Wigmore Hall, London
04 March 2002
Ian Bostridge (tenor)
Julius Drake (piano)
Franz Schubert:
Der Strom D565
Auf der Donau D553
Lied eines Schiffers an die Dioskuren D360
Nachtstück D672
Viola D786
Abendstern D806
Gondelfahrer D808
Auflösung D807
Interval
Widerschein D949
Alinde D904
Rastlose Liebe D138
Geheimes D719
Versunken D715
Der Winterabend D938
Die Sterne D939
Die Götter Griechenlands D677
What the critics say
Tim Ashley The Guardian, Thursday 7 March 2002
rating: 4 stars
An announcement made before Ian Bostridge’s Schubert recital at the Wigmore Hall informed us that “the artist” requested we should refrain from applause until the interval “because of the structure of the programme”. The phrasing was precious, but the request carried intimations that Bostridge’s formidable intellect might once more be at work. So, indeed, it proved: his programme was, without question, remarkably constructed.
Sixteen songs were woven together to form a compelling narrative of love, loss and despair against the backdrop of a metaphysically bankrupt natural universe. The sequence opened with Der Strom, in which the deterministic flow of existence is paralleled by the uncontrollable torrent of a river in full flood; it closed with the emotional wasteland of Die Götter Griechenlands, with its proto-Nietzschean imagery of dead and dying gods. In between came the waterlogged pessimism of Schubert’s Mayrhofer settings, songs to texts by Goethe at his most erotically impulsive, and the peculiar Viola, in which a ludicrous “floral ballad” by the now mercifully forgotten Franz von Schober is expanded into a epic rondo of operatic proportions.
The end result formed a vast pre-echo of Winterreise. It also pushed Bostridge to his expressive limits, and occasionally beyond. His voice has gained in power of late. There is now an easy ring in the upper registers, which, allied to his purity of utterance, proved gripping. Sound and sense were often immaculately welded. The jarring juxtaposition of world-weary recitative and unearthly lyricism of Auflösung was flawlessly judged. Viola, done without coyness or irony, generated astonishing force, and Die Götter Griechenlands, in which the tone gradually drained from his voice in abjection, was overwhelming.
Some of the Mayrhofer settings – Auf der Donau and Gondelfahrt, for instance – exposed a flaw. They lie precariously low, where his voice lacks the requisite fullness of tone, and he resorted to a forced declamation, fracturing the line. But his pianist, Julius Drake, matched him turn for emotional turn, sweeping from song to song with a combination of fluid clarity and unremitting intensity.