Julius Drake 50th Birthday Charity Gala

Wigmore Hall, London
Tuesday, 22 December 2009, 7.30pm

Photo by Georgina Fletcher-Cooke: from left to right, Sophie Daneman, Alice Coote, Joyce DiDonato, Julius Drake, Derek Lee Ragin, Ian Bostridge, Mark Padmore

Sophie Daneman (soprano)
Birgid Steinberger (soprano)
Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano)
Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano)
Derek Lee Ragin (counter-tenor)
Ian Bostridge (tenor)
Mark Padmore (tenor)
Gerald Finley (baritone)
Christopher Maltman (baritone)
Nicholas Daniel (oboe)
Richard Watkins (horn)
Julius Drake (piano)

“To celebrate Julius Drake’s 50^th birthday a superb line up of friends join him for this fundraising concert. All are generously giving their services in aid of the Jean Meikle Music Trust, the charity that among other work funds a voice and piano prize in the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition”

Pictured above is the poster for my Wigmore Hall ‘debut’ concert in January 1983 [click photo for details]. Indeed it was the debut for all six of us – we knew how lucky we were, as young unknowns, to get the prized offer of a date from William Lyne.

Playing all of Francis Poulenc’s music for wind and piano, by way of celebrating his anniversary, seemed a good idea, if a little risky in terms of broad audience appeal. At least there were six of us to share the financial pain if an audience failed to materialize! However, dear Wigmore audience, you didn’t let us down. One of the unforgettable moments of my musical life was walking out on to the stage that Sunday afternoon to a completely, overflowingly full hall.

Of course, I fell in love with Wigmore Hall as soon as I played the first notes on stage that day. I continue to feel enormously privileged to return here as often as I do – a ‘Birthday Gala’ is really the icing on the cake for me and I’m very grateful to be offered such a present.

Indulgently my friends have allowed me free reign with the programme and some of my favourite composers and songs are represented. Yet there is only so much time in one evening. Sadly we have to manage without Debussy or Ravel, Poulenc or Janacek, Rachmaninov or Musorgsky, Sibelius or Grieg, Beethoven, Mozart or Bach. Oh dear! I hastily add that we do have some of my most beloved songs by Purcell and Britten, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Mahler, Wolf and Strauss, Berlioz and Faure, Granados and Obradors, Tchaikovsky and Ives. They are all very close to my heart.

You will notice tonight that I’m playing all the time. I do feel a little embarrassed about this. I think of the great forbearance my friend Steven Isserlis showed at his celebration concert last year, when he sat amongst us in the audience while his favourite musicians played and sang to him. I thought about emulating him. But only for five minutes because assembled here for this Gala are some of the musicians – amongst them Nicholas Daniel and Richard Watkins from the Poulenc concert twenty six years ago – whom I most love to make music with. I can’t begin to tell you how touched and grateful I am that they have all responded so generously and enthusiastically to tonight’s invitation, and that they are all giving their precious time and gifts in aid of The Jean Meikle Music Trust, the charity we set up in my mother’s memory five years ago. The best birthday present for me is sharing the stage with each of them this evening. Julius Drake

Programme

Derek Lee Ragin, Julius Drake
Henry Purcell (real. Britten): Lord, what is man

Ian Bostridge, Julius Drake
Benjamin Britten: 3 songs from Who are these Children, Op 84
Nightmare
Who are these Children
The Children

Nicholas Daniel, Julius Drake
Robert Schumann: Three Canons arranged by Howard Ferguson

Christopher Maltman, Julius Drake (the running order was changed from that of the printed programme so that Christopher Maltman could catch a train to be with his family for Christmas)
Hugo Wolf: Four Mörike Lieder
Im Frühling (In spring)
Der Gärtner (The gardener)
An die Geliebte (To the beloved)
Begegnung (Encounter)

Brigid Steinberger, Julius Drake
Felix Mendelssohn: Die Liebende schreibt (The beloved writes) Op 86 No 3
Robert Schumann: Mondnacht (Moonlit night) Op 39 No 3
Richard Strauss: Ständchen (Serenade) Op 17 No 2
Gustav Mahler: Rheinlegendchen (Little Rhine legend) from Des Knaben Wunderhorn

Alice Coote, Julius Drake
Franz Schubert:
Frühlingsglaube (Faith in spring) D686
Der Zwerg (The dwarf) D771
Am Bach im Frühling (By the stream in spring) D361
Im Abendrot (Sunset glow) D799

Interval

Mark Padmore, Richard Watkins, Julius Drake
Franz Schubert: Auf dem Strom (On the river) D943

Sophie Daneman, Julius Drake
Gabriel Fauré: Four Mélodies
Tristesse (Sadness) Op 6 No 2
Notre amour (Our love) Op 23 No 2
Au bord de l’eau (At the water’s edge) Op 8 No 1
Lydia, Op4 No 2

Joyce DiDonato, Julius Drake
Enrique Granados: Three songs from Tonodillas en un estilo antiguo
La maja doloroso I (The grieving maja I)
La maja doloroso II (The grieving maja II)
La maja doloroso III (The grieving maja III)
Fernando Obradors: Dos canciones clásicas españolas
Del cabello más sutil (From the finest hair) No 7
El vito, No 1

Gerald Finley, Julius Drake
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky:
Sred’ shumnovo bala (At the ball) Op 38 No 3
Nam zvyozdy krotkiye siyali (The mild stars shone for us) Op 60 No 12

Charles Ives:
The Housatonic at Stockbridge
Two little flowers

Finale

Derek Lee Ragin, Julius Drake
Traditional arr. Harry T Burleigh: Deep River

Alice Coote, Julius Drake
Roger Quilter: Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal, Op 3 No 2

Ian Bostridge, Sophie Daneman, Julius Drake
Franz Schubert: Licht und Liebe (Light and love) D352

Birgid Steinberger, Richard Watkins, Julius Drake
Hector Berlioz: Le jeune Pâtre breton (The young Breton shepherd)

Mark Padmore, Nicholas Daniel
Traditional, arr. Benjamin Britten: I wonder as I wander

Joyce DiDonato, Gerald Finley, Julius Drake
Gabriel Fauré: Pleurs d’or (Tears of gold) Op 72

Ensemble (including Richard Watkins as bass-baritone and Nick Daniels on piano)
Johannes Brahms: Zum Schluβ (In conclusion) Op 65 No 15

Photo Gallery

What the critics say

Edward Seckersen, The Arts Desk

The term “accompanist” is no longer acceptable, no longer “politically correct” in musical circles, not least Lieder. It’s hard to imagine now that the relationship between a singer and his or her pianist was ever regarded as anything other than an equal partnership. But 26 years ago, when Julius Drake first stepped out on to the Wigmore Hall platform to play Poulenc with “friends”, the rarefied world of chamber music and song was a very different place. Even Gerald Moore, the most venerated of Lieder pianists, called his autobiography Am I Too Loud? – a title more than a little suggestive of subservience. One might imagine the likes of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf responding in the affirmative.

But times have changed and the only subservience that Julius Drake now recognises has to do with the composers. No doubt the starry assembly of “friends” gathered at Wigmore for his 50th birthday celebration were of like mind. They braved the snow and ice for him and for the young musicians who might benefit from this gala in aid of The Jean Meikle Music Trust. It was a win-win kind of evening featuring so many firsts among equals that writing about it puts me in grave danger of comparing one to the other when the whole point of the concert was to celebrate diversity through the insights and very particular styles of voices which Drake’s vivid pianism both nurses and excites.

So let’s hear it for the potent collaboration pictured above, for the plangent, hall-filling strains of Ian Bostridge once more mourning the death of innocence in Three Songs from Britten’s Who Are These Children? The anguished melisma on the words “with blind and fearful faces” seemed to lend the question even greater urgency while the pay-off “And our charity is in the children’s faces” was equivocal to say the least, a phrase rendered uncertain in the singing of it.

Birgid Steinberger gave us Schumann, Strauss, and Mahler of the old school inflected with such fragility that one feared phrases might break from even her delicate handling. What could be further removed from Alice Coote’s Schubert – all deep contralto disquiet and simmering drama. Her thrilling account of Der Zwerg (“The Dwarf”) took us to dark and threatening places that even her lowest resonances were loth to access. A deathly pallor prevailed. Christopher Maltman’s strength and sensitivity fleshed out Wolf and Sophie Daneman found an underlying chasteness in Fauré.

Then just when you thought the dynamics of the evening had hit all possible highs and lows in came Joyce DiDonato to fire up the blood and heat of Granados. In three songs from Tonadillas en un antiguo she made grieving more erotic than her audience will have thought possible. But there was more: sensuous sweet nothings and a flamenco sizzler from Fernando Obradors with Drake stomping the Steinway and DiDonato wondering where those castanets had gone.

They kept coming. Echoes of Gerald Finley’s handsome Onegin infused the burnished tone and gliding legatos of his Tchaikovsky songs and he brought Charles Ives, too, with Drake dreamily invoking the glacial impressionism of The Housatonic at Stockbridge. Was there a colour Drake didn’t deploy and finesse during the course of this multi-faceted evening? His presence was always felt; but his modesty kept denying him the limelight.

Finally the whole illustrious concert party assembled on stage for the finale and Wigmore became the music room of Drake’s second home. Counter-tenor Derek Lee Ragin got personal with the spiritual Deep River, Alice Coote did likewise with Roger Quilter’s aching Tennyson setting The Crimson Petal, Richard Watkins’ effulgent horn cast a glow over Birgid Steinberger’s pastoral Berlioz, and Mark Padmore joined forces with Nicholas Daniel’s transfixing oboe to unforgettable effect in Britten’s setting of I Wonder As I Wander – pure, true, and touchingly seasonal.

Would they all sing together, this rare and distinguished constellation? Of course. To Goethe’s words “Enough, now, ye Muses!” Brahms made sweet harmony of these special voices and for just a couple of minutes they were the most rapturous of consorts. What a birthday present. I might have been envious if I hadn’t got to share it.

Intermezzo, 27 December 2009

Musicians’ birthday concerts can be smugly self-congratulatory or so featherweight they’re meaningless to anyone outside the enchanted circle. But Julius Drake’s fiftieth was hardcore. Just like any regular recital, he was at the piano throughout, serious and attentive to detail. The only difference was the regular change of partner.

The uncelebratory tone was set early on with Derek Lee Ragin singing Purcell’s Lord, what is man, followed by Ian Bostridge and the three darkest songs from Britten’s Who are these Children?. Songs of blood and death, explored with frightening intensity by Bostridge, whose voice has darkened and gained power recently. There was a welcome return to form by Mark Padmore too, lyrically flowing in Schubert’s Auf dem Strom with Richard Watkins on sensitively judged horn.

Christopher Maltman slotted in four of Wolf’s Mörike Lieder with great composure before dashing for a train, and Birgid Steinberger’s fragile soprano flitted from Mendelssohn, Schumann and Strauss to Mahler. Gerald Finley wrapped his handsome voice around a couple of Tchaikovsky songs before slotting the names of Drake’s daughters into the final line of Ives’s Two little flowers – the only overt acknowledgement of the recital’s purpose all night.

Alice Coote made a mini-opera of Der Zwerg, the expressionist highlight of a Schubert selection that left everyone wanting more. Sophie Daneman’s cool Fauré and Joyce DiDonato’s immaculately poised Spanish songs offered a contrast in perspective – one of the fruits of gathering this diverse bunch of singers together in one place, and a reminder that whatever the composer, whatever the singer, Drake could adapt his skills subtly and effectively.

It wasn’t all singing – Nicholas Daniel joined Drake for three Schumann canons. I’m not convinced that a rearrangement for piano and oboe really works, but the warmth and easy empathy of the performance compensated.

A grand finale saw everyone back on stage together with pairings including Bostridge and Daneman in Schubert’s Licht und Liebe and DiDonato and Finley in Fauré’s Pleurs d’or. But one of the evening’s most special moments was the only one where Julius Drake sat back, as Mark Padmore was accompanied only by Nicholas Daniel for Britten’s I wonder as I wander.

Three hours after it began, the evening ended with what everyone had been waiting for, all Julius Drake’s guests singing together. The fitting choice? Brahms’s Zum Schluss (’in conclusion’).

Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph, 4 January 2010

It’s over forty years now since the accompanist Gerald Moore took centre-stage at the Festival Hall for his final live recital, joined by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Victoria de Los Angeles and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in a programme immaculately produced by Schwarzkopf’s husband, the fearsome but effective Walter Legge.

This legendary event sprung to mind as the Wigmore Hall celebrated the 50th birthday of another superb accompanist, Julius Drake, in aid of a charity established to commemorate Drake’s mother Jean Meikle. The singing and playing we heard was, I would guess, every bit as good in their way as it was for Moore’s event. But the organisation of Drake’s concert was calamitous: faffing about with chairs and music stands, endless rounds of applause and comings and goings, amounting to a poorly planned, over-stuffed, under-rehearsed programme, rambling on for three hours. Legge would never have tolerated it!

Still, there were plenty of pleasures along the way, not least the chance to hear Drake himself in a variety of musical idioms. He is no shrinking violet of an accompanist: without being aggressive or domineering, his style is robust and forthright, and he’s never afraid to draw attention to the piano.

Colours are vibrant – the sunset of Schubert’s Im Abendrot glowed golden, the storm in Wolf’s ‘Begegnung’ was black as thunder – and emotions run high. Singers aren’t cushioned in their comfort zone, but encouraged to take risks and embark on adventures. They clearly thrive on the challenge.

Ian Bostridge sang some of Britten’s late settings of William Soutar with a haunted twisted intensity. In Schubert’s ‘Der Zwerg’ Alice Coote told the Grimm tale of the dwarf and the doomed princess with explosively vivid passion. Joyce DiDonato sounded heavenly in Obradors’ canciones, and Gerald Finley was velvety perfection in Tchaikovsky’s romances. A final bouquet of bonnes-bouches included a seamless and velvety Fauré duet from Finley and DiDonato, and Britten’s exquisitely simple arrangement of ‘I wonder as I wander’, in a heart-stopping interpretation by Mark Padmore and oboist Nicholas Daniel.

Not everything was up this level: for instance, I could have done without the weirdly mannered and fey singing of the Bavarian soprano Birgid Steinberger and Derek Lee Ragin’s embarrassingly camp rendering of Purcell’s ‘Lord, what is man’. But most of all, I just wish the whole party – generous-spirited though it was – had been more slickly administered and executed.