Middle Temple Hall, Fleet St, London

24 April 2007

Mark Padmore (tenor)
Julius Drake (piano)

“Julius Drake is one of the most sought-after pianists by UK singers, and the Temple Song series has his bulging contacts book to thank for a roster of programmes that would be highlights at the Wigmore Hall.” The Guardian

Franz Schubert: Die Schöne Mullerin

What the critics say

Erica Jeal ,The Guardian, 1 May 2007

4 stars

Julius Drake is one of the most sought-after pianists by UK singers, and the Temple Song series has his bulging contacts book to thank for a roster of programmes that would be highlights at the Wigmore Hall. One such chance would be to hear Mark Padmore, one of the finest Schubert singers around, traverse the 20 songs of love and loss that make up Die Schöne Müllerin.

However, the equally rarefied Middle Temple Hall, with its stained-glass coats of arms, louring portraits, and suits of armour, is a very different venue from the Wigmore – atmospheric, certainly, but with a churchy acoustic in which detail can easily get lost.

Padmore and Drake were able largely to overcome this, but they didn’t make things easy for themselves. Performing on one side of the hall rather than at its end meant that more of the audience were closer to Padmore; it also meant he had to turn from side to side to maintain eye contact, but the sound was always clearest when he was facing your way.

Yet the care that went into the balance between voice and piano was paramount. It was most noticeable in Impatience, where Drake’s fast, repeated piano chords were kept unusually light and distinct. In the final Lullaby, Padmore spun arching, airy lines while taking care to give every syllable its due weight.

Padmore’s miller boy is less the naive dreamer than a cocky labourer, surprised more by the intensity of his first love than by the angry jealousy that ensues. And yet with the song Pause, he and Drake slowed the pace down to one of real contemplation. It made the song a moment of self-knowledge, the fulcrum of an intelligent and moving interpretation.

Anna Pickard, The Independent, Sunday, 6 May 2007

… Which brings me, belatedly, to Julius Drake and Mark Padmore’s performance of Die schöne Müllerin in Middle Temple Hall, part of a recital series curated by Drake that continues this week with Christianne Stotijn. Schubert’s first great song cycle is a tirelessly fascinating and disturbing work, and heard in a setting which allows for far softer dynamics than the Wigmore Hall, the change of tone between “Die liebe Farbe” and “Die böse Farbe” was almost physically painful. Padmore has an extraordinary ability to inhabit sorrow in his singing and I left feeling dreadfully bleak.

For lovers of lieder, melancholics and masochists, I can’t recommend this series highly enough.