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United Kingdom Wagner, Liszt, Koch, Mahler, and Weill: Nina Stemme (soprano), Magnus Svensson (piano). Wigmore Hall, London, 2.3.2023. (MB)
Wagner – Wesendonck-Lieder
Wagner-Liszt – Am stillen Herd aus Richard Wagner’s ‘Meistersinger’, S 448
Sigurd von Koch – Die geheimnisvolle Flöte
Mahler – Kindertotenlieder
Weill – Happy End: ‘Surabaya Johnny’; Nannas Lied; Youkali
What it’s to listen to a fantastic voice akin to Nina Stemme’s at shut quarters. Doubtless there will likely be some – there at all times are – for whom this was not, in keeping with their very own arbitrary definition, ‘true Lieder singing’. (They in all probability stated the identical about Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, although would deny it now.) Such foolish, anti-operatic snobbery apart, although, anybody really listening to Stemme’s method with phrases, right here on the Wigmore Hall simply as on the stage at Covent Garden or Bayreuth, can have heard that it was exactly that, furthered by a voice that by no means wanted to pressure, but which by no means sounded too huge, and which sounded as if it may have gone on all night time.
The Wesendonck-Lieder are maybe not the best place to start, chilly, however right here was the hochdramatisch factor from the beginning. The measurement of Stemme’s voice was obvious, in fact, however so too have been seemingly limitless reserves of breath. Hardly surprisingly, echoes – presentiments, actually – of Tristan und Isolde have been heard. And the leisure of the near the opening ‘Stehe still!’ was indicative of an strategy that might and did take its time, seeing no purpose to hurry, with out even the slightest trace of dragging. Magnus Svensson proved a supportive pianist, however this was actually Stemme’s present, ‘Der Engel’ starting with relative intimacy, blooming at her behest, the piano in tandem. There was a little bit of Isolde on stage too, Stemme gazing into the space within the piano introductions to ‘Im Treibhaus’ and ‘Träume’: not stagey, however quite poised. The former’s tessitura permitted a style of what her Brangäne might need been like too. Ringing high notes in ‘Schmerzen’ and ‘Träume’ alike, the previous resulting in a very exultant climax, the latter’s detailed colouring, every reiteration of the phrase ‘Träume’ subtly completely different, a pleasure in itself. If Svensson’s solo rendition of Liszt’s Meistersinger paraphrase proved a little bit stiff, freer the extra it grew to become Liszt correct, then it was a welcome alternative to listen to a real rarity.
Another rarity was Sigurd von Koch’s 1916 song-cycle, Die geheimnisvolle Flöte, in a well-judged efficiency that may have been ready for a repertoire work. Setting poems from Hans Bethge’s assortment Die chinesische Flöte, identified to many musicians from Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, Koch provides well-crafted responses, firmly rooted in German track custom, but with occasional hints of one thing extra Debussyan (in concord, quite than word-setting). Stemme and Svensson handled every of the 5 songs individually, with their very own moods, but additionally as a part of a higher complete. The disappointment of ‘Traurig Frühlingsnacht’ and the darkish defiance of the closing ‘Herbstgefühl’ – no light autumnal – have been particularly fascinating, the latter fairly one thing in efficiency.
Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder is, in fact, completely central to the repertoire, extra typically heard in orchestral guise, but with such readability and spareness heard right here maybe sounding each extra starkly modernist and nearer to Bach. Stemme provided nice readability too, each of line and of objective, although she was definitely not deaf to Mahler’s irony, a pleasant hyperlink to the Weill songs to return. If it have been troublesome not to think about this efficiency in some sense as ‘operatic’, it was definitely not so in a damaging method. As within the Wesendonck-Lieder, Stemme was not afraid to color with tuning, an indication of well-placed confidence in addition to inventive judgement. She, in addition to Svensson, used concord – as an example on the phrases ‘O Augen’ within the second track – to evoke Wagnerian thriller. The depth of ‘Wenn dein Mütterlein’ gave solution to nonetheless higher disappointment, once more not with out irony or certainly simple delusion, in ‘Oft denk’ ich sie sind nur augegangen’. True Mahlerian horror was unleashed within the closing ‘In diesem Wetter, in diesem Braus’, the hallucinatory last stanza a correct inheritor to Winterreise. (Now there’s an intriguing prospect.)
Stemme’s use of phrases was essential in Weill – with and with out Brecht – through which three songs she continued to carry the viewers within the palm of her hand. Svensson’s pianism appeared simply the factor right here too, idiomatic all through. So vividly communicative was Nannas Lied that certainly a listener with out texts and and not using a phrase of German would have had a powerful thought of the ‘Liebesmarkt’ and the challenges of transferring past ‘siebzehn’. The tango rhythms of Youkali provided nonetheless extra alluring cabaret, additionally – maybe oddly – making me assume we have to hear Stemme in Schoenberg, from the cabaret of the Brettl-Lieder to full-throated Erwartung. As an encore we heard the Broadway Weill: ‘My Ship’ from Lady within the Dark, despatched certainly with sails product of silk, Stemme’s English as excellent as her German. Wonderful!
Mark Berry
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