Wigmore Hall, London

25 January 2007

Simon Keenlyside (baritone)
Julius Drake (piano)

This was broadcast on 26 January 2007 by BBC Radio 3.

Johannes Brahms:
Auf dem Kirchhofe op. 105/4
Meerfahrt
Der Nachtwandler op. 86/3
Wir Wandelten
Es schauen die Blumen op. 96/3
Ständchen op. 106/1 «Der Mond steht über dem Berge»

Nikolai Rimski-Korsakov:
Plenivshis’ rozoy, solovey / Rose und Nachtigall / Eastern Song: Enslaved by the rose and the nightingale Op. 2 No. 2

Sergei Rachmaninov:
Khristos voskres / Christus ist auferstanden /Christ is risen Op. 26 No. 6
Ona, kak polden’, khorosha /So schön wie der Mittag /She is as Lovely as the Noon Op. 14 No. 9
Rechnaja lileja / Flußlilie / The Waterlily Op. 8 No. 1 (Six songs)
Son / Traum A Dream Op. 38 No. 5 (Six songs)

Richard Strauss:
Ständchen op. 17/2
All’ mein Gedanken op. 21/1
Das Rosenband op. 36/1
Hochzeitlich Lied op. 37/6
Cäcilie op. 27/2

Interval

Francis Poulenc:Le travail du peintre S 161
Pablo Picasso
Marc Chagall
Georges Braque
Juan Gris
Paul Klee
Jacques Villon
Joan Miro

Claude Debussy:
Beau soir
Romance: Voici que le printemps
Mandoline

Francis Poulenc:
Montparnasse S 127
Carte postale S 58/2 (Quatre poémes de Guillaume Apollinaire)
Avant le cinéma S 58/3 (Quatre poémes de Guillaume Apollinaire)
1904 S 58/4 (Quatre poémes de Guillaume Apollinaire)

Maurice Ravel:
Don Quichotte à Dulcinée
Chanson romanesque
Chanson epique
Chanson a boire

Encores

Franz Schubert:
Der Wanderer an den Mond D870 (op 80,1)
Die Sterne D939 (op 96,1)
Rastlose Liebe D138 (op 5,1)
L’incanto degli occhi D 902/1 (op 83, 1 of 3 songs)

What the critics say

Edward Seckerson, The Independent, 30 January 2007

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/reviews/article2198705.ece

Simon Keenlyside is an uneasy recitalist. White tie and tails is probably his least favourite costume. Give him a character, give him the open stage, and he’s happy. But place him in the well of the piano and suddenly he’s the shy juvenile who’s been told to stand still, but can’t. In between the songs of this Wigmore Hall recital with pianist Julius Drake, he took fidgety walks across the platform. For him, it was a release; for us, a distraction.
If you closed your eyes, however, the concentration was unimpaired. Keenlyside is in fine vocal fettle right now. That was clear from the opening phrase of “Auf Dem Kirchhofe”, the first of his Brahms group. True, there were some individual line readings in these songs; not everything was landing for him. But it was classy, and, in “Nachtwandler”, his casually confidential delivery caught the strange feeling of the song – as though he was the sleepwalker of the title.
Then came Rachmaninov, the voice really opening up to the music’s very particular longing. The stern admonishments of “Khristos Voskres!” (”Christ is Risen!”) took on a theatrical immediacy; “Ona, kak polden’, khorosha” (”She is as Beautiful as Noon”) did the classic Russian thing of embracing the melancholy, with Julius Drake finding just enough space between the final chords to echo the words “silent shore”. Keenlyside’s Richard Strauss group was excellent: free, airy, and voluptuous by turns, his honeyed head voice effortlessly deployed – as in the ecstatic melisma which garlands the word “paradise” at the close of “Das Rosenband”.
In the all-French second half, I was less sure about his choice of Poulenc songs. The seven-song cycle “Le Travail du Peintre” (”The Work of the Painter”) promises more than it delivers, and whilst he caught the obliqueness of the other songs, something of their intrinsic Frenchness failed to come across. Far more compelling was the delusional beauty of Ravel’s “Don Quichotte à Dulcinée” songs, and better even than that, the exquisite caress of Debussy’s “Beau Soir”, voice and keyboard seamlessly melded. For one song at least, Keenlyside was at peace with himself and us.

Hilary Finch for The Times, January 29, 2007

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,14936-2569201,00.html

Four stars

Standing room only: the queue for returns filled the foyer, and doubled back on itself when it came to signing time for the latest opera-compilation CD afterwards. Simon Keenlyside is riding high. But he’s a wild colt, and a Lieder recital can be a rocky ride in the best sense of both words.
The landscape flashes by: Brahms’s churchyard; an enchanted sea voyage; Rachmaninov’s Russian cathedral; a Parisian art gallery; and the red earth of La Mancha. Keenlyside inhabits each scene briefly, intensely and one can almost feel the electricity crackling around him.
Before each group of songs he paces the platform. His fingers are never still; his entire body seems to be pawing the ground. That entry into the churchyard was sudden, dark, intense then the energy as suddenly died down, among the dead. For Brahms’s Sleepwalker, Julius Drake, at the piano, set up an uneasy lullaby through which Keenlyside’s baritone, now muted to half-voice, tenderly tiptoed its way. Serenading, in Ständchen, was done with one hand in the pocket, the other following the voice’s inflections: at once sharply focused and, it seemed, totally relaxed.
For Richard Strauss’s Ständchen Keenlyside reserved the most teasing, tantalising elements of his art. He’d catch a word on the wing, dare to risk its movement downwind and, with Drake’s piano playing, conjure exactly that elusive breath at the heart of Strauss’s writing. It was far from perfection as conventional Lieder-singing goes; but it was revelatory performance art.
Rachmaninov revealed the bell-like resonance of Keenlyside’s baritone, and exquisitely controlled melismas of longing in She is as beautiful as noon. Debussy’s Beau soir flickered with the voice’s variegated half-tones, and Voici que le printemps was an exuberant homage to blackbird and nightingale.
For Poulenc’s settings of Paul Eluard and of Guillaume Apollinaire there was even a touch of Charles Trenet why not? And for Ravel’s Don Quichotte a Dulcinée a rapt focus and a wonderful stillness at last.

Andrew Clements for the Guardian, January 30, 2007

http://music.guardian.co.uk/classical/livereviews/story/0,,2001729,00.html

Simon Keenlyside is such a compelling stage performer that the studied detachment he projects on the concert platform seems to be that of a different singer altogether. The faithful who crammed into the Wigmore Hall for their hero received a good old-fashioned mixed bag in which six composers were represented, rather than a recital with everything arranged around a common literary or musical theme.
German and Russian songs were followed by a French sequence, and the latter was far more convincing than the first. Keenlyside set the tone of suave neutrality in an opening series of Brahms settings, making the general musical contours more significant than the texts. As some Strauss songs later confirmed, the world of German lieder isn’t one that he inhabits naturally, perhaps because it doesn’t provide the dramatic purchase he needs for an instinctive response. A Rachmaninov group that wore its heart on its sleeve suited him much better, and a single, very early Rimsky-Korsakov setting, Eastern Song, with its oriental inflections in the melody, was the unexpected highlight of a distinctly subfusc first half.
Something snapped into focus after the interval, though. Poulenc’s Le Travail du Peintre – seven settings of poems by Paul Eluard, each inspired by a different painter – at last provided Keenlyside with some vivid characterisation to project: Marc Chagall through a kitschy waltz; Paul Klee in angular economy; Joan Miró in bright primary colours. And the closest approach to the operatic world was left until last; in the three songs of Ravel’s Don Quichotte à Dulcinée, Keenlyside caught the mixture of melancholy and faded chivalry precisely.

Richard Fairman for the Financial Times, January 28 2007

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/18c8138e-ad5c-11db-8709-0000779e2340.html

In the opera house Simon Keenlyside is known for his brilliant characterisations and physical energy. Memories of his bird-like Papageno taking a flying leap to join his brood of young human chicks or his swaggering Don Giovanni jumping perilously around the cemetery gravestones remain vivid.None of this is of much avail in the recital hall. An understanding of how to dramatise songs is essential, but otherwise the style depends on denying exactly those outward-looking traits that Keenlyside taps to such success in opera.
His last recital at the Wigmore Hall was full of interest, but too strenuously sung – the voice started to give out towards the end after being pushed to such extremes of loud and soft. So it was good to find his return to the Wigmore on Thursday altogether more controlled, without having lost its spark.
A first half devoted to the late romantics was beautifully sung by a lyric baritone now in its prime. Keenlyside is not especially perceptive in his handling of words – it would be hard to cite an instance in his Brahms or Strauss songs where a line of the poetry spoke as a personal utterance – but he responds effectively to the changing atmosphere of the music. His Rachmaninov group was steeped in aromatic vocal colours and gloriously accompanied by Julius Drake.
The second half – all French, two Poulenc groups balanced by Debussy and Ravel – properly reduced the vocal lyricism to a slimmer sound. The words did start to sparkle now, those throwaway lines in Le travail du peintre so typical of Poulenc neatly etched, and although Keenlyside will never be a master of the Gallic poetic muse like Pierre Bernac, nature has given him a voice of more appeal and range. Ravel’s Don Quichotte à Dulcinée brought all the evening’s strengths together: expressive singing, piano playing of flair, and a character in Don Quixote who positively leapt off the page.

Extracts from an excellent review by Anne Ozorio for “Seen and Heard”

http://www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/2007/Jan-Jun07/keenlyside2301.htm

“…When Keenlyside launched into the French part of the programme, you could hear why he is so outstandingly good in dramatic music.  Each of these songs is a vignette of character, a short, almost narrative account of the subject of the song.  In this sense, French song is “not” Lieder, where inner symbolism is all important.  In this genre, what counts is characterisation…”
“…Ravel’s Don Quichotte à Dulcinée was written for no less than Chaliapin, so it was good to hear Keenlyside sing it, since he’s probably the finest and most experienced baritone in Britain today.  Commissioned for a French film, and set to a French text, it nonetheless captures exotic “Spanish” colour a film audience would expect, and which of course came naturally to Ravel.  Here are glimpses of various Spanish idioms, and even a witty “guitar” ostinato.  Drake was in his element switching between forms.  These songs are full of warm heated humour – in the last song Chanson à boire, the piano even manages a loud burp!
Keenlyside and Drake gave an extended encore of four songs, which was great value for ticket price, but problematic for those who had to rush for public transport.  Beautifully modulated singing and playing made the Schubert songs a welcome extra, but for me, the highlights of the evening were the Poulenc and Ravel songs, performed with such idiomatic flourish.”