Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center, Philadelphia

Sunday, 27 March 2011, 8:00 pm

Matthew Polenzani (tenor)
Julius Drake (piano)

Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin

What the critics say

Peter Dobrin, Philadelphia Inquirer, 29 March 2011

The many layers of ‘Schöne Müllerin’

In terms of ultimate meaning, Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin might be just as elusive as any Northern Renaissance canvas. Experts can translate a white lily as Mary’s purity or a rolling piano part as the brook, but those are local signposts. Consider the fact that you can make it through all 20 songs in Schubert’s cycle and still not be sure who the love object is (the miller’s beautiful daughter or the river?), and you have some idea of the latitude Schubert grants his listener.

In their Philadelphia Chamber Music Society performance of the piece Sunday night at the Perelman Theater, tenor Matthew Polenzani and pianist Julius Drake did tantalizingly little to impose settled answers. They formed a long dramatic arc over the songs – bright and sure at the start, then irresolute and ambiguous, and resolved but still ambiguous at the end. And they both have a firm command of tone as messenger. In “After Work,” Polenzani was no less convincing in the voice of the daughter than in the miller’s, and Drake was author of the unlikely idea that certain phrases can end in a musical question mark.