Wigmore Hall, London
31 January 2010, 7.30pm
Angelika Kirchschlager (mezzo)
Simon Keenlyside (baritone)
Julius Drake (piano)
Schubertiade: A celebration of Schubert’s Birthday
On the evening of the actual anniversary of Schubert’s birth in Vienna in 1797, two of the world’s leading singers join forces with pianist Julius Drake for a unique showcase of some of the composer’s finest inspirations. This is a once-in-a-lifetime evening not to be missed.
Programme
Lieder by texts of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Geheimes (A Secret) (SK)
Meeres Stille (Calm sea) (SK)
Ganymed (Ganymede) (SK)
Suleika I (Suleika I) (AK)
Nähe des Geliebten (Nearness of the beloved) (AK)
Erster Verlust (First loss) (AK)
Versunken (Immersed) (AK)
Heidenröslein ( The little wild rose) (SK)
Rastlose Liebe (Restless love) (SK)
Prometheus (Prometheus) (SK)
Wandrers Nachtlied II (Wanderer’s nightsong II) (SK)
Auf dem See (On the lake) (AK)
Wonne der Wehmut (Delight of sadness) (AK)
Geistes-Gruss (Ghostly greetings) (AK)
Erlkönig (Erlking) (AK)
Interval
Dem Unendlichen (To the infinete) (SK)
Himmelsfunken (Intimation of Heaven) (SK)
Lieder by texts by Johann Gabriel Seidl
Der Wanderer an den Mond (The wanderer addresses the moon) (AK)
Wiegenlied (cradle song) (AK)
Die Unterscheidung (the distinction) (AK)
Bei dir allein! (With you alone!) (AK)
An den Mond in einer Herbstnacht (To the moon on an autumn night) (SK)
Dei Sterne (The stars) (SK)
Lied des Florio (Florio’s song) (AK)
Der liebliche Stern (The lovely star) (AK)
Gesänge aus ‘Wilhelm Meister’ (J.W. von Goethe)
Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen aß (Who never ate his bread with tears) (SK)
So laßt mich scheinen (let me appear) (AK)
Mignon und der Harfner (Mignon and the Harper) (AK+SK)
Encores
Lachen und Weinen (Laughter and tears) (AK)
Der Einsame (The Hermit) (SK)
Photo Gallery
What the critics say
Geoff Brown, The Times, 3 February 2010
Smoked like a chimney; bad eyesight; looked like Richard Tauber in Blossom Time: Schubert’s crude externals are easy to pin down. Fixing the magic of his 600 songs in performance is much harder, and it was a thousand pities that on his birthday, the day he turned 213, this undisputed king of lieder received a mixed handling from the starry voices of Angelika Kirchschlager and Simon Keenlyside.
Days after a victorious solo recital in the same hall, Keenlyside served up his songs of heart sighs and loneliness with confidently controlled emotions, dynamics, and phrasing, though the recital’s heavenly pianist Julius Drake often proved the subtler master. Where Keenlyside sometimes splashed, Drake dappled; he knew the arts of suggestion too, mislaid when the baritone swivelled too showily between thunderous cry and hushed beauty. Predictably and properly, Keenlyside unleashed Prometheus with snarling force (as indeed did Drake’s bass line). But the singer impressed and touched spirits more when he coloured Meeres Stille with all the grey mystery of the motionless ocean.
A cough, one false start, glances at the music hidden under the piano lid: these were signs that Kirchschlager was not enjoying the most comfortable of nights. She sculpted some telling moments, even so. Nähe des Geliebten was brilliantly shaped, each stanza’s sturdy declaration dribbling away toward the final line’s longing’s ache. Single-handed, she coped well with the melodrama of Erlkönig. And when the simpler, folksier songs arrived – the Wiegenlied with Seidl’s text, Der Wanderer an den Mond – her tremulous mezzo found a focus often blurred elsewhere. The other side of the ledger included Versunken, its erotic tenderness accompanied by grotesque swinging of shoulders and hips; Die Unterscheidung, its comic tale flattened in the telling.
Plenty of quality control in the repertoire, though. Goethe’s texts dominated; so did Schubert the poet of despair and the forlorn. “I think you need cheering up,” Drake told us before the sprightlier encores arrived. He was right.
Martin Kettle, The Guardian, 4 February 2010
In recent appearances, Simon Keenlyside has shown signs of vocal strain. But there was no trace of that in the baritone’s outstanding contributions to the Wigmore Hall’s Schubert birthday song recital, an event of starry quality and high seriousness in which Keenlyside shared the stage with the mezzo Angelika Kirchschlager and the pianist Julius Drake. In a programme dominated by 18 settings of poems by Goethe, Keenlyside has rarely sounded more authoritative.
He seemed merely to turn on the vocal tap and out poured rich, generous, ardent tone – from the first song, a wonderfully knowing account of Geheimes, to the last, an encore of Der Einsame that bubbled with character. He once or twice got careless with words, notably in Heidenröslein, but the sheer range of his vocalism, from a defiant account of the masterpiece Prometheus to the romantic stillness of Wandrers Nachtlied II, was compelling. Kirchschlager took a little more time to settle in her first group of love songs, including the erotically charged Suleika II and the restrained playfulness of Versunken. But she was on top form for a thrilling yet meticulous account of Erlkönig.
In the second half, the programme grew ever darker, culminating in three austere songs from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister – the last of which, Mignon und der Harfner, the evening’s only duet, had a bleakness worthy of Winterreise. An odd way to celebrate a birthday.