Intermezzo

the recycler's art

Are there any compositional genres less fashionable these days than the piano transcription?  

Once a popular element of a recital programme, they are now rarely heard. Should we perhaps blame the ideological biases of the historically-informed movement and its emphasis on adherence to composers' wishes, as mystically divined from original scores? Transcriptions have become seen as secondhand, second-rate ideas, when in truth the best are anything but.

The listening public's ever-reducing levels of musical literacy hardly help either. You don't need to be a professional répétiteur to recognise a world of difference between a bog-standard piano arrangement and a great transcription, but you do need to listen critically, and perhaps understand a bit about the capabilities of the piano.

When transcriptions are based on the greatest music, like Liszt's Beethoven and Wagner, they can elucidate a composer's intentions by paring down the musical ideas to the essentials. When the source is of lesser weight, the transcription can sometimes even improve on its original. That's what I think about Schumann's rarely-sung Der Kontrabandiste from his Spanisches Liederspiel and the piano arrangement by Carl Tausig, anyway. The playfulness and fantastical quality that Schumann only half-grasps come through much more clearly in Tausig's version.

Tausig was a child prodigy better known as a pianist than a composer during his tragically short life (he died at the age of 29). He left behind few transcriptions and even fewer original works. Der Kontrabandiste is a convenient couple of minutes in length and provides spectacular encore material for any pianist up to the challenge.

This is Emil Gilels playing Carl Tausig's arrangement (which as Hedgehog has kindly pointed out below, is available on this bargain recording):

And for reference here's the original song, beautifully sung by Stephan Loges with Graham Johnson on piano (available on this recording):

Deutschlands schönste Stimme singt Schumann

Something for the weekend?

Jonas Kaufmann is joined by Helmut Deutsch at the piano for Schumann's Dichterliebe. Yes, all of it, uncut. Find it over the page.

Last time I heard Jonas do this cycle was at the Wigmore a few years ago. It split the audience straight down the middle - often the mark of the truly great as opposed to the merely good.

A CD is reputedly in the works, so here's a chance to find out what it might sound like.

Thomas Quasthoff at Wigmore Hall

Thomas Quasthoff /Justus Zeyen - Wigmore Hall, 21 November 2008

 

Schubert Der Sänger; Auf dem See; Wandrers Nachtlied II; An Schwager Kronos
Musorgsky Lieder und Tänze des Todes
Schumann Liederkreis Op. 39

Encores Schumann Widmung; Schubert Der Musensohn; Seligkeit

Is Thomas Quasthoff planning a new career in chat? He certainly gave us plenty of it at the Wigmore Hall. His introductory speech made a (quite unnecessary) apology for tackling Musorgsky in German rather than Russian, on the eminently reasonable grounds that he doesn't think he should try to sing in a language he doesn't speak. Later he managed a lengthy introduction for each of his encores (without actually mentioning what he was about to sing, it should be added). Not that he's bad at it. I can't think of another singer so able to entertain and hold an audience's attention with this sort of thing. But it disturbs some sort of indefinable equilibrium, turning a recital into a show of a quite different type.

And did it alter his own focus? Intensity was lacking at key moments; there was a hint of going through the motions, or perhaps just tiredness. Quasthoff is blessed with a fine natural instrument. In the lower-lying An Schwager Kronos and particularly the rumbling Musorgsky death songs he used it with devastating power. These were truly terrifying, showing a startling flipside to the jovial bonhomie of his introduction.

Perhaps sustaining this level of intensity throughout a recital is too much to ask of any performer.  Wandrers Nachtlied was by contrast rather half-hearted, as were many parts of the Eichendorff Liederkreis, particularly the higher or quieter passages where Quasthoff is least at ease technically. Justus Zeyen's unobtrusive excellence was some compensation.

Dorothea Röschmann at Wigmore Hall

Dorothea Röschmann / Graham Johnson - Wigmore Hall, 20 November 2008

Schumann Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart
Wolf Nimmersatte Liebe; An eine Äolsharfe; Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchens; Denk' es, o Seele!; Im Frühling; Gesang Weylas; Begegnung
Mahler Rheinlegendchen, Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen, Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht, Lob des hohen Verstandes and Verlorne Müh from 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn'
Brahms 8 Zigeunerlieder

Encores: Schubert Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt; Wolf In der Frühe; Mahler Selbstgefühl from 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn'

Dorothea Röschmann's pearly top notes still emerge effortlessly, but her voice seems to be in a process of transition. It's gaining weight, the centre is dropping, but it's not quite there yet. To speculate how much of this is natural evolution and how much is being hurried along by Röschmann's acceptance of some meatier roles recently and in the near future is probably fruitless (but nevertheless 'interesting'). 

Schumann's Mary Stuart settings are low-lying for a soprano, and Röschmann never sounded quite at ease in the range. It was not a promising start. But the rest of her programme rarely dipped quite as low, and she seemed more comfortable vocally and more freely expressive.

Her recital art is all about nuance and inflection. Although she's capable of grand gesture and bold dramatic expression in the opera house, she wisely leaves that behind in the concert hall.

We saw a small, solid woman in a black lace strapless sheath and matching bolero, her sensible brown bob uncombed, her face makeup-free, like a librarian trying on a party frock. Her comportment has a stillness born of inner calm. Her facial expression is more conversational then stagey. There are none of the diva flourishes employed by the less wise, so distancing in the intimate atmosphere of the Wigmore Hall. Röschmann's effects are achieved more subtly, almost by voice alone.

She explored some of Wolf's most erotically-charged Mörike settings, traversing seamlessly from the sly innuendo of Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchens to the nostalgic Im Frühling, always conscious of both the words and their meaning.

She was equally at home in the rustic idiom of the second half and its folk song texts drawn by Mahler and Brahms. Here, as if to compensate for the lack of lyrical subtlety, she employed a much broader range of vocal characterisation, peaking with the animal farm of Mahler's Lob des hohen Verstandes, its donkey, cuckoo and nightingale all brilliantly evoked. If the Zigeuner Lieder all had a rather samey feel, despite their stirring rhythms, this is as much Brahms's fault as Röschmann's. The contrast with the first of her three encores, where she completely inhabited the tormented teenager of Schubert's plaintive Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, showed this only too clearly.

The concert was recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 25 November 2008 at 7 p.m (that's today!) and available for a week afterwards on the IPlayer.

Thomas Hampson presents a cure for coughing

Thomas Hampson/Wolfram Rieger  - Wigmore Hall, 15 December 2007

Judging by the photos, it seems that Thomas Hampson wears the same suit for all his recitals. But then, he does so few concerts that it would be an extravagance to own any more. I felt duly privileged to be present at his first Wigmore Hall appearance for five years. And with something of a Schumann drought recently in London (no doubt in response to last year's 150th anniversary overload) it was a pleasure to anticipate his all-Schumann programme, which began with the Kerner Lieder.

Uneven intonation and a gruff delivery diminished the impact of the opening Lust der Sturmnacht. I wondered if the celebrated technician had a cold. But I guess it must have been just a public warm-up, because he was back on top with the next song, Stirb, Lieb' und Freud'! Hampson negotiated its tricky high-lying passage, the prayer of a young girl, in solemn and faultless falsetto, to breathtaking effect.

There is a moment at which you know if a recital is going to be a very special one, and that was it. Hampson has lived with these songs for a long time. Now it is as if he inhabits them. His voice has lost some elasticity and crispness of contour over the years, but it has gained in richness and colour. There is an underlying frailty, a vulnerability which Hampson could call up at will, but also an elemental power, operatically-scaled. Hampson deployed this fearlessly, notably in Wanderlied, but never simply for effect. Vocal and physical gestures never outsized the performance space. Any accusations of 'ham' would have been very wide of the mark. He didn't display these songs, he experienced them, from line to line, each word spun out afresh. And incidentally, a few of those words and notes weren't exactly as I recalled them, but such was the conviction of Hampson's performance, I couldn't say whether he was using an obscure edition, or was merely fudging with the most consummate of skill.

In Auf das Trinkglas eines verstorbenen Freundes, the contemplation of the wine glass of a departed friend, Hampson spun the elegiac and celebratory elements together into a warmly reflective whole. The trio of Stille Liebe, Frage and Stille Tränen was the high point of the first half, the final verse's sustained Schmerz ripping open like a fresh wound. Even the inveterate coughers at the back of the hall could do nothing but hold their breath after that one.

For the second half, Hampson presented a Dichterliebe with a difference. This was Schumann's original version, complete with an additional four songs (eventually published separately) to the final sixteen, and a few very minor musical differences. Although the existence of this original twenty song version has long been known, the shorter version is generally held to be the one Schumann himself considered definitive. Hampson's programme notes presented compelling reasons to consider otherwise. As did his performance, into which the extra songs slipped seamlessly.

He also proved that this is not just a young man's song cycle. Hampson could conjure up the wistful beauty of Ich will meine Seele tauchen with lightness and freshness.  And Heine's irony, so often conveyed as youthful petulance, was from Hampson a bitter snarl of frightening depth in Ich grolle nicht and Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen. By the time we got to the final Die alten, bösen Lieder, the despair was absolute, no empty posturing. Wolfram Rieger was no less than an equal partner throughout, responding with the utmost sensitivity to Hampson, resisting any urge to grandstand the postludes. The attentive creation of every single note made the whole cycle utterly engrossing from start to finish, with scarcely a cough emanating from the transfixed audience.

Ear-shattering applause could only squeeze one encore out of them, a charming Du bist wie eine Blume. As Hampson explained afterwards (in a bizarre euratlantic accent, like a verrry posh German who's watched too many Hollywood movies), he's getting to the age when it's wise to leave the audience wanting more. More is most definitely wanted, though when he'll be coming back to London is up in the air. As he makes clear in an interesting interview in this month's Opera News, his intention is that his future now lies mainly in the US.