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The Spectator,
Sep 6, 2003 |
Michael Tanner |
Schubert: Die Winterreise, Edinburgh, 16 August 2003
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Edinburgh Festival 2003, 3
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Queen's Hall |
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Apart from the two cycles of the Ring, all
the opera in this year’s Edinburgh Festival was performed in concert, with
some of the singers taking the opportunity to get in as much acting as
possible – one would have been gratified to see an Ortrud as impassionedly
active as Petra Lang in any fully staged version of Lohengrin; while
others seem to have been content to walk onto the platform when required
and off again as soon as they’d done their bit: all the singers in the
thrilling account of Verdi’s Macbeth under the electrifying, and almost
ubiquitous, baton of Sir Charles Mackerras.
Two singers who acted out their interpretations to an impressive degree
were the tenor Jonas Kaufmann, one of Edinburgh’s most cherished annual
visitors, and Simon Keenlyside, both of whom sang Schubert’s Winterreise
in morning recitals at the Queen’s Hall, where, as usual, much of the most
satisfying music-making of the Festival took place. Neither of these
singers, whose performances were both of a kind which left no doubt that
this cycle is not only one of the greatest musical works ever composed,
but a stupendous drama, went in for elaborate gesturing or miming, but
neither of them was content to stand in the curve of the piano and just
make the odd movement. Kaufmann, who cultivates a romantic appearance and
coiffure, looked a most plausible candidate for the lovelorn wanderer,
very much a development out of the miller’s lad whom we saw him as last
year in Die schone Mullerin. Even though the first song of Winterreise
already laments the loss of love, this traveller set off at a fairly brisk
tempo, with a spring in his step, aided by the superb accompaniment of
Helmut Deutsch.
Wilhelm Muller, the poet of Winterreise, is often taken to task for the
routine imagery of his songs, and for their lack of individuality. That
quality, however, gave Schubert plenty of room for manoeuvre in setting
them, and also, quite often, the chance to leave the quality, the
emotional direction of them, vague, while contrasting some of them with
others where the mood is established or homed in on with death-dealing
precision. And broadly, for the singer, there is the opportunity to
identify with the wanderer or to narrate his tale up to a point from the
outside. Kaufmann took us with him on his journey, left us in no doubt
where he was heading, and stood tormented before us. It was one of the
greatest interpretations of the cycle I have ever witnessed, ranking with
– to mention only the greatest – Hotter and Fassbaender, and tending to
the latter’s eviscerating mode. Nothing in his progression was easy, and
his last note, held for ages, was almost a scream. After the piano had its
final chord, there was an immense silence, Kaufmann looking as if he could
hardly believe what he had just put himself and us through; and then huge
applause, with an element of relief that the ordeal was over. It will be
interesting to see what impression the performance makes when it is
broadcast on Radio 3.
Keenlyside’s account, coming two weeks later, was utterly different, and
even more disturbing. It was hard to know when he came onto the stage with
his regular accompanist Malcolm Martineau, also magnificent in his unity
of intention with the singer, whether the diffident, self-absorbed figure
we saw was the performer or the character he was about to incarnate. Since
Keenlyside is a consummate professional, I take it that the manner in
which he moved – slowly - into the cycle, virtually giving the impression
that he might have to abandon it, was deliberate. At any rate, it created
an electric atmosphere. Like Kaufmann, he used a vast dynamic range, but
where the tenor’s voice has got notably deeper and fuller, Keenlyside
nearly always took the chance to sing as softly as he could, sometimes
almost murmuring his way through whole songs. And odd notes were sung in a
Vickers-like head-voice, adding to the unsettling impact, and only just
this side of the tolerable. Yet both he and Kaufmann kept all their most
extravagant vocal effects within a legato line, so are parts of a new
tradition, one hopes, of unexplosive Lieder singing, as opposed to the
norm of the last fifty years. Keenlyside seemed improvisatory, sometimes
abandoning gestures he’d just started making. Often minutes went past with
hardly a glance at the audience; odd, and rare, smiles almost seemed
unrelated to what he was singing. Madness decisively set in earlier than
usual, though the uncompromising grasp of the worst truths about this
wanderer’s position made it seem a superior state to that of the sleeping
villagers he so gently mocked. By the end he had withdrawn from any
inclination to communicate with anyone, and his last note was merely
breathed out. Keenlyside seemed less relieved when his winter’s journey
was over than bemused about where he was. I can’t believe I shall have
another experience like this one. |
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