Intermezzo

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.

Simon Keenlyside does Wigmore Hall

Simon Keenlyside / Malcolm Martineau - Wigmore Hall, 26 October 2008

Fauré Mandoline No. 1 from 'Cinq mélodies de Venise'; En sourdine; Green No. 3 from 'Cinq mélodies de Venise'; Notre amour; Fleur jetée; Spleen; Madrigal de Shylock; Aubade; Le papillon et la fleur   Ravel Histoires naturelles   Wolf Gesang Weylas; Heimweh; Auf eine Christblume II; Lied vom Winde   Schubert An Silvia D. 891; Die Einsiedelei D393; Verklärung D59; Freiwilliges Versinken D700; Gruppe aus dem Tartarus, D583; Himmelsfunken D651; Ständchen D957; Die Sterne D939; Auf der Bruck D853

Encores: Wolf Der Knabe und das Immlein; An die Geliebte   Poulenc Hôtel 

This was the second of two identical recitals that Simon Keenlyside is committing to disc for the Wigmore Live CD series. And if the engineer can zap out the intrusive but ohso predictable coughing it should make one terrific recording.

New dad (congratulations!) Simon is like the Swiss Army knife of baritones - he can do just about anything. Well, except pluck your brows or pick stones out of ponies' hooves, but you have to pay extra for that.

At Wigmore Hall there was little trace of the physicality so central to Simon's operatic performances. Nattily turned out in a three-piece grey suit, he commanded the Wigmore stage by sheer force of presence, fingers locked over his chest. And he was in excellent form, even though his admirable insistence on performing in original keys meant he was stretched tissue-thin at the top.

The first half's Fauré, drawn from the less sticky end of the syrup pot, was sung with affection and feeling, and Ravel's quirky animal songs allowed room for characterisation. His diction was clear without being fussy, and his French mostly excellent. Only a tendency to nasalise vowels too early marked him out as English (a bit pedantic eh, but unless long vowels are sung open, only nasalising towards the very end of the note, it's a dead giveaway.) Malcolm Martineau was in perfect accord, locating as he so often does that tricky middle ground between anonymity and assertiveness.

Simon sang everything without a score, only a couple of lines in the second half's Wolf group challenging his memory. But the Schubert group which followed was the highlight of the evening for me, traversing from the sublime yearning of Ständchen to the operatic thunder of Auf der Bruck and everything in between. The encores continued on a high. The main programme had been beautifully sung, every note placed perfectly, but here in the pair of Wolf songs Simon let rip more, taking risks he perhaps hadn't dared earlier. It left me wanting more....the ideal way to end any recital.

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.

Kate Royal comes from behind to score a winner

Kate Royal/Roger Vignoles - Wigmore Hall, 29 January 2007

The usual feeling Kate Royal inspires is the greenest of envy, but I couldn't help but feel sorry for her tonight. Faced with a full house of mild mannered Wigmore habitues gagging to hear her, she unaccountably bottled it, delivering her all-Schumann first half bathed in the cold sweat of terror, uncontrolled vibrato a mile wide and excruciatingly, yes, pitchy. Perhaps she's not totally well: her normally slim frame appeared even leaner, positively bony, swaddled in a clingy pearl grey satin frock.

So, a goal down at half time, but fortunately for Kate and ticket holders alike, it was to be a game of two halves.  Whatever she did/drank/smoked in the interval transformed her for the Brahms/Wolf section which followed.

Brahms's Die Mainacht was floated out with a silvery ease, every note assured and in its place. The exuberance of Das Mädchen spricht and other more upbeat songs was a little forced, the gestures scaled more for a mighty opera house than the intimacy of the Wigmore Hall. She was much more effective in the reflective quietude of Unbewegte laue Luft and Wolf's Das verlassene Mägdlein, sinking back into the music and allowing just the dusky warmth of her voice to do the work. Kate Royal has a rare gift for communicating her personal resonance with texts, and the less that's hidden behind the trappings of an oversized 'performance', the more penetrating and affecting she becomes.

Roger Vignoles was more than just a solid support - he steered, he cajoled, and subtly applied the brakes where necessary. His unflashy virtuosity in the Wolf counterbalanced Kate Royal perfectly.

Called back twice for encores, they impressed again with the contrasts of Schumann's dreamy Nachtlied and (after a little scrabbling to find the music) Wolf's lively Ich habe in Penna from the Italienisches Liederbuch.

Christine Brewer's Wigmore opener kicks Proms into touch

Christine Brewer/Roger Vignoles - Wigmore Hall, 8 September 2007

The opening night of the Wigmore Hall season is cunningly scheduled to provide a welcome alternative to the last night of the Proms. The honour this season went to soprano Christine Brewer, a Wigmore Hall favourite.

In a concert recorded for later release in the Wigmore Live series, she married a familiar first half - Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder and Wolf's 4 Mignon Lieder - with some less well-known works in the second - Britten's Cabaret songs and John Carter's Cantata.

Coming on in a glamorous cerulean satin dress topped with a floral print kimono and incongruously battered black Queen Mother shoes, she delivered a predictably immaculate performance.

Her powerful voice is even across its whole range, her diction is clear but never mannered, her dynamics perfectly controlled, her tone flexible and intelligently deployed. And she makes it all seem so easy, so natural, even her breathing seems to be by some imperceptible osmosis.

In the Wagner I sensed her attention was more focused on line than on individual words, and her natural warmth substituted for a more specific engagement. Dramatic intensity was clearly not to form a part of tonight's performance. But the sublime Goethe poetry of the Wolf songs brought more pointed colouring to the text. Roger Vignoles, particularly in the tricky Wolf, proved an able and sensitive partner on the piano, the perfect foil.

Incidentally, this night was also the concert debut of the new Wigmore Hall piano, a Steinway selected with the aid (puzzlingly) of András Schiff, undoubtedly expert, but a pianist so attached to Bosendorfer he may never use the new acquisition. It seems to have a brighter, brasher tone than its predecessor, but that could simply be my imagination.

For her second half, emphasising the switch to a very different repertoire, Brewer dropped the gown and went for an art teacher look - black top and pants, complemented with a colourful braid-trimmed kimono.

The Britten/Auden Cabaret songs, as the title hints, are far from characteristic Britten, with their hints of Porter and Weill. The first one in the set of four, Calypso, was my only moment of doubt in the evening. Brewer, wavering between two irreconcilable styles, swung from singing the high notes to belting the lower lying passages. But it was largely redeemed by her wicked humour and a couple of piercing taxi-whistles she slipped in.

In the other songs of this set, her American accent and sense of humour created a warmth and ease that often eludes classically-trained singers in this sort of repertoire.

The Cantata she ended with is a classical setting of four spirituals - Peter go ring dem bells, Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, Let us break bread together, and Ride on King Jesus - by the little-known African-American composer John Carter. Brewer again sang these with a radiant born-to-it ease and great sensitivity, though I am not sure Carter's rather fussy, laboured arrangements do the exquisite simplicity of these great songs any favours.

A reception made even more enthusiastic by the free wine offered to all in the interval drew three encores, Hall Johnson's arrangement of I've heard of a city called heaven, Strauss's Ich liebe dich, and last, Mira, from Bob Merrill's musical Carnival! With its uncomplicated down-home warmth, it was not hard to see why it's Brewer's favourite song.