BBC Radio 3 In Tune
24 April 2010
Petroc Trelawny talks to Julius Drake and Matthew Polenzani
PT: Now the last time the American tenor Matthew Polenzani appeared on In Tune he was singing Ferrando in Cosi at Covent Garden, that was in 2007. He hasn’t sung in the UK since, but he’s back for his Wigmore Hall debut on Saturday evening, performing a programme of Schubert and Liszt plus Britten and Renaldo Hahn. Liszt as well, with the pianist Julius Drake. Both men are here and they’re going to start by performing the Schubert song Nachtstück “Nocturne”. “Mist spreads over the mountains and Luna battles with the clouds as the old man takes up his harp and steps into the forest, singing softly.”
Live – Schubert: Nachtstück
Nachtstück by Schubert: The old man listens, the old man is silent. Death is inclined toward him. Matthew Polenzani , Julius Drake performing for us live on In Tune this Thursday. Welcome to both of you.
JD: Thank you very much
PT: Welcome back Matthew
MP: Good to be here
PT: Arrived from New York yesterday and er, off to Frankfurt after this but we’ll come on to that later. Such a wonderfully atmospheric song that isn’t it, I mean the idea of the green trees rustling and the swaying grass over the man’s grave
MP: Well we had a rehearsal just before we came here we ran our programme and after we finished the Schubert set I said to Julius what would it have been like to be Schubert who managed to convey so perfectly exactly what was being said, and to set a mood to that [JD: Yes] it puts you right in the right place for, you know…
JD: Such an infinite variety of moods and situations and feelings
PT: And we sort of shouldn’t be surprised because Schubert is so well known and yet it every time it is surprising isn’t it
JD: Yes well maybe it’s that sort of hallmark of all great music that it’s always as fresh as paint
PT: The Wigmore Hall debut for you tomorrow night. What does that mean to you? How important is that in a singer’s career, in your career?
MP: Well I mean, Wigmore’s name is, in America we only have Carnegie which could be sort of in the same vein, I mean you know when you think of the list of people who have come through here and musicians that have made music in this hall, it’s a huge honour to be here, especially to be playing with Julius who happens to be British [JD: Hm mm] so it’s nice to be performing in your home town I’m sure [JD: It certainly is] it’s such a lovely, lovely thing to be making music with such a great musician like him, so great fun for me [JD: Oh Matthew, thank you!] so…
PT: It really has that kind of world awe? I mean you’ve played so many times in so many different places, all three halls at Carnegie in one season
MP: That’s right. That was kind of a strange thing actually but it was all different works. There was a Schubertiade with James Levine, and then a… I can’t remember… what else did I do that season? There was Eliot Carter I think, maybe, and… well I don’t remember, but it was a very strange thing to be in all three halls, but kinda cool too actually… [PT: remembering which door to go through] that’s right
PT: You’re incredibly busy on the opera stage, you’re off to sing in Berlioz’s Faust in Frankfurt, touring with Covent Garden in Japan, Mozart’s Magic Flute as Tamino for the Met’s new season, Idomeneo in Turin. When you’re doing a long run of an opera do you forget about lieder, or do you actually use it as part of the process? What happens?
MP: It really depends on whether I have a recital coming, you know… I was just singing Magic Flute right before I came here, so yeah, you know, I was working on those things a lot, and particularly in Mozart it’s quite easy to be working on other music because it’s so healthy for your voice, it’s sort of easy to be singing other things. Damnation of Faust is a little bit different, because it’s a little lower and a little more dramatic, except for this crazy duet which has a couple of written C sharps. Other than that it’s kind of a lower piece. So I do keep it around me, especially now with what we are speaking about we have a tour next year in America as well, and we’ve been talking about the programming for that, and we were thinking of doing Schoene Muellerin, so now I’ve been studying it over the last couple of months just to re-acquaint myself and make sure that’s exactly what I want to do, and I’d forgotten how great was so I’m really excited about it, so I mean it’s kind of fun
PT: I guess one of the joys of the song world is you can go out there and search the repertoire out for yourself [MP: Oh for sure] which you don’t really get in the operatic world
MP: Yeah, for sure. I mean operatic repertory is very wide and varied, but song repertory, I don’t know, I’m sure there’s no way you can compare the two in terms of the breadth of repertory that exists in song rep, it’s just massive. Massive, massive. So there’s a lot to choose from. But on the other hand in some ways that makes it hard because there’s so much great things that it’s kind of hard to settle on something you really love.
JD: And the great thing also about song, as opposed to opera for a singer, is that opera, even if you’re the big star you’re still a small cog, a relatively small cog in a very giant wheel, and the wheel will turn whether you are there or not you take your part. But in song it’s, it’s one of the great chamber music repertoires, and there are just two of you to work out, just two of you to make the whole show if you like, so the responsibility on your shoulders is of a very different nature, but it also gives the opportunity to be such a fulfilling thing for musicians that it’s really up to the two of you how it goes.
MP: For me actually it’s, I just want to say, the communication, the amount of communication you can make in a song recital is so much greater than… you have a moment, you have an aria perhaps, to convey to an audience exactly how you’re feeling in an opera, but here you have to tell multiple stories of different types of people and different types of situations with an audience that’s generally… I’ve not been inside Wigmore I don’t know how big it is [JD: Six hundred people] …perfect. So intimate you can practically look at each person in the eye and say something directly to them. In opera there’s always the pit in between you and [the audience], and you have a costume and there’s the set and all these things, they help but they also hinder
PT: And also the concentrated form of story-telling, the fact that most Schubert songs have plots as complicated as a three hour opera [MP: indeed, yeah]. How did the two of you meet? Julius.
JD: Ooo how did we meet Matthew?
MP: It was set up by IMG. We’re both with IMG… I think… [JD: Yeah] and…
JD: What was the first thing we did? We first started working together in 2006 [MP: Right] and we’ve done various projects, and the one that we are very excited about is we’ve just made a recording of all Liszt’ songs for Hyperion
PT: And this is the beginning of a series of the complete Liszt songs?
JD: It’s the beginning of Hyperion’s complete Liszt songs edition, and Matthew and I have done the first one, and that was a very exciting project
PT: Including Petrarch’s sonnets which you’re going to be performing on Saturday night [JD: yes]. How many discs will it be in the end?
JD: Well, I’m supervising them, so I ought to be able to say it’ll be X number of discs, but actually I can’t tell you yet because Liszt had an infuriating, an endearing habit [laughter], but quite infuriating if you’re trying to work out how many discs to do, of re-doing many of his songs, so there are multiple versions
PT: And this is going to have ultimately every version?
JD: The idea is that it’ll ultimately have every version, yes. But exactly how many discs it’ll work out at I’m not quite sure yet
PT: So it could occupy you for some years
JD: Hopefully it’ll occupy us for a while to come, yes
PT: You’re going to sing some Britten for us now, Michelangelo’s Sonnets are on the programme on Saturday which I think were the first work Britten wrote specifically for Peter Pears. Is that right?
JD: It may well be, yes, in America
MP: I didn’t know that actually, I knew it was written in America but I didn’t know it was the first thing he wrote for Pears
PT: Someone said they are not so much celebrating a sexual relationship as a restless and unsatisfied desire [laughter] such as in the early stages of any love affair. Do you get that in the piece?
JD: I think you do yes, I think you do, absolutely
PT: What are we going to hear?
MP: “Tu sa’chio so” I think it’s the third or the fourth [JD: forth] in the set
JD: Very complicated Italian poetry. I suppose complicated because it’s a bit like, if you’re not English, understanding Shakespeare can be very difficult, it’s the same. Understanding the text in what I suppose is Mediaeval Italian is quite complicated and difficult.
MP: Well this particular song, you know I feel even now this is the third time we’ve done this programme, we’ve changed a couple of things in the framework of the recital but three of the five sets we’re doing I think we’ve done before, but always I was noticing I’m changing some of the ways I’m thinking about singing you know, new ways of thinking about it. This particular song has a very Christian feel to me in a lot of ways, you know he’s saying “You know my Lord that I like being near you” but he eventually gets to a point where he says “but we don’t understand you” the truth is that, he says in the end that “if you want to really see my face you must die first”. And I was thinking to myself it seems very Christian to em oddly enough, but I don’t even know if Britten was a Christian, I mean, but it just felt like he was trying to say in a way that that is the message of Jesus, that you have to die yourself first before you can really see God, but I don’t know if that was the psalm but…
PT: Well let’s hear it. The first line roughly translates as “I knowest beloved that I come nearer to enjoy thee more”
Live – Benjamin Britten: Sonetto LV, Tu sa’chio so
PT: “Tu sa’chio so” the fourth of Britten’s Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo performed live on In Tune by Matthew Polenzani and Julius Drake who will be performing all seven at the Wigmore Hall in London on Saturday night. When you worked Julius on a new singer does a strong partnership come easily or can there be a bit of a run-in time where you size each other up?
JD: Well I think sometimes it all goes off like a house on fire and you really feel comfortable with the person personally as well as musically, other times you might feel one or the other, you might get on really well together but perhaps just don’t feel the music goes as well, or the other way around. I suppose it’s like any human relationship. And certainly if you do what I do, working with a lot of chamber music people, you have to be quite necessarily gregarious, quite like people, like meeting new people..
PT: Being relaxed?
JD: Well yes relaxed, but obviously you’re working quite hard and doing something you both care about, and it’s very… you’re both trying to do as well as you possibly can, and that takes a lot of demands and creates a lot of pressure if you like, so relaxed isn’t quite the right word. But certainly being open to meeting new people, and i feel that’s one of the great things about my life is meeting new artists, working with people, because it keeps you alive, keeps new ideas flowing
PT: Now Matthew, you’re from the mid west, from Chicago originally, but New York now very much your home, and specifically the Metropolitan Opera where you’ve sung more than 20 roles there since your debut in…
MP: Yeah, you know I had a Sirius – when they have those little broadcasts Live from the Met on Sirius satellite radio – I had an interview just recently when the person said… I can’t remember the number, I want to say he said it was more than 275 performances, or something like that I’ve given there [PT: What!] I know it’s incredible! Of course when I started I was doing smaller things, I was…
PT: You must tell us about your first role, when you had to sit around the theatre…
MP: Oh it was hilarious. I had to… I was covering a part in the first act, I didn’t have a cell phone in those days, in 1997, cellphones existed but I didn’t have one, and er… but the rule was that if you lived in Manhattan you had to be in the theatre half an hour before the curtain, which was Boris Godunov, it was a 7 o’clock curtain so I had to be there at 6:30, but I didn’t actually sing until 20 to 12 [laughter] I sang my four words, but I didn’t have a coaching… it was with Maestro Gergiev as a matter of fact, actually, and when we did it he said to me well you have to make an aria of these four words [laughter]. I mean it was so fast. It was a very surreal experience because I got to be on stage for 5 or 6 minutes while the chorus was raping and torturing me [laughter] which was real fun. [PT: Worth waiting around for] But you see I had time to look out to the theatre and think to myself “Jeez, I’m standing on the stage of the Met, and I’m making my…” I mean, how did I get here, you know? It was a very surreal experience
PT: It’s funny because we think of the Met over here as being kind of enormous, well it is an enormous theatre, but an enormous institution perhaps even slightly impersonal, but actually I don’t think it is that. You’ve worked extensively with James Levine, he’s coached you, he’s played piano for you [MP: He has], it’s that sort of access to…
MP: Yeah I think, and if you ask most singers this I’m sure that they would say this, the staff and the people that work there are all very erm, they’re just like Julius was saying, they like people, they’re gregarious, they’re easy to get along with, and if you treat them with even a small modicum of respect you’ll get 5 million times that respect coming back to you. So I do feel like it’s my home even though I’m from Chicago. The met is kind of my home house, and I’ve been gone… I sang there last season but it was in the fall, so this season I didn’t sing until the spring so it had been like a year and a half since I’d been there and oh I felt it, as soon as I walked in I just realised I was home, and it was great to see all of these people
JD: And that’s part of what makes a great opera house isn’t it. I mean the Met’s reputation as one of the greatest opera houses will be founded partly on that, because I know people who say the same thing about Covent Garden as well, the staff that are working there and the welcome they give to the artists, and the atmosphere for work… to make really good work and in conducive surroundings is a really important part of any great opera house
PT: You could say the same about the Wigmore Hall [JD: Absolutely] where you’ve got people who have worked there for years and when you arrive I guess as an artist there it’s a familiar face
JD: Well it’s one of the outstanding things about the Wigmore Hall is the wonderful welcome that you get, that you feel you are playing somewhere where you’re really welcome, and they really want you to do your best and they’re there to help you do that.
MP: Well the funny thing about it is that you would think that every organization that was offering some kind of art, be it dance or film or plays or theatre, that type of thing, would work really hard to make sure every artist felt as comfortable there as they felt in their own living room or their own bedroom simply for the fact that an artist who is happy, comfortable and relaxed is going to give a better performance and a more… a deeper… sort of a more meaning with the words, and if you’r relaxed and at ease you’re going to be much more accessible, the things in side of you will be much more accessible, to create an atmosphere… to create art that is… you’d think they’d do that automatically
PT: You’re doing programmes that are in demand around the world, but it sort of happened by accident, you were going to be a music teacher and someone gave you a tape
MP: That’s right actually, I had a tape of… Well the truth is my voice tutor gave it to me as a freshman and of course I was really disinterested in opera…
PT: How old as a freshman?
MP: Eighteen. So I was at my first year in college and I just threw it in a box because I wasn’t interested in opera and I didn’t care about singers who were bellowing away in some language that I didn’t speak, and four years later I’m going through a box of tapes and things and throwing things away and I put this in, and the first thing on it was Jose Carreras in this brilliant recording of Tosca with Maestro Colin Davis, who I worked with now a couple of times and I told him he was… it was fun to tell him that he was kind of instrumental in my becoming a singer. So singing “E lucevan le stele” …
PT: We played it on the programme on Tuesday funnily enough
MP: Oh really! Oh man it’s so great, for me one of the greatest Cavaradossis ever, ever recorded. So I listened to it and I was floored, and I rewound it like 30 times, and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and of course I don’t know if I’ll ever sing Tosca in my career, i mean I hope I do at some point… you know I was just so completely bowled over, and that changed my whole thinking about what I wanted to do
PT: your sister’s a singer too, she’s a folk singer
MP: She is yes
PT: You’ve never appeared together on stage?
MP: No not really, not officially in any way. I would like to sing with her though as I love folk music and I like what she does, so maybe some time in the future. Who knows
PT: We are going to finish, as you will finish the concert on Saturday, with Reynaldo Hahn and his song set Venezia which had I think an extraordinary premiere. Do you know about this Julius?
JD: I don’t know about the premiere Petroc
PT: I’m reading from the notes and according to this the premiere was in Venice on a gondola
JD: On a gondola?
PT: On a gondola with the piano, played by Hahn himself, on the gondola, the singer on a gondola, two gondoliers [JD: I want one as well] marvellous [laughter]
MP: We need to see if we can recreate this
JD: Well he couldn’t have written anything that sounds more gondola-like and Venetian [MP: for sure] a wonderful set
PT: Well we’re going to hear La Barchetta “The little boat” from Venezia by Reynaldo Hahn. Matthew Polenzani, Julius Drake, live for us now on In Tune
Live – Reynaldo Hahn: La Barcheta
PT: La Barchetta from Venezia by Reynaldo Hahn sung live on In Tune by Matthew Polenzani and Julius Drakeat the piano, Saturday evening at Wigmore Hall their concert, with Schubert, Britten and Lizst and Hahn as well, and we look forward to the Lizst disc on Hyperion as well hopefully out early autumn I guess, something like that. Doubtless we’ll be playing it on In Tune as soon as it arrives, so you’ll hear it first here. Thank you both very much indeed for coming along.