Lise -- Vocal Arts DC 👍🏻

 

March 19, 2021?  This picture is of the people performing, Lise Davidsen and James Baillieu, but the venue shown is wrong.  This recital is in London on a different date.  I am discussing the Lieder recital streamed from London to Washington, DC.

I feel a certain musical kinship to Lise, not for her glorious Wagner and Strauss operatic triumphs, but more for her Bach, Brahms, Schumann and Strauss Lieder.  When I started at IU, I told the professors that I had performed the alto solos for all the major works of Bach.  They responded, "No you haven't."  So I said,  "Matthew Passion, B minor mass, Magnificat, St John Passion, Christmas Oratorio.  What does that leave?"  I love it that Lise has sung some of the same music.   I once did a whole recital of Lieder by Brahms so it is nice to see a couple of them here.

"Auf dem Kirchhofe" Op.105 No. 4    Johannes Brahms
"Da unten im Tale"  WoO. 33 No. 6
"Mädchenlied"  Op. 107 No. 5
"Liebestreu" Op. 3 No.1
"Von ewiger Liebe" Op. 43 No. 1

Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart     Robert Schumann

Abschied von Frankreich
Nach der Geburt ihres Sohnes
An die Königin Elisabeth
Abschied von der Welt
Gebet

Luonnotar  Op. 70                             Jan Sibelius  She tells us this is a tone poem.

Five Songs  Op. 37                          Jan Sibelius

Three Songs from Six Songs  Op. 48                   Edvard Grieg

From Acht Gedichte aus "Letzte Blaetter"  Op. 10        Richard Strauss

Zueignung

Allerseelen

Die Georgine  "ob spät, ob früh, es ist deselbe"  [Early or late it is the same.]  She has come to me late in my life,  It is a wonderful gift.

 

"Wiegenlied"      Richard Strauss  I have grown to love this in Lise's version.

"Malven"      Richard Strauss

 

"Befreit"      Richard Strauss

 

"Caecilie"      Richard Strauss     This makes a great ending.

This is an entirely different style of singing than the Wagner and Strauss operas she is rapidly becoming famous for.  It is true Lieder singing.  I'm pretty sure the only two languages are German and Finnish.  The film includes the original text with an English translation below it.

Between each group she talks to us, generally about the songs and about how much she is missing the audience.  She would like to say hello to each of us.  I can only hope that this will happen.  I wish her a wonderful career and a life of happiness.  I've never been famous, but I've had fun.

If you want a disinterested review of Lise Davidsen, you will have to look elsewhere.  I find that I love it because she does.  In the not too distant future there should be a Grieg song album.

Dichterliebe

Sometimes I post films of music just because I love them.  This film of Jonas Kaufmann singing Schumann's Dichterliebe is an example.  I tried while I was still singing to fit in things that I wanted to perform.  Many I succeeded, but a few I did not.  I regret that I never sang Dichterliebe, a truly glorious cycle. I wanted very badly to play Orlovsky, but no one seems to have been able to picture me as a guy.  Sigh.

For me you cannot beat Jonas in Lieder.  My heart says this is the best.  Enjoy.

Jonas has said this before, and I've heard it from others as well.  Without an audience it's not the same.  If I could give him a hug, I certainly would.  Bravo.  There's no one like you.

Scarlata and Kalish at Sac State

Yesterday I attended a vocal recital with baritone Randall Scarlata and pianist Gilbert Kalish at California State University Sacramento as part of this year's New Millennium concert series.  I last saw Kalish in this same series accompanying Dawn Upshaw two years ago. 

What made this particular recital unusual was the emphasis on standard vocal repertoire. How often to you see that these days?  They performed sets by Ives (English), Fauré (French), Beethoven and Schumann (German) with an encore "Ständchen" by Schubert.  These are the mountains of classical song.  To give you an idea of the selections, in this entire program nightingales were mentioned at least four different times, including rossignol in French and Nachtigal in German.

Mr. Scarlata has a particular style of presenting which he employed in all four sets.  He uses gestures, facial expressions and walking rather more than is usually the case, but I found it moving and never too much. 

When Upshaw came, she also did some Charles Ives.  Perhaps Kalish is fond of him, as am I  I was not familiar with any of these but enjoyed their presence.  I like the idea that Ives would become standard repertoire.

Gabriel Fauré setting four texts by Paul Verlaine formed another group.  In my mind Fauré is the greatest of all French chanson composers.  There was a bit of name dropping when Scarlata mentioned discussing repertoire with the great French baritone Gérard Souzay.

For the Ludwig van Beethoven year (250 years since the birth of LvB) we were presented with the very first song cycle, Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte on poems by Alois Isidor Jeitteles.  It establishes the genre by focusing on an unhappy love affair. 

We finished with the greatest of all song cycles, Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe on poems by Heine.  Scarlata got so excited singing "Ich grolle nicht" that his face turned quite red.  This is a very beautiful set of songs that start sentimental and end tragic. 

There were appropriate changes in style as we moved from one composer to another.  The problem with performing standard repertoire is that one has ones own idea of what one should hear.  I loved the emotion but would have liked a more highly developed idea of legato.  Don't get the wrong idea.  I was very happy to hear this.

Season Opener for Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera

The 2018-19 concert season of the Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera featured guest conductor Andrew Grams with guest violinist Angelo Xiang Yu playing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto.  They were fun together with their surprisingly matching over the top enthusiasm.  This was met with great audience excitement.  Yu played an encore of a solo version of the Meditation from Thais by Massenet.

The concert finished with Schumann's Symphony No. 4.  Maestro Grams brings much excitement to his performances.

May before it's over

This is Schumann, of course.  "In the wonderfully beautiful month of May."

Renée Fleming at Zellerbach

Renée Fleming gave a recital last night at Zellerbach in Berkeley with pianist Olga Kern.  I am having a hard time deciding what to say.

Unfortunately, Renée has reached the point in life where her voice is not the gorgeous instrument it has always been.  Before today I have always been pleased to report that she sounded great.  It was pouring rain, and the concert started very late, so perhaps this contributed.  A piano piece was inserted so she could exit the stage.  Perhaps it was just for today.

Renée is a celebrity who can charm any audience into submission, even me.  Sigh.  Strauss was best.  Of course.  We were asked to sing "I could have danced all night."

Murray at Mondavi

Murray Perahia in a single sentence:  the harder it is the better he plays.

So maybe you wanted more.  He got three standing ovations, and beat the piano so hard someone had to come out and tune it during intermission.

JS Bach, French Suite #4
Beethoven Appassionata
Schumann Papillons
Chopin Scherzo #2

These are widely divergent styles of music.  I would like to hear more difference between the different styles.  He has excess amounts of WOW, but maybe wow isn't everything.  I liked the Beethoven best.

This isn't my area of expertise, so I'm going to shut up now.

Mondnacht

Current favorite.

Schumann

You may have noticed by now that my first love is Lieder. The others are gone so I have chosen "Mondnacht."

Schaefer's Dichterliebe

I have owned this film for years.  After all, it comes with Pierrot Lunaire which I reviewed here.  Es heisst Theaterrealität. It is two things in one--a film of Schumann's Dichterliebe and a film of people filming Schumann's Dichterliebe--and it can be played either way.  I am showing the long version without subtitles for the full experience.

There is an extended bit filming Christine Schaefer's bare feet.  In another section she says "Ich liebe dich" into the camera over and over.  Unsuccessfully.  We do not feel loved.  The pianist Natasha Osterkorn takes a bath.

They are German, they smoke, they drink.  "Es ist leichter sich am Arsch zu kratzen als am Hertzen," she writes on a blackboard while singing "Ich grolle nicht."  Hoffentlich.

She is performing the songs in a moving railroad car with ragged furniture and dirt.  And a grand piano.  And an audience that appears and disappears.

One hears the words as never before.

I begin to feel that the truly modern exists only in Germany.  I begin to long for Berlin Alexanderplatz.
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I like all sorts of things

It would be fun if this came without the label so we could all guess what this is.  She is only the very slightest younger than I, and I was a huge fan. It's less strange than Sting's Dowland.  For the sake of journalism this is Barbra Streisand singing Schumann's "Mondnacht."

Footnote: die Ausprache ist wirklich wunderbar.

Goerne

My iPod has quite a bit of Matthias Goerne by now. Besides Die Schöne Müllerin, there is an album of Dichterliebe and Liederkreis reviewed elsewhere, and an album of Bach arias with Christine Schäfer and Hilary Hahn called Bach: Violin & Voice.

The singers in the Bach album simply don't rise to the level of the divine Hilary Hahn. What is she doing that they are not? Again it comes down to phrasing. Bach's music comes with a regular harpsichord beat underlying everything. So do you just fall in with it and emphasize every beat with the harpsichord and eventually become plodding, as I feel Goerne does here? Or do you phrase across and occasionally against the beat as Hahn does? Schäfer falls somewhere between the two.

I enjoy all of them in various ways, but only Hahn attains the truly divine. I want them to soar higher.

How one reacts to a singer will depend very much on the timbre of the voice. Goerne is the sort of singer who will appeal or not. He has cut a niche for himself in Lieder singing which is very appealing. I personally prefer his tone to that of the sainted Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, but I know this is strictly a matter of personal taste.

In Lieder Goerne masterfully manipulates his tone to enhance expression. He can diminuendo without falling into sotto voce, as so many do nowadays.

At this point I refer to Anna Netrebko saying that she was taught to sing always with a full tone. When conductors and coaches want a softer tone than she can produce without switching to sotto voce, she simply refuses to do it. For me this is wisdom.

For Goerne his tone stays full to very low dynamic levels. He also can manipulate the color of his voice to great effect. This can be wonderful to hear in Schumann. My problem here is that his overall color is too dark for Die Schöne Müllerin, a work of extreme naivete. Perhaps Wunderlich could manage it. I still refuse to buy his version.
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Composer Missing

I went to San Francisco to hear Dawn Upshaw and Emanuel Ax at Davies Hall. The main attraction for me was the announced debut of a new piece by Oswaldo Golijov. Well.... I ran into Stephanie Friedman, and she said that the piece by Golijov was not ready. Now that he's so famous maybe he's having composer's block.

On the program instead was a song cycle by Stephen Prutsman called Piano Lessons. It is possible to hear in these pieces a connection to such American composers as Bernstein, Copland and Barber. The poems are charming, the music is nice, blah, blah, blah. But don't you think maybe pieces about practicing scales should have here and there a few scales? Perhaps he is avoiding the obvious. I like to hear a specific character for each song and instead got a lot of sameness. To be completely unobvious the singer would have to sing the scales.

This year is the 200th anniversary of the births of Frédéric François Chopin and Robert Schumann, and this concert may be regarded as a celebration of that. The Chopin songs were sung in Polish--Dawn Upshaw does that--and were accompanied by a Polish pianist. They were pleasant.

The highlight of the evening was the playing of Emanuel Ax. Between the songs he played four mazurkas and two nocturnes by Chopin.

The encore was by Hugo Wolf who is having his 150th anniversary this year. It was all fine, but I went for Golijov. It was known but not announced that his songs would not appear by the time I bought my ticket.

Keenlyside

Interior of Opera Garnier from my seat.

Keenlyside at Garnier. He did a group of Faure followed by Ravel. It was Ok, I guess. The audience seemed to understand him.

He did Dichterliebe, which I love. It was OK.

He is unclear on the concept of encores. They're supposed to be at least a little fun.

László Polgár in Recital

László Polgár, bass, is a man with an aura. If he is there, you know something tragic is going to happen. One of his roles is Bartók`s Bluebeard. With him singing the part you would know the ending was not happy. All ambiguity would be gone.

He was a replacement at the Zurich Opera House for someone else which probably explains the fact that he used a score in the first half, and that the program seemed to change from what was advertised. In order of presentation things seemed to improve as we went along.

Schumann`s Liederkreis was done rather matter-of-factly. Admitedly all song cycles have the same subject--poet has lost his one true love--and this makes them seem a bit alike.

Then came sections from Schubert`s Schwanengesang. The ones that worked well are the ones that best fit his aura of gloom: Der Atlas and Still ist die Nacht.

As we go from section to section the level of gloom deepens and the quality of the performance increases. What Lieder are glomier than Hugo Wolf`s Drei Gesänge nach Sonatten von Michelangelo?

Herr Polgár is Hungarian and therefore not an obvious choice for a Liederabend. He ended his program with something more suitable: Mussorgsky`s Songs and Dances of Death, sung in Russian. In this cycle the singer represents death himself, and who better than gaunt Lazlo in his black silk pajamas and snow white hair? Perhaps when death appears he will look like this. In these songs he was magnificent. He relaxed into the expression, leaned back on the piano and was quite beautiful.

Goerne’s Dichterliebe

I never performed Schumann’s Dichterliebe (poet's love); it’s not supposed to be for women. Lotte Lehmann who taught Lied interpretation thought this was bullshit. She sang whatever she wanted. But nevertheless, it is a work that I have studied and tried to sing and play on the piano. I know each song almost by heart. “Ich grolle nicht” is probably the only one I actually performed. Dichterliebe is the peak in the song cycle world.

Why? It is made up entirely of fragments, snapshots with no beginning or ending, the perfect example of Schumann’s art, the reason he is revered above all others. It’s like haiku—capture all there is to say about one thing in just a few notes, and then move on. The poet Heinrich Heine is as perfect in his expression as Schumann is in his settings. What expresses falling in love better than “Im wunderschönen Monat Mai?” What song is more bitter than “Ich grolle nicht,” or more tragic than “Ich hab' im Traum geweinet?” [It’s mistranslated on Wikipedia—my tears are still flowing.] What other song cycle can claim irony such as “Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome” and “Allnächtlich im Traume?”

It’s like a collection of tiny diamonds.

Matthias Goerne is the first to establish a major career from Lieder since Fischer-Dieskau, and has recorded all of the big cycles. I’ve never cared for the voice of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau—it’s just too kind of sweet and whiny for me. He’s regarded like a god, but I just don’t like him, though old age has softened this. Goerne’s voice is not especially pretty. He growls and groans his way along, but I like this growl better than Fischer-Dieskau’s whine.

There is not room for great effects as there is in opera. Interpretation consists of finding the same fragment of perfection as the poet and the composer. Goerne has found the perfection of Dichterliebe. Each song is as it should be.

He is aided in this achievement by the astounding piano playing of Vladimir Ashkenazy. He’s far more assertive than what I am used to, but I think for Schumann this is right. The piano must feel equal to the voice. I love it.

Liederkreis is on the same recording, but I don’t know it nearly so well.


Well, I guess I do know this one.
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The Romantic Generation

Professor Gossett has suggested that instead of writing books I should consider reading some. Ouch. I am taking this pretty well.

One of his suggestions is Charles Rosen's The Romantic Generation. This covers the period from 1830 to 1850, the period of Schumann, Chopin, Bellini, Berlioz, Liszt and Mendelssohn.

Rosen is a pianist, and his book reflects this bias, a bias that the era may also be seen to reflect. Schubert and Beethoven give hints of what the piano might achieve, but it is Schumann, Chopin and Liszt that bring it to its full idiomatic glory.

On the down side: he picks over every damn piece for an unbelievable 710 pages.

In the first chapter he talks about "Conception and realization" as it applies to the Romantics. I'm always looking for a good generalization, and this is quite a nice one. Looking back from the present we might assume that in any given era the composer imagines a specific performance for his composition. Stravinsky insisted on this--he optimistically rejected the whole idea of interpretation. This point of view, Rosen is saying, only extends into the past as far as the Romantics. They attempted to notate the precise expected sound the piano was to make.

In previous generations composers planned for improvisation. That's what the figured bass is all about--it is a plan for improvisation. In the modern world someone composes a keyboard part for the continuo player and sticks it in the score. Baroque composers would have expected it to sound different each time, especially when played by different people, like a fake sheet.

In the Baroque the conception created a structure for a variety of possible realizations. In the Romantic era the composer tried to spell out the precise expected performance, to imagine in advance how it would sound.

There is a chapter called Fragment, a prominent feature of Romanticism. He seems to be saying that the Romantics instead of changing or attacking the classical forms focused on fragments, bits often taken out of context, or deprived of a context.

I have always loved the song "Im wunderschoenen Monat Mai" by Schumann and used to play and sing it just to try to get the right expression. Rosen explains how it begins and ends on the wrong notes, achieving proper tonal cadences only in the middle of the verse. It is a fragment, and Schumann was the master of fragments.

More later. [See here, here, here, here, and here.]
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