very subtly characterised Erlkönig followed. Quasthoff has enormous warmth and a very easy delivery, but there were many moments when he seemed imperfectly focussed, his naturalness sliding into a less than thoughtful delivery. Not enough of the material was in his satisfyingly rich and resonant bass register either, and he strained on the higher notes.
The trio Kantate zum Geburtstag des Sangers Johann Michael Vogl which closed the lengthy first half at least takes singing as its subject matter, and of course as a rare Schubert trio was appropriate for this particular line up of performers. But a good eight of its ten minutes seemed excessive - at least it was delivered with humour and energy.
The shorter second half of the concert was dominated in every sense by Dorothea Röschmann's three Faust songs, a spectral Der König in Thule, an intense Gretchen am Spinnrade and a moving Gretchen’s Bitte. There is a simple authenticity to everything she sings, an ease which makes every word sound fresh-minted and completely honest - though she wasn't best served by Julius Drake's idiosyncratically languorous accompaniment here, to a lesser extent an issue all evening.
The Szene im Dom which followed, another Faust setting and effectively a duet for Röschmann and Quasthoff, gave Quasthoff the opportunity to play to his strengths as the darkly evil spirit chastising the desperate Gretchen.
After the charming Bostridge/Röschmann duet Licht und Liebe the concert closed with the rather silly but at this stage enjoyable Der Hochzeitsbraten, complete with hunting calls and yodelling effects, where a pair of hare-poaching lovers are caught by a gamekeeper.
And then, at least for the lucky few, it was off up the road to the much smaller St Lukes, where Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake were joined by Sophie Daneman for what was billed as 'Late Night Cabaret', a set of songs by Coward, Porter and Weill. Bostridge's Schubert credentials are impeccable, his popular music less so. The stage was set with a starry night sky backdrop, a champagne bucket and a haze of filtered lights. (No smoking allowed tho).
Opening with Coward's I Travel Alone, Bostridge showed a much less mannered touch than his recording, now a few years old, would suggest. He hardly has the insouciant ease of a Sinatra, but in the songs he connected with, like this one, the performance was at least credible, and considerably less physically awkward than his earlier Barbican showing. The dismissal of considerations of technique which to some ears flaw his classical performances give him a head start here, where the centred voice and the clipped note are not always what works. In others, like Twentieth-Century Blues, he seemed to be offering more of a commentary than a performance, and it didn't come over nearly as well.
He has a terrific rapport with Sophie Daneman, who brought a relaxed charm to the evening. Her high, silvery, vibrato-free voice is just as well suited to musical theatre as to the baroque opera she's more usually associated with. There was never any sense of pain behind her perpetual smile though. As she translated the quiet despair which should underline If Love Were All into a cheerily game resignation, I longed for the raw simplicity of a Judy Garland.
Surprisingly, the least effective songs were the six from Weill's Die Dreigroschenoper, for which Drake's loosely phrased piano work was partially to blame. It's an unfortunate reflection on the art of accompaniment that the audience tends only to notice what the pianist is doing when it's not quite right, but that's the way it goes. A bit more rhythmic impetus would certainly have helped here. And Bostridge's tendency to spit out every other line like a curse grossly distorted the text.
It was a smart idea to end with a group of Cole Porter songs, their supercilious wit ideally matched to the performers' strengths. I don't think this is an experiment I'd want to see repeated any time soon, but as classical crossover goes, it was at least not entirely witless or excruciating, a rarity in itself.
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