Barbican, London
29 October 2009
Dorothea Röschmann (soprano)
Angelika Kirchschlager (mezzo)
Ian Bostridge (tenor)
Thomas Quasthoff (baritone)
Helmut Deutsch (piano)
Julius Drake (piano)
Robert Schumann: Duets, trios and quartets
Spanisches Liederspiel:
Erste Begegnung op. 74/1
Intermezzo op. 74/2
Liebesgram op. 74/3
In der Nacht op. 74/4
Es ist verraten op. 74/5
Melancholie op. 74/6
Geständnis op. 74/7
Botschaft op. 74/8
Ich bin geliebt op. 74/9
Minnespiel:
Meine Töne still und heiter op. 101/1
Liebster, deine Worte stehlen op. 101/2
Ich bin dein Baum op. 101/3
Mein schöner Stern op. 101/4
Schön ist das Fest des Lenzes op. 101/5
O Freund, mein Schirm, mein Schutz op. 101/6
Die tausend Grüße op. 101/7
So wahr die Sonne scheinet op. 101/8
Interval
Spanische Liebeslieder:
Vorspiel op. 138/1
Tief im Herzen trag ich Pein op. 138/2
O wie lieblich ist das Mädchen op. 138/3
Bedeckt mich mit Blumen op. 138/4
Flutenreicher Ebro op. 138/5
Intermezzo – Nationaltanz op. 138/6
Weh, wie zornig ist das Mädchen op. 138/7
Hoch, hoch sind die Berge op. 138/8
Blaue Augen hat das Mädchen op. 138/9
Dunkler Lichtglanz, blinder Blick op. 138/10
What the critics say
Ivan Hewitt, The Telegraph, 30 October 2009
Thomas Quasthoff’s concert series at the Barbican came to end with glorious singing from him, Ian Bostridge, Angelika Kirchschlager and Dorothea Roschmann. Rating: * * * *
For the past year that tremendous bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff has been the focus of his own concert series at the Barbican. This was the final event, which Quasthoff might have seized as the moment to be exclusively centre-stage. Instead, in a nice gesture of collegial modesty, he brought together a few friends for a cosy evening of “songs around the hearth”. Together with soprano Dorothea Roschmann, mezzo Angelika Kirchschlager and tenor Ian Bostridge, he performed three of Schumann’s song-cycles written for several voices and piano.
These are rarely heard, for the obvious reason that four world-class voices are a lot more expensive than one. And the flame of Schumann’s genius doesn’t burn as brightly here as it does in his immortal single-voice song-cycles. But as this concert proved, they contain wonderful things.
Two of them had the word ‘Spanish’ in the title, but frankly the Spanish flavour was very fleeting – just the odd bolero rhythm and occasionally an emphatic ending suggestive of a brusque guitar chord and a senorita turning disdainfully on her heel. What these songs really portray isn’t Spain, it’s the safe domestic space of the German middle classes of the mid-19th century, with their coy coquetry, their tendency to mingle religious sentiments with romantic ones (all those trysts looking up at the stars!), and their air of fluttering feminine sensitivity.
It’s a remote world, but these four made it engaging, partly through sheer seductiveness of sound. The very first song, with Roschmann and Kirchschlager warbling in intertwined melodic lines, was delicious enough to make your head spin. And in between the waltzes and strolls in the moonlight, there were songs that showed the undercurrents of anxiety and sadness behind the bourgeois façade. Dorothea Roschmann struck a thrillingly intense note in the song Melancholy, which just for a moment hinted at something genuinely tragic.
Even in this starry company, Roschmann stood out as something special. By comparison Kirchschlager seemed more conventionally “beautiful”. Ian Bostridge, lucky man, had the most heavenly song of the evening, Mein schoner Stern! (my lovely star), and he floated its rapt lines with perfect control.
Meanwhile Quasthoff sat off to one side, beaming like the amiable uncle at a family gathering, occasionally throwing in a massively authoritative song. On the other side were the two pianists Helmut Deutsch and Julius Drake. Whether playing separately or together, they were the ideal accompanists, alert and sensitive but never precious.
Thomas Quasthoff’s Barbican series in honour of the voice ended gently with a hushed, sighing hymn to love Rating: * * * *
In a celebratory grand finale for Thomas Quasthoff’s Barbican series in honour of the voice (Die Stimme), the German baritone invited three of his colleagues to join him in an evening of duets, trios and quartets by Schumann — and with not only four voices, but four pianistic hands, too.
Helmut Deutsch and Julius Drake took it in turn to accompany two groups of what were virtually parlour songs: Schumann’s Spanisches Liederspiel and his Minnespiel. The composer’s idea in the former was for a little armchair travelling in the context of domestic music-making. He raided a new anthology of Spanish poetry and found a ditty in which soprano and mezzo could act out a First Encounter in the rose bushes: just the thing for Dorothea Röschmann and Angelika Kirchschlager, their voices entwining in coy seduction. And he discovered a nocturne, dark with the torment of Spanish religious poetry: In der Nacht was sung exquisitely by Röschmann, with Ian Bostridge entering halfway through, and empathising in a melancholy descant.
For a while it all seemed a little studied. Tricky, after all, to find intimacy and spontaneity in a hall packed with at least 50 parlours-full of audience. But time and place was forgotten when Röschmann sang her solo, Melancholie, giving lustrous voice to its despairing angst in the most heartfelt and perfectly sculpted arching line. Julius Drake took over from the eloquent Helmut Deutsch for Minnespiel, settings of Friedrich Rückert, which he accompanied with ever-sentient fingers. Again, Röschmann stole the honours; but Bostridge’s Mein schöner Stern was an ardent plea for transfiguration.
After the interval, in the Spanische Liebeslieder, Deutsch and Drake duetted gleefully — both alone and accompanying miniatures in which Quasthoff at last had his party piece: a resonant serenade to a river in Flutenreicher Ebro. Finally all four singers, as fine-tuned to each other as ever, sang a hushed, sighing hymn to love.