Zankel Hall, New York, USA
14 May 2006
Dorothea Röschmann (soprano)
Ian Bostridge (tenor)
Julius Drake (piano)
Robert Schumann:
What the critics say
William R. Braun, Operanews.com, August 2006
The final concert of Ian Bostridge’s “Perspectives” series at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall was an all-Schumann affair on May 14. Bostridge and German soprano Dorothea Röschmann took turns at the collection of songs published under the title Myrthen, pausing for a break after Röschmann’s performance of the two bridal songs. (Thus the first part of the recital ended, in fine Schumannesque fashion, with a quizzical half-phrase.) Myrthen was bracketed with four duets on either side, the Op. 78 set to begin, and the Op. 34 set at the end. It was a serious and ample program – I’ve never known anyone to look at Myrthen as a complete cycle rather than a collection to be dipped into – and the audience certainly left with an appreciation for Schumann’s genius as a lieder composer.
Some of us did not leave with an unadulterated appreciation for the singing, however. The curious aspect of the arrangement was that Röschmann and Bostridge showed a lot more teamwork in the back-and-forth solos of Myrthen than they did in the duets. After she finished “Jemand,” Röschmann remained standing in front of the piano, while Bostridge, seated to the side, played the role of a cranky restaurant customer in the two “Lieder aus dem Schenkenbuch im Divan” numbers. Later, he stayed in the crook of the piano after his anguished “Aus den hebräischen Gesängen,” while she posed the riddle of the next song from the side of the stage, as if to cheer him up. He shot her a bitter salute after his number about the Captain’s wife, and he sang the beguiling serenade of Venetian songs directly to her in his finest performance of the night. Both stood together as they alternated the last four songs of the set. When they actually sang together, however, they were not an ideal match. Röschmann was singing for a larger hall, Bostridge was singing to the audience, and pianist Julius Drake did too much “accompanying.” The best of the duets, “Unterm Fenster,” was pitched in the right, bantering way, but too often we had Röschmann cruising at full throttle, Bostridge unwilling to match her vibrato and Drake trailing deferentially behind.
Röschmann’s voice has a beautiful round bloom on the top G, which is lucky for much of this material. But the F-sharp below is unruly, and often, as in “Weit, weit” and “Im Westen,” she oversang. (Drake gave a lovely, appropriate tint to the former, but it didn’t fit with her version.) Yet she had fine moments in “Der Nussbaum,” naturally shaped with subtle variations, and “Die Lotosblume,” which had just the legato required. Bostridge was Bostridge. He addressed “Niemand” to the front row of the audience, hands in pockets. He began “Aus den hebräischen Gesängen” in a natural, easy flow that he deliberately disrupted with raw anguish and toneless low notes. The sound splayed at the top in “Widmung,” as he meant it to, but then he followed the song with a confidential, clever “Freisinn.” He will not let us be bored; he will not allow us to be comfortable. Yet these are not isolated effects, and his ability to project a song (such as “Hochländers Abschied”) as a single thought is as fine as anything we have today.
Schumann would no doubt have been puzzled at the picture of hundreds of well-dressed, well-ordered listeners admiring two singers in their concert clothes who had rehearsed some little duets he intended for home use. He would also have been puzzled, I think, at the intermittent reticence of Julius Drake, who surrounded his great partnering skills in songs such as “Talismane” with spells of tinkling. After long and loud applause, Drake announced the encore, “In der Nacht” from the Spanisches Liederspiel, as “one of the most beautiful things Schumann ever wrote.” He played it that way, and he fired the finest duet singing of the evening from this team. It’s hard to complain about the programming, yet perhaps if they had begun with this piece….