Matthias Goerne - Wolf Pfitzner Wagner Strauss - Wigmore Hall

Matthias Goerne and Seong-jin Cho at the Wigmore Hall, London, in a demanding programme - Hugo Wolf Drei Gedichte von Michelangelo, Hans Pfitzner songs,  Richard Wagner Wesendonck Lieder and Lieder by Richard Strauss. From Goerne we can always expect the unexpected, presented with musical intelligence, and Wigmore Hall audiences are well up to the challenge.  Since I last heard him live, Goerne's voice has grown richer and more burnished, without losing the tenderness at the top he's so famous for.   Astonishing mastery of nuance and phrasing, helped by a new ease of line.   Ironically, as Goerne shades closer to bass baritone than befiore, he can still deliver songs usually the preserve of female voice, so convincingly that you wonder why they aren't done more often this way.

To begin, standard Goerne territory, the Drei Gedichte von Michelangelo of Hugo Wolf.  He's done these often enough in the past, but this performance was something else.   Goerne shaped the lines with such authority that the phrases seemed sculpted from solid marble. The fluidity of line suggested the sensuality of Michelangelo's work, where fingers pressed on flesh seem alive even though the moment is frozen in time.  Formidable as these songs are, they are erotic though not in "love song" fashion.  Perhaps the love object is life itself . hence the profundity of the central song Alles endet, was entstehet with its steady dignity.

The darkness in Goerne's timbre brought out the drama in the six Lieder by Hans Pfitzner (1869-1949). Though in later life, Pfitzner was to embrace Hitler and the values of the Third Reich, these songs, written between 1888/9 and 1916, represent Pfitzner while still in relative youth, heavily influenced both by Wagner and the almost Expressionist Zeitgeist of the time. A good link between Wagner, Wolf and Strauss. 

Seong-jin Cho

These Pfitzner songs are expressive, with piano parts so elaborate that they feel scored for full orchestra, though only piano is present.  Goerne's pianist was Seong-jin Cho, a young concert pianist of great flair.  He won First Prize in the 2015 Fryderyk Chopin Piano competition.  Goerne has always liked working with concert pianists  (Brendel, Andsnes, Pressler and Gage, for starters). It's a different approach to the usual relationship between singer and specialist in piano song : riskier, but very rewarding.  Cho is assertive, with a very individual personality in his playing which brings out the best in Pfitzner's settings where the piano is more flamboyant than the vocal line.  Cho's pedalling rumbles and roars : dramatic introductions that set the stage for songs that want to be music theatre, figures flying across the keyboard adding commentary on text, and postludes that make the pianist protagonist as well as partner.  Pfitzner may not get the subleties in the Heine settings Wasserfahrt op 6/6 and Es glänzt so schön die sinkende Sonne op4/1 but wow, does he paint a thrilling picture !  Quieter songs like An die Mark op 15/3 (1904), Abendrot op 24/4 (1909) and Nachts op26/2 (1916) give the singer more of a chance to sing, and Goerne shapes them sensitively, bringing out the atmosphere in the texts.

Goerne has had Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder in his repertoire for around 15 years, and his interpretation has matured. While these songs are beautiful with female voice,  Goerne connects to the deeper undercurrents.  The dangers of sexuality !  Tristan und Isolde in a villa in 19th century Switzerland, the composer literally on the run from the ,police at home.   Thus the tension in Stehe still ! much tenser and  more troubling with a male voice which resonates with muscular physicality.  The headiness of Im Triebhaus lets Goerne's tone stretch with barely suppressed excitement before sinking into the pain of Schmerzen.  Goerne has been singing King Marke in concert, which added frisson given the context behind the Wesendonck Lieder.  Jonas Kaufmann sings these songs too, but the more obvious Tristan connection isn't nearly as disturbing as the idea of Marke or Otto Wesendonck watching what was going on.

Four songs by Richard Strauss - Traum durch die Dämerung op29/1 , Morgen ! op27/4,  Ruhe meine Seele! op 27/1 and Freundliche Vision op 48/1 (1900) were followed by Im Abdendrot from Vier letzte Lieder, forming an arc between early Strauss and Strauss nearing death, looking back on the past.  Though these songs are usually - but not exclusively - heard with female voice, they transpose well enough. In any case the emotions they deal with are universal, which a singer as good s Goerne has no trouble expressing whatsoever.  As so often in Goerne's ingenious programmes, this selection formed a mini-cycle.  The shadows of twilight give way to sleep and to dreams, refreshing the soul, for dawn and a vision of hope.  As the last notes of Freundliche Vision faded away, Im Abdendrot  returned us full cycle, to sunset.  

Jonas Kaufmann Diana Damrau Wolf Italienisches Liederbuch

Jonas Kaufmann and Diana Damrau, Wolf Italienisches Liederbuch, Goldner Saale, Musikverein, Vienna

Jonas Kaufmann and Diana Damrau singing Hugo Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch with Helmut Deutsch at the Barbican Hall, London.  Despite astronomical prices, tickets will sell.  Not for Hugo Wolf, but for Kaufmann and Damrau, a good team for music like this. Unlike most of the concerts in the Barbican's Kaufman residency, this one is seriously interesting in musical terms.  Hugo Wolf will always be more specialist taste than populist, but this Liederbuch could be ideally suited to Kaufmann, whose sensually-charged, darker timbre should be pretty much perfect.  Wolf hasn't enjoyed mega profile celebrity status for decades. Kaufmann and Damrau's tour takes in twelve European cities, including Berlin, Vienna, London, Paris, Barcelona and Budapest.  Kaufmann and Damrau's Wolf Italienisches Liederbuch is significant, so chances are that a recording will eventuate. It will be cheaper than shelling out big for tickets/transport ! haha ! Besides THIS is where I went the night before, still high on it.

For the Italienisches Liederbuch, Wolf used texts by Paul Heyse, whose translations of Italian and Spanish poetry appealed to German-language readers, fascinated by "The Dream of the South" a potent theme in Central European aesthetics,  even before Goethe's life-transforming visits to Italy.  Wolf was born in Windischgrätz in what is now Slovenia. Though the family was German-speaking, Wolf's mother played the guitar and had Italian connections.  Dreams of the South cast a spell on Wolf, who would later go on to write the Spanisches Liederbuch and the opera Der Corregidor.  Significantly, though, Wolf never actually made it to Italy.  When his friend arranged for him to visit during his last, troubled years, he refused to go, aware perhaps that nothing could quite match the Italy of his imagination.  The forty-six songs in Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch form a panorama, each song an individual vignette.  Lovers pine for one another, thwarted by bossy mothers. Serenades, and songs about dirty old men dressed as monks ! Delicate songs of innocence, robust songs of flirtation, and songs of sheer wonder, like Schon streckt' ich aus im Bett die müden Glieder, where a man jumps out of bed to fill the streets with song.  But not just to one girl. "So manches Mädchen hat mein Lied gerührt, Indes der Wind schon Sang und Klang entführt." (many girls hear my song, even when it's been blown away by wind and noise). Images of sunshine, and of the night, of warmth and a sensibility very different to uptight Northern morality (and probably not much like strict Catholic behaviour, either.).

Each song is a miniature opera, telling a story, creating a mood. That's why I think these songs were made for Jonas Kaufmann.  His voice has a smouldering, sexy quality which suits the slightly louche nature of these songs.  His Italianate looks don't hurt, either !  As an opera singer, creating character with his voice comes naturally. Although these songs are Lieder, they aren't as inward or as intellectual as many Lieder can be, so they can benefit from a more impersonal approach as long as the touch is elegant enough not to overwhelm.  Although Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau made so many recordings that the Italienisches Liederbuch is almost (not quite) associated with him,  the collection is also tenor territory.  Peter Schreier and Christoph Prégardien performed it many time, Prégardien sometimes adjusting the song order to group the songs into tighter units. So Kaufmann, with his baritonish richness could create the best of both worlds.

Because Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch depends so much on the interplay between the many different components in the collection,  in practical performance it needs singers who are  balanced enough to create a natural flow between their voices. Diana Damrau has done the Italienisches  Liederbuch before, so she's a known quality.  The girlish brightness of her youth has warmed to a  maturity,  better suited to this collection, where so many songs describe a worldly-wise woman with such confidence that she can chide her (many) lovers with mocking good humour.  Many of the "female" songs in this set reveal women as stronger personalities than men.  And as for Helmut Deutsch, he's so familiar to Lieder people that we can "hear" him, just thinking about him.

Uralte Wasser : Gesang Weylas Hugo Wolf

Du bist Orplid, mein Land!
Das ferne leuchtet;
Vom Meere dampfet dein besonnter Strand<
Den Nebel, so der Götter Wange feuchtet. Uralte Wasser steigen
Verjüngt um deine Hüften, Kind!
Vor deiner Gottheit beugen
Sich Könige, die deine Wärter sind 

You are Orplid, my land ! Shining in the distance, from the ocean rises your sunlit shores,  mists refreshing the cheeks of the Gods.  Primeval waters rise, rejuvenating around your hips, Child ! Before your Divinity kneel kings, who are your Guard of Honour. 

Gesang Weylas, Eduard Mörike (1804-1875).  In his student days, Mörike and his friends created visions of Orplid, a fantasy island in the South Pacific, rising from the ocean, shrouded in mists, which deposit life-giving moisture. A metaphor for creative renewal.  The island's remoteness is symbolic, too, for it exists in the imagination, its culture and history artistic invention. What little we know about it comes from fragments Mörike later used in his novel Maler Noten, started in 1830, published but never complete, continuing to inspire the poet to the end of his life.  Boxes within boxes. The Orplid themes occur in a play enacted by Noten the Painter and his friends, some of whom aren't true friends at all.  The novel deals with dreams, art, wandering, sexuality and betrayal. Everyone ends up mad and/or dead.  These themes connect to real events in Mörike's life. As a young man, he met a mysterious woman, whom he called Peregrina (a name which means wandering).  Possibly she was a gypsy, and seems also to have had some kind of religious mania.  She disappeared, leaving Mörike enthralled in abject fascination.  Thus the connections with Maler Noten where Noten is haunted by a mysterious curse : love and art, mixed with danger and delusion.

The introduction to Hugo Wolf's Gesang Weylas (1888) replicates the sounds of a harp,, an illusion to Classical Antiquity where gods moved among mortals in pristine landscapes.   The mood is noble : the voice rises on the word "land"as if a halo were glowing round it. Depth  and richness in the word "Uralte", the emphasis on "Ur", so ancient it's before recorded Time.  But emphasis on "Wasser" too, the life-giving force that continues, eternally.  "Uralte Wasser steigen". Three words in the phrases, each one significant, marked carefully.  The last king of Orplid is dead, bu the goddess Weyla, is eternal.  Even kings must kneel before "Deiner Gottheit" for Orplid, land and/or conceptual vision is greatest of all. 

Loving Life ! Mahler 5 Petrenko RLPO, Orchestral Wolf

 

Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra are a great combination, truly major league. More's the pity we don't get to hear them  more often down south.  So hearing them on BBC Radio 3 was a treat, especially with a strong programme of Hugo Wolf orchestral music and Mahler Symphony no 5.  Full marks to Petrenko and his players but nul points to whoever wrote the script for the BBC presenter. "Mahler's Fifth is almost as popular as Beethoven's Fifth"?  Wolf was told shouldn't be doing music. And who cares whether Mahler 5 is a TV theme tune?  Even local radio would be shamed.  "Reaching out" is all very well, but top-notch musicians like this attract audiences who know what they're doing. Quality sells itself.  Liverpudlians are not oafs!   Thank goodness for Petrenko himself,  a good communicator who makes sense without dumbing down. 

Hugo Wolf wrote quite a bit of orchestral and chamber music, like the Italian Serenade, and his songs are among the finest ever written.  Aged only 17, he completed what would have been his first Symphony but lost the manuscript, though he rewrote the Scherzo and Finale.  Frank Walker, Wolf's biographer, described the Scherzo as "novel and arresting". "Over an ostinato figure on the drums a tiny germ motive enters canonically nine times, or, if we include the further shortened entries, twelve time  on flutes, oboes, bassoons and strings - all within the first four bars". This is augmented by "rising pizzicati strings" and "downward leaping staccato figures" on woodwind, developed over eighty six bars the germ motive recurring almost as many times.  A sturdy rustic trio and a "sudden rapid downward rush" of the violins introduces a triple canon.  Mercurial high jinks with a plaintive kick -  Wolf's voice is already distinctive. The Finale is a Rondo Capriccio, inventive but feels incomplete, as if Wolf's ever-impatient mind was eager for new adventures.

Wolf was an able orchestrator,  but here we heard Mahler's arrangement of the Vorspiel to Wolf's opera Der Corregidor.  The Prelude is brief, only 5 minutes, but includes an expansive figure that "lifts the curtain" to the drama. Mahler didn't change much.

The trumpet solo that marks the start of Mahler's Fifth gleamed brightly. Although the Trauermarch is a mourning procession, its steady pace is broken by sudden flarings-up and gentler passages, which often, in Mahler, signify pastoral images.  Yet the trumpet continues calling: the Stürmisch bewegt section here alert and lucid, the mysterious slow passage in this instance very well defined. Though the orchestra is huge, what Mahler had in mind was "Kammermusikton", not chaos, observant listening, as if in a chamber ensemble. We hear, for example, the quiet plucking of a single violin.  . Well defined contrasts,  keeping up the momentum. Petrenko's approach also highlighted the chorale-like patterns and contrasts of tempo and mood.  Yet sensitivity is of the essence, which the RLPO do with great finesse : how well those violins shimmered, tenderly surrounding the harp.  The Rondo Finale felt richer and more fulsome after that Adagietto.  Often I think this is where the "love agenda" really lies in this symphony, for the music surges invigorated For what is love if it doesn't enhance life  Mahler very nearly died of a rupture while the symphony was in gestation.  Perhaps the warmth in this movement represents the vital life force which animates so much of Mahler's entire output.  The coda was triumphant, but cheerful, the RLPO rushing exuberantly to the brisk conclusion. 

Hugo Wolf Michelangelo Lieder Stone Records

Latest in Stone Records Complete Songs of Hugo Wolf series is volume 9 featuring Wolf's Drei Gedichte von Michelangelo, with Robert Holl. Holl is a much loved Lieder singer, so it's rewarding to hear him again. Basses have formidably long shelf lives, and Holl's gift for phrasing and interpretation remains worth hearing.  Wolf wrote these songs in 1897, when his health was failing, so in  a sense they are his own "letzte Lieder" inviting comparison with Brahms Vier ernste Gesänge completed the previous year, though the texts chosen differ.  In Wohl denk ich oft,  the poet, translated by Walter Robert-Tornow, compares past to present, Now, he's praised by the world, but fame has come at a price. The last line ruses with a Wolfian flourish, but laced with bitterness.  A slow, penitential  introduction leads into Alles endet, was entstehet.  Holl's autumnal tones contrast with the firmness in Kynoch's piano part, which reinforces the meaning of the song, that if one phase draws to an end, life goes on.  While Brahms finds resolution, of a sort, in love (in a general sense), the text Wolf uses in Fühlt meine Seele  refers to earthly love. Yet as the vocal part ends, the piano part continues, suggesting a kind of afterglow.

Also on this disc are the very early Sechs lieder für eine Frauenstie. Morgentau, written when Wolf was 17, redeems a very slight poem, while in Die Vögel, to a poem by Reinick, the piano part reveals how Wolf's gift for lyrical charm emerged even at this period.  The three last songs in this set, written in 1882, show how quickly Wolf matured. Wiegenlied im Sommer and Weigenlied im Winter are well judged companion pieces and Mausfallen-Sprüchlien is a miniature masterpiece, which Elizabeth Schwarzkopf dearly loved.  Lydia Teuscher sings with pretty clarity, though she doesn't quite catch the menacing subtext Schwarzkopf brings out so well in the phrase"Witt ! Witt!".

There aren't many recordings of Wolf's Gretchen vor dem Andachtsbild der Mater Dolorosa, so this alone is a good reason for getting this disc. The song is  a gentle contemplation that ends with two subtle but important chords that could perhaps benefit from stronger characterization to distance it from the earlier songs, since it comes from Goethe's Faust, and we know the context.  .

Robert Holl sings Der König bei der Krönung and Biterolf from Wolf's Sechs Gedichte von Scheffel, Mörike, Goethe and Kerner.  Although his voice isn't as agile as it once was, he delivers with gravity, which suits meaning. Holl is a king "kampfmüd und sonn'verbrannt" who deserves honour, He is a long-standing stalwart of the Oxford Lieder Festival,so the rapport he has with Sholto Kynoch is very strong. Kynoch adjusts to Holl sensitively, so subtly you'd hardly notice, but adds warmth and depth.  The remaining songs are shared by all four singers, who include Thomas Hobbs and William Berger.  This recording has the ambience of a private, personal recital, being recorded at the church of St John the Evangelist in Oxford, rather than in a more formal studio.  Kynoch's playing is superb, very much an artist in his own right, not just an "accompanist". While the singing isn't megastar quality, this recording is worth getting because it brings out the sincerity in Wolf's music.

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Das Fest auf Solhaug - Ibsen bei Hugo Wolf

Hugo Wolf's Das Fest auf Solhaug (1890-91) was written for a Vienna production of Henrik Ibsen's Gildet paa Solhaug (1856). Wolf didn't take kindly to working on commission.  "I like the Ibsen play less each day... It is right honestly botched with damned little poetry. I don't know where I shall get the plaster from, with which to clothe in music this home-made carpentry".

Admittedly, Wolf was working from a German translation which may not have captured Ibsen's unique idiom.  Shorn of the inherent music in Ibsen's syntax, the plot may well  be awkward.  Margit is unhappily married to rich old Bengt. Margit's really in love with Gudmund, now an exiled outlaw, but returns to Solhaug.  Margit plans to poison Bengt so she can marry Gudmund, whom she does not realize has fallen in love with her gentle sister Signe, who has been promised by the King to Knut, a brute. Knut kills Bengt. The King learns that Gudmund wasn't a villain at all and lets him marry Signe.  Margit becomes a nun.

Wolf's Das Fest auf Solhaug languished in negativity until the original score was edited and published by Kalmus in 1987.  The first, and only, recording,released in 2006, with Helmuth Froschauer conducting the WDR Rundfunkorchester Köln,with Günther Lamprecht as speaker. He's wonderful, and acts so well with his voice that he makes the work come alive, in the tradition of German spoken theatre.  In this version, prepared for performance by Christoph Schwandt, there is no dialogue. The cadences of spoken prose communicate, telling the story in a personal, believable way.  There are only two solo songs, for Margit and Gudmund, the rest scored for chorus and orchestra.  This "new" version of Das Fest auf Solhaug shows that it is much more than the set of three songs from the piece published in 1897.  I've long loved  the lyrical "Gesang Margits" for piano and soprano.  Did Wolf know Grieg's Solvieg's Song (1876)?  He despised copying, as true artists do, but perhaps it had a subliminal effect on his sensibilities. The orchestral version we hear here is something else, though.

Wolf set the scene for the play ambitiously. The orchestral prelude is grand, even panoramic, rising to a sudden crescendo then suddenly breaking off.  On this recording there is descriptive narration, but not dialogue, a good idea since the emphasis here is the music. .  Margit's song "Bergkönig ritt durch die Lande weit"  is intoned heroically, heralded by trumpets and horns, taking up the challenging thrust of the Prelude. The voice lowers with menacing portent,as if Margrit were a character in The Ring.  Perhaps Wolf did intuit the background to the tale,where an anonymous King pulls strings, trading his subjects off as if they were chattels.  "Bei Sang und Speil sind wir vereint" sing the chorus:  Solhaug is celebrating the anniversary of Margit's marriage to Bengt, but the mood is ferocious,more hunt than party,with large, pounding ostinato and the clash of cymbals,and trumpet calls. Now it is night, and the narrator tells us about Margit mixing poison. Gudmund sings , "Ich führ wohl ber Wasser" The mood remains truculent and upbeat, with a vigorous orchestral interlude, haunted by solo clarinet, perhaps symbolizing sinister intent. Swirling figures,interrupted by savage,sharp chords, then a madly merry dance.  The horns blast, and morning comes. And so ends the Fest at Solhaug. Bengt's dead, Knut's in trouble with the King and Margit ends up in a convent.  The choir sings in hushed tones, while the orchestra blasts forth in grand coda. Wolf's Das Fest auf Solhaug isn't half bad. We can imagine Wolf gnashing his teeth in exasperation. Perhaps we can feel his impatience. He'd rather be getting on with The Spanish Liederbook than writing mock medieval slush, which may come from the Vienna translation, which fortunately isn't easy to track down..   

Which is more than can be said for Hans Pfitzner, whose own  Drei Vorspeil zu Henrik Ibsens Das Fest auf Solhaug completes this disc.  The first and last Vorspeils are ponderous, taking nearly 20 minutes to say very little.  At least Hugo Wolf gives us a merry jape !  The middle Vorspeil, only 5 minutes, is livelier. Perhaps he's depicting a party of sorts.  But Ibsen and Wolf had a pretty good idea that the festivities at Solhaug were bluff.  Well played, though, even if the music isn't so good. I've been revisiting Das Fest auf Solhaug  as another musical version is released, Wilhelm Stenhammer's Gillet på Solhaug). The world premiere recording of Wilhelm Stenhammer's opera Gillet pa Solhaug, a significant contribution to Swedish music. Read review here.

Wolf Schlafendes Jesuskind

On 8th October 1888, from Unterach, outside Vienna, Hugo Wolf wrote to his friend and patron, Friedrich Eckhardt, about an exciting new project. A volume of songs to texts by Eduard Mörike! As usual with Wolf, once the floodgates of inspiration exploded there was no holding back. Wolf "scrawled at breakneck speed" (described by Frank Walker who saw the original letter). He'd written ten songs in 9 days.

"All these songs are truly shatteringly composed. Often enough the tears rolled down my cheeks as I wrote. They surpass in depth of conception all the other settings of  Mörike. I am working day and night. I  no longer know what rest is.....Ask the publisher of Mörike's poems for a portrait of the poet in his youth. . But be quick, be quick, be quick ! Mörike must appear before Christmas or I'll kill both you and myself".

Yet how radiant the song Schlafendes Jesuskind is, so gentle that it's difficult to sing, since the line should float, barely held up by breath.  Perhaps it isn't even a song for concert performance, but for private contemplation. I won't upload any recording as none of those on YouTube are good, even alas, Fischer-Dieskau. This song is best heard sotto voce, as if it flows from a state of unconscious rapture. Divine serenity, understated and pure. The poem was inspired by a painting by Francesco Albani (1578-1660) in which the painter shows the heavenly infant lying on a plank of wood which one day will be the Holy Cross, "dem Holz der Schmerzen".  Don't wake himu! Let him sleep, presumably oblivious.

Sohn der Jungfrau, Himmelskind! am Boden,
Auf dem Holz der Schmerzen eingeschlafen,
Das der fromme Meister, sinnvoll spielend,
Deinen leichten Träumen unterlegte;
Blume du, noch in der Knospe dämmernd
Eingehüllt die Herrlichkeit des Vaters!

O wer sehen könnte, welche Bilder
Hinter dieser Stirne, diesen schwarzen
Wimpern sich in sanftem Wechsel malen!
[Sohn der Jungfrau, Himmelskind!]

(Translation by Eric Sams on Lieder.net)

Auf eine Christblume Real life Eduard Mörike Magic

Auf eine Christblume : a poem by Eduard Mörike , set by Hugo Wolf at Percholdtsdorf in April 1888, encapsulates so much of the spirit of Mörike  that it's worth deep contemplation.  One evening in October 1841, Mörike  came across a rare bloom in a wintry graveyard, shining white and glorious in the gloom.  It was all the more miraculous to him because he had never seen such a flower before, especially in such a grim setting.  Being of an erudite bent like his friend the doctor/poet Justinius Kerner, he rushed home to check his botanical treatises and find out what the bloom was.  It was Helleborus Niger, the Christmas Rose, a flower of deep woods, rarely known in cultivation at the time. Here it was flowering out of season and out of context.  Mörike  put it in a glass just outside the window for he felt it needed to breathe out in the moonlight and in the free, open air.

 Next morning he found that the wind had ravaged it and it was no more than a lieblisches Geist ( a lovely ghost)..The poem grows out of the botanical journal, referring to the plant's natural habitat hidden deep in the woods, and commenting on the wonder of finding it in a windswept cemetery.  It is lily-like and exotic, yet hardy enough to brave the grim winter barrenness. Then Mörike's characteristic curiosity - whose grave was it growing on? how was it planted? He then connects the mystery of finding the flower with the wider realms of magic and wonder. Deep in the woods he finds the image of the crystal-clear pool, a "Heimat zaubbereich" ( epicentre of magic). This "Kind des Mondes, nicht der Sonne", so unlike other ordinary plants; is ephemeral and spreads its invisble magic by a heavenly scent which seems to emanate from no less than the robes of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mörike was a Lutheran pastor but he was known for his heterodox tolerance and married a Catholic.  Many of his poems show a fascination with the Virgin Mary, not necessarily in a purely theological context, as here where there's a strange juxtaposition of conventional piety  and pagan earth magic.

Mörike  enters a secret spirit world of elves and mystery. An elf, on his way to a wild midnight party, gazes in wonder at the glory of the mystical flower.  Then the poet makes another leap into transcendence. Now we are with the butterfly, another ephemeral being, hibernating in winter, waiting for spring, emerging from its chrysalis and flying bravely into the sun. It may never taste the wonder of the Christblumes's nectar, for by then the fragile flower will be no more.  Or will it? As Mörike says: Wer aber weiss? Perhaps, when the gaudy joys of summer are gone, and the butterfly too becomes a ghost, it might be drawn, in spirit, by the magical scent of the flower. This for me is a truly cosmic metaphor. A long ago commentator, von Weise, in his interpretation of this poem, says the mystery of all being is revealed in the image of this flower

As is typical of Mörike, there are metaphysical aspects to the poem. The flower emerges in the depths of winter, against all odds, braving darkness and freezing temperatures. The flower Mörike found was in an old graveyard, a cemetery so neglected that he couldn't figure out whose grave it was growing from. As a poet, he assumed that the grave may have been that of a young man or maiden,who died before their time, becoming immortalized, symbolically, in a fragile flower. In a sense that's a metaphor for all human life: a cycle of regeneration that never ends. 

I originally wrote this piece nearly twenty years ago. Amazingly, it's lasted fine. I was then working on ancient archives in a very hot part of South China,  Exhausted, and with no music or poetry around me, I unexpectedly came across an early edition of Mörike's poems!  It was like a sudden flash of magic, so uncanny that it took me a while to realize it wasn't a dream.  Opening the book to the page with Auf eine Christblume with its crisp, frosty imagery was like a sudden, sharp shock. In steamy, subtropical South China no Christblume will ever grow, though we have frangipani instead, and other exotics like Michaelia Alba (pikake)  whose  minute, unseen  flowers  fill the air with heady perfume,. So much like the mystery of the Christblume.  Pondering on the last two stanzas, I reflected on the mystery of how things which don't seem to have anything in common can find a correspondence, even if its on another plane than surface reality.  Good old Mörike! Magic does happen.

Florian Boesch Wigmore Hall Schumann Liederkreis op 39

For my review of the Schumann Liederkreis op 39 recital in November 2017 (Justus Zeyen) please read HERE  Florian Boesch and Malcolm Martineau at the Wigmore Hall, a superb culmination to their year's residency at the world's finest Lieder venue.  On the eve of Robert Schumann's 205th birthday, the highlight of this recital was Schumann's Liederkreis op 39, A masterful performance, beautifully paced and nuanced. But Boesch performances are outstanding because he brings exceptional emotional commitment to what he sings.  Lieder is, and always has been, an intellectual art, even though it might be fashionable  in some circles to play down the depth that goes into Lieder, as opposed to fashionable easy listening.  Anyone can enjoy Lieder as song, but a truly good Lieder recital is interactive, challenging the listener and makes him or her think, even, or especially in, familiar repertoire. 

As always, with Schumann, the quality of poetry defines the music. The poet in Liederkreis op 39  is Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (1788-1857), a key figure in Prussian intellectual circles, an aristocrat but also a practical man of enlightenment who helped create the very high standards that marked Prussian education. Eichendorff was also a devout Catholic. Not for him the irony of Heinrich Heine.  Eichendorff's most famous book, Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts, is worth reading for it encapsulates the idea that simplicity can be wisdom.  Taugenichts  is a gardener who falls in love with a princess.  But think, what kind of humble gardener travels to Italy in pursuit of his dreams?  The novel unfolds in a series of songs (some set by Hugo Wolf), but the pastoral lightness disguises its depth. If a gardener can win a princess simply by  being a good man, there's hope for all good people.

Schumann's setting of Waldesgespräch is magical. "Es ist schon spät, es ist schon kalt ". We feel just as entranced by the beauty of the maiden in the dark forest as the protagonist who assumes she's a kind of human prey which he can take home and marry: Golaud and Mélisande avant le lettre. Significantly, the piano introduction is brief and direct. We're thinking as the man. Then , softer, rolling figures which might suggest water or tumbling golden tresses. The maiden warns, "Du weiss nicht, wer ich bin". Suddenly the hunter realizes "Du bist die Hexe, Lorelei."   Boesch and Martineau respect the way Schumann marks the difference between male and female, literalness and mystery. Boesch didn't need to mimic a woman's voice but simply softened his timbre: the real horror here is not the Lorelei but what will happen to the man.. Firmly, Boesch sang "Nimmermehr!" and with a haunted tone  "nimmermehr auf diesem Wald", Martineau played the lyrical,postlude so beautifully that we, too are drawn into the nightmare. He played that last, sudden, decisive chord so that it fell with the chill of death.

Zweilicht is even more pointed. Languid, flowing lines suggest the beauty of twilight  and the promise of slumber. But beware! The night is deceptive, revealing secret dangers.  Hunters are roaming the forests, their Waldhorns "hin und weider wandern". Boesch 's voice descended into whisper. The final line is spoken, without ornamentation. "Hüte dich" said Boesch, Martineau adding a single note  as exclamation point. "Blieb wach und munter" is followed by three firm, unequivocal chords. The message is clear. This poem is a good example of the Romantiker fascination with what we'd now call the subconscious: anything but "romantic" in the small "r" sense of the word.

Thus we are prepared for the miniature psychodrama that is Im Walde. The pianom part is ecstatic, describing a wedding procession in the mountains, escorted by men on horses, blowing trumpets.
Birds are singing. "Da war ein lustiges Jagen" ("what a merry hunt")  sang Boesch,, observing the jaunty musical line, yet managing to impart the brutal implications of what's really going on,. Before the poet has time to think, night falls, hiding everything from sight.  "Und mich's schauert's im Herzengrunde". Eichendorff gives no specific reason for this intense sense of foreboding. Shouldn't weddings be happy?  The quietness with which Boesch delivered the phrase was chilling. Does the alpha male violence of the hunt hint at horrors too frightening to articulate?

Perhaps Boesch and Martineau might have chosen Hugo Wolf's settings of Eichendorff with which to begin this Wigmore Hall recital, but they did a selection of eight songs from Wolf's  Italian Songbook., a good idea because this created greater contrast. The Italienisches Liederbuch is not a narrative cycle. It doesn't "tell a story".  Each song is a vignette which stands on its own. Some years ago, Boesch sang the collection with Miah Persson.  This time the songs served as an introduction to Brahms Vier ernste Lieder, a truly integrated cycle, Brahm'ss final meditation on the meaning of life. It was written in the wake of the death of Clara Schumann, Brahms must have been remembering the feelings he had for her,and for Robert Schumann, so many years before. This is one of the most powerful and moving pieces in the entire Lieder repertoire. Boesch sang it with exactly the dignified, clear-sighted affirmation it needs, sincere and direct. Brahms was looking at death without maudlin sentimentality.  This was one of the most interesting interpretations I've heard, and I've heard many.  This performance was so good that I can't do it justice here in a  review that must centre on Schumann,  It's worth a much more detailed analysis, but I think Boesch and Martineau will be doing it again in the near future.

The photo above belongs to the BBC and is used here under the terms of Fair Use. It's a wonderful choice because it illustrates the lucid, down-to-earth nature of Boesch and Martineau's artistic personalities.  That's why they are such great musicians!

Florian Boesch Wigmore Hall Prometheus Schubert Wolf

Florian Boesch and Malcolm Martineau gave a challenging lunchtime recital at the Wigmore Hall yesterday, framed by two different versions of Goethe's Prometheus.

Martineau defined the mood of Schubert's Prometheus with granite-like chords.  Boesch's voice floated in quietly, all the more impressive for its restraint.  Prometheus has the world on his shoulders, he can't flinch.

Boesch's Grenzen von Menscheit was outstanding, as if the whole programme had been planned around it. This long, difficult song is often the preserve of bass baritones who emphasize its dark qualities. Boesch, however, brings out its optimism, which might, to some, be shocking. The piano introduction  begins with slow, plodding chords, reminiscent of Prometheus.  Yet Boesch shaped the opening lines with surprising tenderness, anticipating the sudden leap skywards on the word "Wolken"  The Heavenly Father is sending thunderbolts, but "mit gelassener Hand". So Boesch sang the words "segnende Blitze" employing the agility in his voice to suggest a caress.

The last four lines in the first two strophes are repeated, suggesting that the protagonist is trapped, dragged down by his burdens.  Men cannot compete with Gods. Then a transition, where Goethe repeats the words "Wellen" and Schubert  creates rolling phrases to suggest  invisible tides. "Ein kleiner Ring" sang Boesch,"Begrenzt unser Leben, und viele Geschlechter reihen sich dauernd Aa ihres Daseins..." Tremendous breath control and dignity. "Unendliche Kette." Individual men may be doomed to struggle, and to drown, but some invisible power, like the tides of the ocean, ensures that mankind will be replenished. Boesch showed how Grenzen der Menscheit, in its quiet, understated way, isn't so much about the limitations of Mankind, but about endlessly renewed horizons.

Boesch and Martineau did Wolf's Drei Gedichte von Michelangelo which Matthias Goerne and Andreas Haefliger performed at the Wigmore Hall last October (more here).  Goerne and Haefliger were exceptional, as one would expect.  In the more relaxed setting of a lunchtime recital, Boesch asnd Martineau could afford to "merely" be very good. A relative term, as these are performers of the highest calibre.  Besides, they were saving up for Wolf's Prometheus. Wolf's setting is ferocious, almost manic in its rage against the fate of the Titan, whose crime was to give light to Mankind. One can understand why Wolf, a man of extremes, would identify with Prometheus. Pounding piano figures, and demands on the voice that would frighten lesser singers.

Wolf emphasizes defiance. Martineau's playing was demonic, Boesch's singing intense and emotionally ravaged.  "Hier sitz' ich, forme Menschen Nach meinem Bilde. Ein Geschlecht, das mir gleich sei, Zu leiden, zu weinen, Zu genießen und zu freuen sich Und dein nicht zu achten, Wie ich!"  Wolf knew about Nietzsche and his fate, so similar to Wolf's own. This insight makes the interpretation of the song even more poignant. With his sensitivity to text, Wolf would have connected his own creativity (and frustration) with Prometheus's mission to create a new race of men.

Prometheus, Michelangelo, the protagonist in  Grenzen von Menscheit and Wilhelm Meister, the Harpist in the Schubert Harfenspieler songs earlier in the recital, share in common stubborn persistence in the face of adversity. They create, therefore they live, even if they are themselves effaced. This programme was wonderfully well thought through and will, no doubt, in time mature into a larger conceptual collection.
..
The recital ended with Hugo Wolf Gebet. "Herr, schicke, was du willst,", the poet challenges God. But the poet is Eduard Mörike whose wry humanity appealed so much to Wolf. "Doch in der Mitten liegt holdes Bescheiden". Happiness doesn't come from extremes but from being "in the middle", knowing one's boundaries.

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Hugo Wolf Spanisches Liederbuch new CD

The classic recording of Hugo Wolf's Spanisches Liederbuch is the version with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, with Gerald Moore. This new recording, Vol. 7,  the latest in Stone Records' Complete Hugo Wolf series is a refreshing contrast. The soloists, with all respect, aren't in the league of DFD or Schwarzkopf but they offer a very different perspective.

Wolf's Spanisches Liederbuch is far less immediately popular than his Italienisches Liederbuch, but to Wolf aficionados it is valuable because it shows Wolf entering a new creative phase. The collection, in its full 44-song version, is an imaginary panorama of "Spanish" culture, filtered through the Austro-German sensibility of Wolf and the poets Paul Heyse and Emmanuel Geibel. The ten Geistliche Lieder, on religious themes, are available on Volume 6 of the Stone Records complete Wolf series. This new disc focuses on the Weltlisches Lieder, the 34 songs of worldly love. The songs don't form a narrative. They function more as a kaleidoscope of scenes evoking life in a warm, exotic climate where lovers in perfumed gardens play tambourines and exchange secret glances: highly charged passions veiled in mystery and allusion. The Spanisches Liederbuch is dramatic in a more sophisticated way than Wolf's opera Der Corregidor, which incorporates two of the songs in the set, Herz, versage nicht geschwind and In dem Schatten meiner Locken, one of the most ravishing pieces in the whole art song canon. .

The "South" seduced German poets much in the way that exotic, oriental locales fired their imaginations, offering alternatives to sober, rationale propriety. Wolf's Italienisches and Spanisches Liederbuchs are his West-ostlicher Divan. Wolf was not Viennese but came from Windischgratz in what is now Slovenia.  He longed for Italy, but when his friends arranged for him to visit, he had what seems like a panic attack and could not go. Richard Stokes, in his notes for this disc, describes Wolf's interest in Spain. "Alarcón's ironic and somewhat  acid style appealed to Wolf, whose own letters bristle with sardonic wit". Wolf writes local colour into the music, though fundamentally the tone is his own, not touristic. 

One of the great delights of this recording is Sholto Kynoch's playing   He's one of the best song pianists of his generation, and Music Director of Oxford Lieder, but here he excels. Listen to the fluidity which he brings to Klinge, klinge mein Pandero: the notes dance brightly, capturing the way a tambourine suddenly changes direction as its sides are turned. Such freedom, and such fun! And in Geh, Geliebter, geh jetzt! the piano sparkles with wild ecstasy, returning to earth so gently that it feels the song may never end.  Four voices feature - Birgid Steinberger, Anna Huntley, Benjamin Hulett and Marcus Farnsworth, instead of the usual soprano /baritone format. This exchange animates the performance, which was recorded live in the Holywell Music Room. The Spanisches Liederbuch, especially with the Geistliches Lieder, which anchor the secular songs are quite an undertaking, which is why the collection isn't performed very often, except by artists of the standing of Mathias Goerne and Christine Schäfer. Using four voices lessens the pressure, and gives inner momentum.  The singing is energetic, which suits the nature of these "worldly" songs.  . This disc is released both in hard copy and as download.  Visit Stone Records for more detail.

Goerne Wigmore Hall Wolf Liszt Haefliger

Matthias Goerne and Andreas Haefliger's recital at the Wigmore Hall was eagerly anticipated.  Goerne and Haefliger are a Dream Team, who have worked together for about 15 years. In the audience were many who had heard Goerne before he became famous, and some who knew Andreas Haefliger's father, the tenor Ernst Haeflinger. An audience like this doesn't need popular titbits. Goerne and Haefliger performed Wolf and Liszt  with intense, passionate committment. Even by the very high standards of the Wigmore Hall, this was an evening to remember.

Hugo Wolf's Peregrina I and II (1888) set the mood. Peregrina was a real, if mysterious, woman, a beautiful semi-vagrant, extremely well read and intellectual, though tinged with religious mania. Eduard Mörike, a nice Lutheran pastor, was intrigued because she represented  a wild, exotic alternative to conventional mores. The piano part seems worshipful, but when Goerne sang the phrase "....Tod im Kelch der Sünden", the poisonous danger in the reverie could not be mistaken. Wolf set only two of Mörike's five Peregrina poems, but the ending of Peregrina II might suggest why. The poet is in the midst of a family celebration. But in the midst of the festivities, the ghost of Peregrina comes to him, and they walk out, hand in hand. Goerne expressed the horror, but also the excitement. After 150 years, Peregrina continues to taunt, tempt and tantalize.

In contrast, Wolf's An der Geliebte, also to a poem by  Mörike, seemed heartfelt relief.  Goerne's voice these days is freer and brighter at the top.  In the two Wolf  Reinick songs Liebesbotschaft and Nachtgruß (both 1883), he could bring out the images of light and transparency to great effect.

These very early songs thus served as a good prelude to Wolf at his craggiest, the Three Lieder to texts by Michelangelo (1897). These songs, originally written for bass, have long been Goerne specialities, for they fit his natural register so well.  Haefliger delineated the firm opening chords, so when Goerne's voice emerged, it seemed hewn from stone. In Wohl denk' ich oft , the two strophes contrast past and present. Once, the poet thought "to live for song alone" though "im jeder Tag verloren für mich war". Now he's famous - and censured - "Und, dass ich da bin, wissen alle Leute!"  Goerne brought out the bitter irony, his voice spitting the consonants in the last line, contrasting with the firm round vowels of "alle". Two parallel realities embedded in the structure of the song.

Haefliger's chords struck like purposeful hammerblows in Alles endet, was entstehet. Goerne sang with nobility, the smoothness of his legato giving the song an elegaic quality. Yet this was no marble monument. When Goerne sang "Alles, alles rings vergehet!", he expressed human, personal anguish. In the final song, Fühlt meine Seele, the poet wonders whether his art has been inspired by "Licht von Gott". When Goerne sang "ich weiss es nicht", he expressed something altogether more complex. The strength in his timbre suggested where Michelangelo's deepest convictions lay.

Franz Liszt expressed himself ideally in his works for piano, and in some ways his songs work best as Lieder-in-reverse, where the piano sings and the voice accompanies. That in itself makes them an interesting part of the repertoire. Haefliger came to the fore. He played the introductions and postludes elegantly, but with the focus on meaning that differentiates piano song from piano solo. In Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam (S309/1 c 1855) the piano's sparkling, twinkling chords describe snowfall and starlight. Heine's poem is more ironic, for he imagines the spruce tree imagining itself a palm. For Liszt, though, the atmosphere is magic, and we marvel in its beauty.

More conventional poets seem to bring out the best in Liszt. In Laßt mich ruhen (S314 1858) to a [poem by Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Liszt creates the "Mondes Silberhelle auf des Baches dunkler Welle" so vividly that the song is almost a tone poem. Ich möchte hingehen (S296, 1845), Georg Herwegh the poet thinks how nice it must be to die. The piano part is almost jolly, as if Liszt is mocking the poet's delusion. The new brightness in Goerne's voice worked very well indeed.  Only in the last verse does reality intrude. The lines go haywire. and Goerne sings sardonically. "Das arme Menschenherz muss stückweis brechen".

Liszt responds to individual lines in  poems, like "Noch leuchten ihre Prpurgluten um jene Höhen, kahl und fern" in Des Tages laute Stimmen schweiugen S337 (1880)  to a poem by Ferdinand von Saar. Delicious round sounds for Goerne to circulate his voice around. Liszt is interesting as song composer, too, because his songs suggest how Lieder might have been experienced in the interregnum between Schubert, Schumann and Hugo Wolf. Liszt's Über alles Gipfeln ist Ruh' (S306/2, 1859) predicates on repeats of the words "Warte nur" and a nice final coda. Dozens of composers set this poem by Goethe, not all to penetrating effect.

Earlier this week at the Wigmore Hall, Goerne sang Schubert Lieder accompanied by harp (full review here) with the three Gesänge des Harfners.Now he turned to Hugo Wolf's settings of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister songs, Harfenspieler I, II and III (1888). Wolf's approach is more extreme than Schubert's, veering away from tonality towards psychic disintegration. The piano treads penitentiually. "Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergibt", sang Goerne, bringing out the desolation. "Still und sittsam, will ich stehn"sings the Harper in the second song. One of Goerne's great strengths is his inwardness. Like the Harper,  he doesn't emote theatrically to entertain an audience, but draws in on himself, physically and emotionally, focussing expression outwards, entirely through his voice. In the third song "Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen aß" brought the loudest asnd most forceful singing of the evening, but, as always with Goerne, volume was natural and unforced, deployed intelligently, not simply for show. Magnificent singing, and done with integrity. No populist showmanship here.

Goerne and Haefliger concluded with three Wolf songs from 1896, Keine gleicht von allen Schönen  and Sonne der Schlummerlosen, to texts by Byron and Morgenstimmung to a text by Reinick. A glorious ending to a thrilling concert. "Die Engel freundejauchzend fliegen". Goerne's enunciation was flawless. The encore was Wolf's Anakreon's Grab. Goethe describes the Greek poet's grave festooned with flowers. "Frühling, Sommer, und Herbst genoß der glückliche Dichter; Vor dem Winter hat ihn endlich der Hügel geschützt. der Hügel geschützt." As I left the Wigmore Hall, the thought of that "mound" where art rests eternally cheered my heart.

This review appears in full in Opera Today

Wolf with Wit - Bostridge Daneman Drake Wigmore Hall

Fun and Hugo Wolf ? Wolf's songs are the epitome of art song, due great reverence. But they're also vibrant with good-hearted wit. This latest concert in Julius Drake's ongoing "Perspectives" series at the Wigmore Hall brought together  Sophie Daneman, Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake, all of whom have been working together for many years, and the chemistry was almost palpable. The Wigmore Hall, with its small size and good acoustic, is specially suited to Lieder recitals, but this concert had an unusually intimate immediacy.

Given Wolf's exceptional feeling for poetry, any interpretations must be influenced by the texts he chose. In this recital, we heard songs by Eduard Mörike.and Goethe, each of which Wolf turns into a miniature opera distilled into purest form. Some of these songs are character studies like Abschied where a critic is kicked downstairs to mock waltzes and garishly manic melodies. There's so much action in this song that it could be expanded into monodrama, but Wolf doesn't overpower the simplicity of Mörike's text. Apart from the droll, and very pointed, reference to Viennese taste,  Wolf writes with the precision of a Lieder composer. Even when Wolf sets more abstract texts, like   Selbstgeständnis, a soliloquy where the single child considers a family dynamic different to his own, the focus is on the protagonist's inner life, and on the poem.

Wolf may have been prickly, but he was an acute observer, and very empathic towards others. From Frank Walker's biography, still the best after 60 years, we get a much more rounded sense of his personality than accounts of his death might suggest. Perhaps his sensitivity to others might explain his respect for the individuality of the poets he set. Wolf's songs, be they settings of Mörike, Eichendorff, Goethe or Heyse, are informed by an interest in people and the siuations they get into.  This good-hearted warmth runs throughout his work. This Wigmore Hall recital was a delight, because it connected to that fundamental humanity in Wolf's music.

Wolf creates character with great subtlety,  In Agnes, for example, a young woman has a ribbon in her hat, which flutters gently in the wind. Daneman sang quietly, as a maiden might. The piano, however,  expresses what a demure girl dare not say. Just as the ribbon flutters. the girl's heart beats wildly at the thought of the man who gave her the ribbon, who has now betrayed her. Often the postlude fades unnoticed, but Drake emphasizes the "fluttering" figures, reinforcing their impact by following Agnes with Lied vom Winde, where notes explode forcefully,  "Sausewind, Brausewind, Dort von hier!". Drake reinforced the connection with the "fluttery" images before the final strophe. "Lieb ist wier Wind....... nicht immer beständig". This wind is capricious but not destructive.  As it blows away, the words "Kindlien, Ade!" repeat three times, suggesting that winds, like love, can return. The connection was made again in An eine Äolsharfe where Drake played the postlude so beautifully that he evoked the magical world of nature spirits that inspired Eduard Mörike.

Like Wolf, Mörike had what we might today recognize as psychological issues, but he also had a jaunty sense of irreverence that gives so much of his work a defiant vitality, which Wolf picks up on. Abschied, for eample, touched on a painful subject for Wolf, who was a music critic as was Eduard Hanslick. Behind the slapstick humour in this song lies the suffering and frustration that would later drive Wolf insane. Sensitivity is important in an artist, so ill-intentioned nit-picking isn't constructive.  Wolf and Mörike.suggest that an artist, being creative, will triumph over the venality around him. Bostridge's performance was superb, conveying bite as well as wit. Every consonant sharply enunciated, crisp, confident, even defiant.

Storchenbotshaft  has long been a Bostridge/Drake speciality. The song is funny, and we join in the shepherd's shock as he learns he's become the father of twins. Yet the poem is Mörike, and there's an element of the supernatural. Wolf writes jerky, angular figures into the music which suggests the way storks move, but also conveys a heightened sense of excitement that borders on panic. "Ein Geistlein, ein Hexlein, so wustige Wicht", each phrase defined by just the right short gasp. Is the shepherd altogether happy?  One of Bostridge's great strengths as an artist is his intuitive ability to access deep, often disturbing undercurrents in the music he sings. His Britten is exceptional.  Over the years, his Wolf has developed true maturity.

In the Goethe songs, Daneman was charming. Her Blumengruß was lustrous, and her Cophtisches Lied I and II nicely articulated. Bostridge was frech und froh in the two Frech und Froh songs, and created Gutmann und Gutweib bringing out the riotous humour. For an encore, Daneman, Bostridge and Drake did an excellent Schubert Licht und Liebe (Matthäus von Collin). As duet, the words "süßes Licht" entwine deliciously.

The surprise of the evening, though, happened while Daneman sang Wolf's Epiphanias.  The door behind the stage opened. In walked a boy dressed as a Wise Man, bearing a gift. He was followed by two other boys in costume, and then a little girl, dressed asd a fairy, waving a wand with a star at its apex! The song was written on 27 December 1888, while Wolf was spending the holidays with the Köchert family. In Goethe's time and quite likely in late 19th century Vienna, household masques like this weren't unknown: indeed, Goethe staged a presentation of this very poem at Weimar in 1781. Moreover, people used to have processions door-to-door bearing a star. The parallel with Wagner's children serenading Cosima on her birthday wouldn't have been lost on Wolf if he'd known.  Wolf had a long-term love affair with Melanie Köchert, with the tacit approval of her husband, Wolf's patron and friend. Evidently they all got on, so Wolf was able to rehearse the Köchert children and play the piano. The song was a gift of friendship, a love song in code (Read more here). This time, at the Wigmore Hall,  two of the children were Bostridges and the younger pair were Daneman's children.  All four moved solemnly in time to the music, with great dignity.  It was hilarious, and also magical. It showed Hugo Wolf as "family man", loving and loved. For years, I've dreamed of interpretations that would access this aspect of Wolf's idiom. Thanks to Drake, Bostridge and Daneman (and their kids), that dream is  fulfilled.

For more detail, read the full review in Opera Today

Hugo Wolf Wigmore Hall Kirchschlager Henschel Drake

Julius Drake's latest Hugo Wolf Songbooks recital at the Wigmore Hall featured Angelika Kirchschlager and Dietrich Henschel. These singers have very different voices indeed, so Drake's programme made the most of the contrast.

 The logic behind the song selections revealed itself as the recital progressed, but the evening started with five Mörike songs which Kirchschlager sings so well. Her distinctive, warm timbre adds depth to Wolf's songs, bringing out the sensuality fundamental to their interpretation.  When Kirchschlager sings Wolf, there's nothing precious or effete, even when, as in Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchen, the girl is so young that she cries "Grief ich eine Schlange" while less innocent ears know what she's really snared in her net. Kirchschlager's forte is natural graciousness.  She's ideal in Wolf because she's subtle, capturing the delicate charm beneath which Mörike shields dangerous thoughts. In Das verlassene Mägdlein, Wolf writes turbulence into the piano part, expressing the emotional tempest the servant girl feels even though she's attending dutifully to her job.  On this occasion, Kirchschlager was singing into words, as if the songs were a vehicle for hochdramatischer grand opera. She's good enough that she was still enjoyable, but it's not her usual style, nor one particularly suited to these songs.

Perhaps this concert was an experiment in turning Wolf's songs into theatre.  It's perfectly reasonable to group Wolf's settings of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister poems into a kind of narrative. The saga is so well known that most listeners understand where the songs belong. Kirchschlager, Henschel and Drake presented the three Harfenlieder songs (plus Spottlied)  with the three Mignon songs, and Philine and Kennst du Das Land.  

This was a welcome chance to enter into the world of the strange old harper and Mignon. Mignon is very young, but has a horrible backstory of abuse.  Kennst du das Land is one of the most beautiful songs ever written, but part of its impact comes from the intense emotions it evokes, emotions almost too extreme to be expressed by a child. Sorrow is central to her personality. "Nun wer die Sensucht kennt, weiss, was ich leide!". The rcihness of Kirchschlager's voice suggests that there are mysteries to Mignon's personality which we may never know. When she sings the downward phrases at the end of Mignon 1 ("und nur ein Gott"), her voices seems to swoon. Julius Drake shows how the phrase is replicated in the piano part, the piano reinforcing what Mignon cannot tell. 

In some repertoire, a voice like Dietrich Henschel's is an advantage. Recently he sang Bernd Alois Zimmermann's  Ich wandte mich um und sah an alles Unrecht (Ecclesiastical Action) for Vladimir Jurowski at the Royal Festival Hall (read review here) where the harsh, apocalyptic subject requires a singer who can sing forcefully, often in tricky, disjointed phrases. Henschel sang that well, but singing Wolf is a different prospect.. Henschel was acceptable in the Harfenspieler songs, because  Goethe deliberately contrasts the ravaged Harper with the angelic Mignon.  In the earlier part of the recital, with other Goethe settings, like Prometheus and Grenzen der Menscheit his singing as marred by excessively wide dynamics. Phrases were pulled out of shape, harsh vibrato overcompensating for dry tone.  It didn't help that Julius Drake pounded ferociously.  He's one of the best pianists for song but here gave his singer no quarter. Henschel's good enough to know when things aren't going well for whatever reason. When Kirchschalger finished singing Philine, Henschel remarked on the final lines "Jeder Tag hat  seine Plage, und die Nacht  hat ihre Lust". Everyone has bad days sometimes. He then approached Spottlied with gruff good humour, defusing some of the bitter envy in the text, which is a perfectly valid interpretation. 
 
Hugo Wolf been called the "Wagner of the Lied" but this refers to the way he rethought the relationship between poetry and song. Indeed, Wolf's sensitivity to miniature nuances precludes Wagnerian treatment. While it was good to hear the Wilhelm Meister songs together, they aren't music theatre but songs to be sung as lyrically as is reasonable.  The encore was Leopold Lenz (1803-62) Nun wer die Sensucht kennt., for two voices and piano. 

Music for hikers : Wolf Fussreise

The "Vienna Myth" distorts music history. Everyone likes Strauss Waltzes and Klimt derived decorative arts. So if you want to make money, you repackage music in their image. But look more carefully though. Mahler, for example,  couldn't wait to get out of Vienna and head for the hills where he could be creative. Vienna was where he made a living (for a while). It was not his life. Even Schubert, impoverished city boy as he was, was tranfixed by the Salzkammergut. We owe much of Schubert's music to Gmunden rather than Vienna per se (many of Schubert's friends knew the countryside well).  Another popular myth : Romanticism wasn't necessarily "romantic" (though some of it was maudlin).  Romanticism was revolutionary because it focussed on the individual rather than groups. It was an outgrowth of modern ideas on political liberty and freedom. It was the foreunner of modern ideas of identity and psychology.
I've been writing about music and mountains for years because mountains are metaphors for many Romantic ideals. On a simpler level, walking was what people did before cheap public transport. Even in big cities people walked and climbed flights of stairs. If you were poor, you had no alternative. Please see my work on Mahler 3rd and 6th, on Strauss Alpensinfonie, Ernst Krenek's Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen and  much else. Today, I'll focus on one song that epitomizes the whole idea : Hugo Wolf's Fussreise.

Wolf was perhaps the true country boy among Lieder composers, growing up in an impoverished  family in provincial Windischgrätz (surrounded by mountains). Later, he walked from Vienna to Bayreuth. To him, hiking was as natural as breathing. Listen to those brisk, jaunty rhythms, repeated in the piano part. You actually can tramp to them, I've tried, singing the song while walking. Wolf knew about "frischgeschnittnen Wanderstab" (freshly cut walking stick). These  help regulate walking rhythms. Optimistic, energetic. But the poet is Eduard Mörike (another man who preferred countryside to city). Almost imperceptibly the mood becomes more serious.

"So fühlt auch mein alter, lieber Adam Herbst und Frühlingsfieber, Gottbeherzte, Nie verscherzte Erstlings Paradiseswonne." (my old, beloved Adam felt Spring and Autumn fever, given by God, never forgotten by those who were the first creations of Paradise). Wonderfully compressed German phrase which means that the spirit of Adam in Eden lives on in us when we experience the joy of Spring and Autumn). Mörike and Wolf refer to Adam and Eve before the Fall, suggesting that primeval bliss lives on in modern man when he interacts with Nature in Spring (growth) and Autumn (colour). "Wie an ewig neuen Schöpfungstagen" (like an eternally new Day of Creation).

 Mörike, a country parson, uses Bible terminology but emotionally, this "Creator" could be Dionysius or something even more ancient. But the greatest joy of this song, to me, is the way it expresses the physicality of walking, in its pace and in the tiny detail "leichten Wanderschweiße" (light "walking" perspiration). Mörike and Wolf know first hand what brisk walking means. Without effort, no results. Walking keeps you grounded. Definitely not salon aesthetic.  

Hugo Wolf Complete Songs vol 4 Stone Records

This latest release in Stone Records' Hugo Wolf Complete Song series fills a valuable niche in the market. Wolf's early and lesser-known songs, some written when he was only 15, are spread out all over the discography and take some tracking down. Here, they are gathered together in a convenient group, with more to follow, since Wolf wrote 88 extant songs before his breakthrough with Mörike. Since the disc also includes songs Wolf wrote towards the end of his artistic life, it shows insight into his creative processes

Because these songs aren't well known, it's important to hear them in context. Richard Stokes's programme notes are superlative. His knowledge of the background is encyclopaedic. He's analytical, and draws well-judged comparisons with other composers, citing specific works, some known mainly to specialists, but does so in a style that general readers might be spurred on to explore further. This is what intelligent music writing should be about. Anyone seriously interested in Wolf will need this disc, but Stokes's notes are worth the price alone.

Although most of these songs date from Wolf's youth, "none of them is insignificant", writes Stokes, and explains why. Even in his teens, Wolf was well read, experimenting with different poets as if he were learning to hear the "music" that made each poet unique. Wolf sets Chamisso, Hebbel, Körner and Rückert and poets whose names are obscure today, some even anonymous. In Körner's "Ständchen" (early 1877) Wolf observes the hesitant changes of mood perhaps more pointedly than the poet does. The flow may not be conventional, but it's emotionally sensitive.

Wolf was also well informed about other composers. Beethoven's setting of Freidrich von Matthison's "Andenken" is exceptional, but Wolf finds interesting things to say himself, particularly in the piano line. Wolf revered Schumann but even at this age was wary of imitation. "Whereas Schumann composed a chorale-like setting with close harmonies", writes Stokes, Wolf's setting of Rückert's "So wahr die Sonne scheinet" (February 1878)  is "altogether more euphoric". Wolf's an exuberant teenager, while Schumann was reverently writing for, and with, Clara, after a long, troubled engagement. Wolf is learning originality. Later in life he didn't set poems unless he felt he had something personal to say.

With the settings of poems by Hoffman von Fallersleben, signs of Wolf's mature style emerge. The poems aren't subtle, but this gives Wolf the freedom to dash them off in rapid succession as the excitement inspires him. "Auf der Wanderung" bursts with joie de vivre. The vocal line surges, the piano part cheerful. This is a song for a young man who has open roads and open skies ahead of him.  "Ja, die Schönst! ich sag es offen!".begins with a vaguely Schumannesque prelude for the piano, but is very un-Schumann-like in its confidence.

The disc then moves on to June 1890, after the Mörike,  Goethe and Eichendorff songs and the Spanisches Liederbuch. Wolf laboured with "Alte Weisen, Sechs Gedichte von Keller". Even Frank Walker says "Only 'Wie glänztder helle Mond' is wholly worthy of Wolf's genius", but that's only comparative. In these songs, we can hear glimpses of what was to come in the autumn and early winter: The Italienisches Liederbuch. There are also echoes of the Spanish Liederbook  in the droll character vignettes. Wolf's Keller settings are interesting as they fill the relative doldrums betwen the intensity generated by the two great masterpieces. Interestingly, Othmar Schoek, who revered Wolf, went on to set many of Keller's poems. This sketch of Keller was done by Arnold Böcklin in 1889.

The following year, Wolf planned to write incidental music for Henrik Ibsen's play "Das Fest auf Solhaug". Perhaps the translation didn't sing to him,. "Damnred little poetry", he wrote "I wonder where I shall get the plaster from to clothe in music this home -made carpentry". Yet, as pure music, Wolf's songs, espeially the lovely "Gesang Margits" are beautifully expressive. Did Wolf know Grieg's Solvieg's Song (1876)? Like Wolf's other ventures into opera and music theatre, the parts may be greater than the whole.

The soloists on this recording are Mary Bevan and Quirijn de Lang, and the pianist is Sholto Kynoch.  Since the explosion of Wolf recordings after the 2003 centenary of his death, the market is flooded  but this disc is unique because of the material. Stone Records' series Hugo Wolf : the Complete Songs is shaping up well, and this disc in particular is a valuable contribution to Wolf studies. Buy it here.

Karwoche violets

Easter brings out the pious. Some genuinely so, some by rote!  So here is Eduard Mörike, set by Hugo Wolf. The poem is Karwoche. "O Woche, Zeugin heiliger Beschwerde! du stimmst so ernst zu dieser Frühlingswonne....der Frühling darf indessen immer keimen" Read the full text and excellent translation by Malcolm Wren on Emily Ezust's Lieder Texts site HERE.

Holy Week is the darkest time of the year for the truly devout, who meditate on the meaning of Jesus's death. Yet it coincides with the arrival of Spring. No accident, for Easter and the Resurrection symbolize Spring in a wider spiritual sense. Christian ideas have deep pre-Christian roots. Think Persephone, or the ancient European goddess  Ostara (variants in spelling). Or even Du Liniang, the Peony Pavilion heroine raised back to life by love. (More here - there was a fault on the broadcast site, might be OK now)

Eduard Mörike was a clergyman, but sensitive to pagan nature spirits, and to irony. So he imagines a girl plucking violets for a wreath which will wither on the altar. "Ach dort, von Trauermelodieen trunken, und süß betäubt von schweren Weihrauchdüften, sucht sie den Bräutigam in Todesgrüften, und Lieb' und Frühling, Alles ist versunken!"

The church is filled with music and incense, but around and beneath are graves. The girl is seeking her bridegroom in the vaults of the dead, "and Love, and Spring, all submerged". Hugo Wolf set this poem twice, once as piano song, once fully orchestrated. In both, the final word "versunken" drops sharply downwards, suggesting sudden chill. Perhaps it's the usual Romantic fascination with death, perhaps it's just an acknowledgement that frosts can blitz a promising Spring (as we've learned this week). Mörike and Wolf are saying, "don't count your blessings too soon".

photo : Chris Gunns

Exsultate, Jubilate Anna Lucia Richter

Anna Lucia Richter, so impressive singing Hugo Wolf at the Wigmore Hall, recommended by a friend who was there, too. (My review is HERE)  She wore the same dress.  Very professionally done video, too. Here she is singing in Aachen in December 2009, when she would have been 19. Give her a few more years....!

Hugo Wolf : Mörike Goethe Prégardien Richter Wigmore Hall

Hugo Wolf is a hard sell. Technical expertise isn't enough. The secret to singing Wolf is expressing the unique personality in each song. Wolf, perhaps more than any other composer, creates miniatures that open out into mini-operas when performed well. Singing Wolf can never be generic, so true Wolf specialists are hard to find.

Christoph Prégardien started off the Wigmore Hall's new series of Hugo Wolf Songbooks with Lieder to texts by Mörike and Goethe. Prégardien is one of the best Wolf singers around, with the right combination of  timbre and individuality. At his best, he's brilliant. For whatever reason, on this occasion, he wasn't his usual self, the voice sounding tired and occluded. Nonetheless, he has years of experience to fall back on. Intelligent phrasing, the right emphases in the right places, accurate intonation. Yet not the luminous, transcendent tones he's capable of, which lift his performance way above most everyone else. Still, proof that mastery of technique pulls one through. His Feuerreiter was suitably dramatic, though not quite at the demonic level he and some others (especially baritones) can reach. But he brought real drama to Ritter Kurts Brautfahrt, a strophic ballad that can fall flat in the wrong hands (voice) (read more about Feuerreiter here). In Sankt Nepomuks Vorabend, one could hear glimmers of Prégardien's natural translucence, reflecting his youth as a choirboy. "Lichtlein, schwimmen auf dem Strom"

Listen to Prégardien's most recent recording of Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch which came out in Spring 2011 on the small label Channel Classics (reviewed here). The soprano on that disc was Julia Kleiter, a fellow Limburger, good for the ensemble work so crucial to the Italian Songbook. But the Mörike and Goethe are much more sharply defined and need great personality. When we heard that Kelier was being replaced ar minimal notice by a singer born in 1990, our hearts dropped. What could any singer that young bring to Hugo Wolf?

Yet Anna Lucia Richter turned out to be the surprise of the evening. Obviously someone aged 21 isn't going to sound polished but Richter turned her youth to advantage. In Nixe Binsefuß, bright, almost staccato notes sparkle like sharp icicles. But this Nixe is a water sprite with attitude who would like to slash the fisherman's nets and liberate the fish. Richter's voice is pure, but has a wild edge totally in keeping with the Nixe's free spirited anarchy. Then, when she sings about the fisherman's daughter, her voice warms. Icicles no more! And so the Nixe flies away as the day breaks. (read more about this song here)

It's difficult to combine the technical demands of Elfenlied with a true sense of innocence, but Richter manages well. Her elf is genuinely naive and she describes his accident with droll humour. Similarly, Richter's Begegnung is turbulent, like the wind and the emotions the young girl experiences.  I don't know how long Richter had to prepare, as the programme was printed before she was hired,  but she threw herself into the songs with unselfconscious enthusiasm, so they come over extremely well.

No-one at Richter's age, or even ten years older,  is going to have finesse, but that will come with experience. It's much better that a singer starts out with enthusiasm, and engages with what she sings, as Richter does. Her voice has colour and range, so she has plenty of potential. Definitely someone to follow. She has dramatic instincts, leaping into some songs in the second part of the programme as an opera singer might, so she will have many options. She's still studying at the Cologne Conservatory but is scheduled to  join the company of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf from 2012-13. She's also worked with Prégardien before  and recorded Schumann with him."We'd better give the poor girl some help" said Julius Drake before the encore (a Mendelssohn duet). He played gloriously, but part of a song pianist's brief is to work with singers, especially the young.