Die Meistersinger from Budapest

In a year when every cultural centre of any significance (apart from London for some reason) is staging as much Wagner as it can afford – and then some in many cases – few contributions to the bicentenary are likely to stand out. Even so, Budapest is going further than most, staging seven of the ten mature operas over the course of the year, many under the baton of the estimable Ádám Fischer. If you catch it quick, their performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is available to hear online and is well worth a listen. Fischer’s account is unusual in some respects, often very slow, but really emphasising clarity of texture. The counterpoint in the strings comes through with particular clarity, revealing many details that had previously passed me by.  More significantly though, Fischer conveys the summery optimism of the score in every bar; you might not agree with his every interpretive decision, but it is a performance that is guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

The other reason is to catch this performance is the casting of Klaus Florian Vogt and Annette Dasch as Walther and Eva. I hadn’t heard of either of these fine Wagnerians ever singing Meistersinger before, but both are predictably impressive, and they bring the same chemistry that helped the recent Lonhengrin at Bayreuth to get over its rat problem. The rest of the cast is good too, James Rutherford a dependable Sachs and Eric Halfvarson an impressively rich Pogner.

The performance was broadcast live on Saturday 8 June on Bartok Radio. It should be available to listen on demand for at least a week. This is the station to come to, by the way, for the first week of Bayreuth each year. Those performances stay on the site for a few weeks, so perhaps this one will too. To listen to the Meistersinger:

Follow this link: http://hangtar.radio.hu/bartok#!#2013-06-08
Click on “Kapcsoljuk a Bartók Béla Nemzeti Hangversenytermet”
Hover to the left of the title, and after few seconds a play triangle will appear. After you’ve clicked on that the media interface appears at the top of the screen. (I know, it’s big hassle, but it’s worth it.) 

For any Hungarian speakers out there, here's a review. It seems to dwell on the nationalistic aspects of the story, which are particularly relevant, given Fischer's relationship with the current Hungarian government: http://figaro.postr.hu/sorbariton-plusstenor-es-szuperszopran

 (Photographs: Művészetek Palotája) 

Carolin Widmann Alexander Lonquich Wigmore Hall 7 June 2013

Schubert: Violin Sonata in A D574; Fantasy in C D934

Poulenc: Violin Sonata

Ives: Violin Sonata No. 4 “A Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting”

Carolin Widmann  - violin

Alexander Lonquich – piano

Wigmore Hall, London 7 June 2013

Like many soloists, Carolin Widmann is shown off to her absolute best by the Wigmore Hall acoustic. She has a narrow tone, focussed and occasionally gritty. It is very elegant though, and she is able to produce plenty of timbral variety, though never a large or round sound. That doesn’t matter at the Wigmore Hall, because her playing is always clearly audible here, and in this acoustic the focus of her tone translates to intimacy. So, rather than large rhetorical gestures, instead we hear the details up close; they’re always interesting, and they are usually very beautiful as well. The two Schubert works on this evening’s programme appear on a disc that Widmann and Lonquich recently recorded for ECM. I was less impressed with the results there. The big, warm recording environment that is a trademark of the ECM label ought, by rights, to compensate for the lack of body in Widmann’s tone, but in this case it seems to have the opposite effect, isolating her in a broad soundscape that she is unable to fill. The Wigmore acoustic doesn’t make Widmann sound any warmer, but it does give her the presence and the immediacy that the ECM sound conspicuously lacks.

Pianist Lonquich is at the other end of the spectrum. His sound is warm and enveloping. Again, it is not a huge sound, but it is much more robust than Widmann’s. The two complement each other perfectly. Lonquich often behaves more like a soloist than Widmann does, and in the Schubert sonata it often seemed that the rubato impulses and the phasing were coming more from the piano than from the solo line. But that didn’t matter a bit, especially as the accompaniments in all these works carry so much of the musical interest.

There is never any feeling of undue certainty in Widmann’s playing. In fact, while everything she performs is technically correct (bar a few tuning slips), nothing ever seems completely secure. The narrowness of Widmann’s tone is a related issue, and it often seemed that her bow did not have the purchase it needed on the strings. There were occasional extraneous sounds from the strings themselves, some of the passage work was irregular, and some notes failed to sound immediately. Perhaps this is just a more reticent approach to the violin; it is certainly at odds with the more strident (more masculine?) sound that predominates among leading soloists today. On her recordings, these problems are minimised, but that reticence always remains.

The problem/issue/quirk was most apparent at the opening of the first work, the Schubert Sonata in A D574. The introduction to this sonata is, or should be absolutely exquisite, atmospheric chords from the piano over which the violin plays a simple, unadorned melodic line. The extreme exposure here, and the requirement to reduce the vibrato to almost nothing, highlighted Widmann’s insecurities, with her tuning and articulation particularly problematic. Fortunately, Schubert gives a second chance, including the atmospheric introduction in the exposition repeat. And this time it was just ideal: innocent and plaintive, but hinting at the complexities that are to follow. Lonquich treats the accompaniment of this first movement as if it were a solo piano sonata, but Widmann has enough ideas of her own, and enough volume, to ensure he never steals the show. Between them, they produce quite a Romantic interpretation, with plenty of rubato and intense emotions in every phrase. By the time we get to the recapitulation, we realise just how far we’ve come. That atmospheric introduction returns for a third time, but now all the naivety has gone, and the final statement of the themes from here on, while virtually identical on paper, is given with a sense of worldliness and reluctant sophistication.

Poulenc’s Violin Sonata is a rarity on concert programmes, but its inclusion on this one was clearly warranted. Widmann’s focussed tone gives direction and purpose to Poulenc’s occasionally wayward melodic lines, while Lonquich’s boisterous accompaniments fully realise the music’s playful side. Widmann occasionally struggles to produce the quantity of tone that the composer expects, which can strain the longer climaxes, but she compensates with the energy she puts into the scurrying details elsewhere. The finale is classic Poulenc, with surprises and changes of direction at every turn. Widmann and Lonquich manage to keep the suspense up right to the end, with every new idea sounding fresh and original.

Ives’ Fourth Violin Sonata is even more of a rarity, and perhaps justifiably so. But, like the Poulenc, it is a work that makes the most of these players’ ability to give focus and purpose to otherwise only tenuously connected musical ideas. Ives structures his sonata around a fairly involved narrative, which fills a whole column of the programme. From a musical perspective, the unifying ideas are hymn tunes, which are repeatedly abused in a variety of ways. Widmann’s brusque tone at louder dynamics seems appropriate in this music, and sits well with the composer’s distanced approach to his material. And again, the broad and sometimes frenetic playing of Lonquich gives weight to the proceedings, ensuring the music never sounds trivial.

The highlight of the concert was the last work, the Schubert Fantasy in C D934. Like the earlier sonata, the Fantasy opens in a nebulous atmosphere, with tremolo chords in the piano introducing a plaintive melody on the violin. This time Widmann was the music’s wavelength from the very start, and the whole performance was excellent from beginning to end. There is a lot of passion and intensity in this music, but it all falls under a carefully controlled emotional contour. After the impassioned opening statement of the themes, the intensity drops, as a series of variations begins, in quieter dynamics and over lighter textures. But as the variations continue, the intensity gradually rises again, slowly and evenly over the course of the second half of the work, and the controlled but emotive performance here was ideal, leading to a truly spectacular coda.

For an encore, Widmann and Lonquich played the third movement of Schumann’s Second Violin Sonata, another excellent choice. The movement is slow and dreamy, but with occasional melodic outbursts that, in this performance, seemed to come out of nowhere. As with everything that had gone before, and especially the Schubert Fantasy, the Schumann was poignant, focussed, intense in so many subtle ways, and, above all, filled with an exquisite beauty from beginning to end.  

Steven Osborne Vingt regards Queen Elizabeth Hall 29 May 13

Messiaen: Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus

Steven Osborne (piano)

Steven Osborne seemed destined to battle the odds with his performance of Vingt Regards this evening. The steely, clear tones of a Steinway D, in the deadening acoustic of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, is hardly the ideal setting for Messiaen’s perfumed devotions. As it turned out, this bright and focussed piano sound proved ideal for Osborne’s reading. Details of texture and harmony are at the heart of his interpretation, and by giving clarity to every chord and every phrase, he was able to demonstrate that there is far more to this music than Catholic mysticism, and that its emotional impact is as much a result of the innovative and finely-wrought piano textures as it is of the theological ideas that inspired it.

In the absence of a resonant acoustic, silences became all the more intense. Audience expectation ran high (no doubt because Osborne’s recording of this work is considered among the finest available) and when he came onto the stage and sat at the keyboard, it seemed that nobody breathed until he played his first chord. And the opening passages set the tone for the performance ahead: quiet and precisely voiced, crystalline and inscrutable. Under other hands, this opening movement can tend towards Impressionism, but Osborne stands further back from the emotion within the music. He lets the varied tone colours shape the phrases, and adds no more rubato than the score demands. This has the paradoxical effect of making the music sound all the more intimate and immediate: Osborne takes himself out of the equation, letting the audience commune directly with the composer. Messiaen himself poses question after question, with his irregular rhythms and unresolving harmonies, and rather than offering his own answers, Osborne leaves the music open for his listeners to decide for themselves. And when major chords and simple cadences appear from within the otherwise complex limited-transposition harmonies, Osborne never dwells on them, suggesting that any resolution they offer is only transient, and that the big questions still remain.

The louder music makes exceptional demands on the performer’s virtuosity. Osborne has the technical facility to deal with everything the Messiaen throws at him. The long crescendos are finely graded, and the climaxes have a volcanic intensity. Sudden dynamic changes are expertly timed to give each new idea a sense of inevitability: there was never any feeling here that either Messiaen or Osborne was simply out to shock.

Osborne’s unromantic reading is fully validated by the quiet movements. The composer’s message is conveyed here through the continual repetition of the elegant ideas, rather than through that elegance itself. These passages are presented with clarity of texture, and with the repetitions suggesting gentle insistence rather than pedantry. The approach works because Osborne also has a mastery of the music’s form and progression, which given the sheer scale of this work is perhaps the most impressive aspect of his reading. Messiaen often writes long, long crescendos and diminuendos over angular repeating figures. Osborne makes the dynamic changes, but also keeps the colour and character of the music constant throughout. And then when it returns, many movements later, it is exactly the same as we last heard it.

The heart of the performance was the penultimate movement, “I sleep but my heart keeps watch”. We hear a short chordal motif, repeated incessantly and interpolated by short scurrying figures at the top of the keyboard, and a tolling bass note at the bottom. An absolute silence separates each of these elements, not as a rhetorical gesture of phrasing, more as an ontological chasm between the unrelated sonic worlds. And the audience maintained that silence too, still held in rapt attention after around two hours of continuous listening. The last movement, “Gaze of the Church of Love”, is similarly diffuse, but much more intense. Here the main middle register idea is an obsessively repeating chord, while the contrasting idea in the upper register has now become bells. Osborne again maintained the high level of concentration, making each chord and chime a significant and poignant event. After the final flourish, a brief downward dive towards an earthy, deadened bass note, Osborne stood to receive the applause. He seemed shattered, hardly able to stand from the emotional exhaustion of the previous two and a quarter hours. Everybody in the audience knew exactly how he felt.

Juliane Banse Martin Helmchen Wigmore Hall 21 May 2013

Juliane Banse (soprano), Martin Helmchen (piano), Wigmore Hall, London, 21.5.1

Wolf: Six Lieder to texts by Eduard Mörike, Mignon-Lieder

Schubert: Geheimnis, An Mignon, Kennst du das Land, Gasänge aus Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Sehnsucht, Der Einsame, Der König in Thule, Auf dem See, Bei dir allein!

Juliana Banse is a rare visitor to these shores, but her reputation precedes her. An impressive debut recording of concert arias made quite an impression when it was released here a few years ago, leading many, myself included, to follow her opera career in German houses with great interest. Her accompanist this evening is also an established recording artist who has made precious few appearances on the London stage. Martin Helmschen’s concerto recordings on PentaTone have garnered much well-deserved praise, and present him as a distinctive musician able to give convincing and personal perspectives on repertoire both mainstream and obscure. So expectations ran high.

Some of them were met and some of them were not, but the artistry and personality of both singer and pianist made this a memorable evening. The programme was standard Wigmore fare: well-known Wolf – Mörike songs and Mignon-Lieder, and slightly obscure Schubert – Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and Der König in Thule, among others. It’s all music that needs personality, emotion and high level of artistry, and on those criteria it all succeeded.

Banse, though, was not on top form. The occasional cough between songs suggested that she was bravely attempting to conceal some minor respiratory condition. That impression was also supported by occasional horse notes, poorly controlled crescendos and a shrill tone on many of the top notes. Were it not for the contrast between her performance this evening and those on her recordings, these defects may have gone unnoticed, but, good as this performance was, it did not show her at her best.

But these are technical issues only, and the artistry of her singing was not affected. Banse has a very aristocratic sound, old-fashioned in all the best senses. She has round, plummy vowels and is able to project well on almost any letter: the resonance she achieves on ‘m’s and ‘n’s is particularly impressive. Vibrato is reserved for the very ends of long notes at the ends of phrases, and a wide range of colours and tones is employed to give variety even within individual phrases.

The chosen repertoire gave Martin Helmchen many chances to shine. He is able to draw a rounder and warmer sound from the Wigmore Steinway than most can manage, and even when he reaches grand climaxes, the precision and evenness of his touch are never in doubt. He is as much a soloist as he is an accompanist in these works, which is exactly what Wolf and Schubert demand. He and Banse are happy to allow each other their rubato, with the two of them often moving in and out of synchronisation to good expressive effect.

Wolf proved the better music for Helmchen, while Banse was better suited to Schubert. The pianist’s warm tone and liberal expressive approach is more fin de siècle than it is Classical, while the aristocratic refinement of Banse’s singing sits better in the long 18^th century. Her intonation was occasionally suspect, but this may have been down to the cold as well.

The concert ended on a high with Wolf’s Mignon-Lieder. The vocal line here is predominantly in the lower register, where Banse’s affliction mattered little. And despite her more reserved approach, the passionate and often pained lyricism was communicated well. Helmschen’s artistry was shown off to good effect by the virtuosic accompaniments, which almost became character pieces under his hands.

An interesting concert, then, and one that gave London audiences a rare and welcome chance to get to know the work of these two musicians. But it was frustrating too, as it was clear throughout that Banse is capable of so much more, but wasn’t able to deliver on the night.

This concert was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and can be heard online until 28 May: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01sj041