Lieder Afternoon

There are two kinds of singers in the world, those who overwhelm us with the sheer beauty and power of their voice, and those who, although not blessed with a naturally beautiful instrument, move us with the power of their intellect and the interpretative insights they have into the music.

Baritone Christian Gerhaher appears to be blessed with both voice and brains, as was evident in the recital he gave in Vancouver this past Sunday with pianist Gerold Huber, his longtime musical partner. Their recital marked the opening of the Vancouver Recital Society’s 2014 – 2015 concert season. The performance consisted of lieder by Franz Schubert and Wolfgang Rihm, on poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Gerhaher alternated sets of songs by Schubert and Rihm, ending the concert with an extended lied each by the two composers. As the singer noted in his own programme notes, Schubert’s lieder is not merely poems set to “more or less suitably affective music”, but “appropriate musical equivalents for the texts of the pre-existing poems.”

The artistry of the performers was apparent in the first of a series of eight Schubert lieder. The quality and power of Gerhaher’s voice, the beauty of his diction, and his interpretative strength, reminded me of a younger Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. In Sehnsucht (Longing), Gerhaher’s pacing was impeccable, building tension and changing moods by subtly changing the quality of his voice. Throughout, Huber proved an equal partner, musically and technically. The voicing of the chords at the beginning of the line, “Auf einmal erschein ich, Ein blinkender Stern” (“All at once I appear, A glittering star”) was magical. In An den Mond (To the Moon), Huber beautifully echoed the vocal lines, especially in the final two stanzas. And the pianist sensitively supported Gerhaher’s singing in the gently relentless piano part in Geheimes (Secret).

In Schäfers Klagelied (Shepherd’s Lament), Gerhaher had the remarkable ability to shape the musical and emotional arch of the song, allowing the emotion to gradually open up until the dramatic line, “Und Regen Sturm und Gewitter” (“In rain and storm and tempest”). It was truly a masterful performance.

Like Schubert, German composer Wolfgang Rihm exploits the beauty of the solo voice, and the vocal lines of his song settings are lyrical. It is in the piano figurations and the harmonic language that we view Goethe’s poems with 21^st century eyes (or ears.) Compared to Schubert, Rihm's songs have a wider vocal and dynamic range, as well as greater technical challenge. As in the Schubert songs, Gerhaher, consummate artist and musician, sing these songs like a masterful storyteller, leading us through the ever-changing emotions of poems, confiding in the audience the innermost secrets of the poet’s soul.

In spite of the sophisticated harmonic language and the intricate piano writing, I must confess that, for me, Schubert is far more successful in underscoring the language of the poems, using far more economical means. To me, there is, to borrow the words of Yehudi Menuhin in describing the music of Arnold Schoenberg, a curious discrepancy between the word and the gesture. Unlike even the simplest Schubert lieder, I do not feel that the vocal lines of the Rihm songs really convey, or underscores, the emotions of the words being sung.

Schubert’s Gesänge des Harfners, three songs that closed the first half of the programme, are harmonically and musically darker than the preceding songs by the same composer. Again, Gerhaher drew us into Schubert’s incredible sound world, with Huber’s piano playing sometimes setting the stage, sometimes creating the atmosphere, sometimes commenting on the poem, and always sensitive to the drama unfolding before our ears. The dramatic and harmonically unresolved piano postlude to the second song was especially memorable.

The songs in the second half of the programme were larger in scope, poetically as well as musically. The first of the four Schubert songs, Prometheus, was almost operatic in style, with the music juxtaposing between the highly dramatic and declamatory to the emotionally intimate and subdued. Once again, Gerhaher captivated the audience like a master storyteller. With the beginning of the final stanza, “Hier sitz’ich, forme Menschen, Nach meinem Bilde” (“Here I sit, making man, In my own image”), the singing took on a regal air. In Ganymed, both pianist and singer conveyed the sense of urgency and feeling of movement in the stanza, “Ich komm! Ich komm!” (“I come, I come!”), making the audience feel that the heart of poet and composer was indeed beating faster.

The penultimate song of the programme, Wolfgang Rihm's setting of Harzreise im

Winter (Winter Journey Through the Harz Mountains) is a severe test of the musicians’ stamina with its huge range of emotions. In this particular setting of the Goethe poem, I did feel more of a connection between the words and the music. Strangely enough, I feel that the composer was more effective in mirroring the emotions of the words in the piano part than in the vocal lines. Both in this and the final song, Schubert’s Willkommen und Abschied (Greeting and Farewell), Gerhaher rose to the challenges set by the two composers, writing music almost two hundred years apart from each other.

At the end of the programme, both artists acknowledged the warm applause of the audience. It was not the kind of performance that sought to garner rollicking ovations. Rather, everyone in the audience seemed to feel a sense of communion with and gratitude toward the artists. It was an afternoon of intimate music making, even in the large space of the Chan Centre of Performing Arts, intimate in the sense that each member of the audience felt that the musicians were addressing him or her alone.

We must thank Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber for giving Vancouver such an auspicious start to the year’s concert season.

Riotous Youth

Other than providing Vancouver residents with performances of great Shakespearean plays for the last 25 years, Bard on the Beach also runs an active educational programme, to give young people the skills and the confidence to speak on stage, as well as an appreciation of the beauty and drama of the great dramatist.

Riotous Youths is a new initiative of Bard whereby “graduates” of the Young Shakespearean programme could continue to participate in workshops and hone their acting skills. To mark the end of this new endeavor, the group of young artists put on a show with brief scenes from some of Shakespeare’s most well know works. To add an element of chance to the performance (a la John Cage?), the names of the plays were put in a hat, and audience members were asked to draw from the hat to determine the scene to be performed.

This was a remarkable hour of theatre. Musicians and actors, who set out to recreate great works of art, should have only one goal in mind: to ensure that whatever he or she is doing, no matter how “original”, is to be true to the spirit of the creator, be it a Shakespeare or a Mozart. These young artists gave us their “take” on scenes from the plays they had chosen, and performed them with conviction, verve, and a youthful enthusiasm undiminished by “experience”.  At no time during the performance did I feel that they were trying to be different for the sake of being different. Unlike certain professional directors, they did not try to use Shakespeare to further their own political or personal agenda. And at the end of the performance, I was convinced that they had stayed true to the spirit of Shakespeare.

Funding for the arts in today’s society is often tenuous at best, and becoming more and more so. In North America, there appears to be unlimited funds when it comes to sports. Bard’s Riotous Youth programme has shown us that when we invest in the arts, we are investing in the future of our young people. Let’s hope that this very worthwhile initiative will continue to thrive and grow.

A Less Than Magical Dream

It is difficult to think of summers in Vancouver without Bard on the Beach, our annual Shakespeare festival. Twenty-five years ago, Bard began its history in the city with a modest single production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Since then, the festival has grown bigger and, in most cases, better. It seems entirely fitting, then, for Bard to celebrate its 25^th summer by revisiting this divine comedy yet again.

From the outset of the performance, it seems clear that director Dean Paul Gibson and costume designer Mara Gottler are aiming for maximum silliness and raunchiness in effect. Hermia and Helena appear in tight-fitting corsets, and Puck dresses throughout in ballet tutu, complete with punk hairdo. A friend remarked that this is a reference to A Rocky Horror Picture Show. Indeed, there are numerous pop culture references throughout the evening. Laughs were milked by slapstick antics that became outdated even in Hollywood decades ago with shows like I Love Lucy and The Three Stooges. Moreover, the production was saturated with sexual innuendoes and double entendre, which would have been acceptable, even funny, if they are done with taste, with cleverness, and if they serve the play.

Rather than using Shakespeare’s immortal and oh-so-beautiful words to elevate us from our everyday existence, the production appears to be aiming at the lowest possible common denominator. If the director thinks that dumbing-down Shakespeare would make the play appeal to a younger audience, he has seriously underestimated what young people are capable of.

Regarding the female characters, I believe the director is aiming to portray these women with assertiveness. However, Gibson seems to have mistaken assertiveness with vulgarity. In the confrontation between Hermia and Helena in Act III, the actors were shouting their lines like men and women in the fish market haggling over the price of the latest catch. Shakespeare, like Mozart in his operas, has always endowed his female characters with wit, with cleverness, and with confidence. The concept of the current production has, to me, robbed the female characters of their true beauty and, more importantly, dignity.

This attempt to update this, probably Shakespeare’s most timeless play, has robbed Midsummer Night’s Dream of all its magical elements. By the time the performance reaches Act V, the play-within-the-play - the “tragedy” of Thisby and Pyramus - feels very tedious with even further attempts at slapstick humour more appropriate for a Christmas pantomime by an amateur theatrical company.

At the end of the performance, I did not feel a sense of wonder, or of joy. I did wonder what, if any, is the director’s concept for the production? Surely there is more to this great Shakespeare play than just to elicit a few laughs from the audience? By the time the performance reaches Puck’s beautiful final monologue, I could not wait to escape into the beautiful summer evening.

Just a few days later, on the same stage, I witnessed a production of Twelfth Night, given by the young players of Bard on the Beach youth programme (“Young Bard”). For me, the enthusiasm and earnestness of the young actors make the performance a much more joyful and joy-filled experience than what the professional players had accomplished a few nights before. Personally, this performance of “unadulterated” Shakespeare is closer to what the playwright had in mind.

In this 25^th anniversary season, Artistic Director Christopher Gaze should feel justifiably proud of what the festival has accomplished. I do hope, however, that Gaze would also carefully examine the future direction for the festival. Rather than using Shakespeare to further whatever personal or political agenda of the director, should they not be directing their talents toward bringing us, the audience, into new and wondrous discoveries and insights into Shakespeare’s heart and soul?

In Search of an Artist's Soul

In the musical world, there are artists who draw listeners into the inner spiritual world of the musical masterpiece, and there are others whose sheer abilities on his or her instrument draw our attention to the potential of that instrument. Pianist Olga Kern, I think, firmly belongs to the latter category of instrumentalists.

Kern made her Vancouver Chopin Society debut last night in a mammoth programme of Schumann, Alkan, Chopin, and Rachmaninoff. I found it curious that the pianist chose to open her programme with Schumann’s Carnaval (Op. 9), a work that many pianists would end their concert with. In fact, opening the concert with Carnaval, and closing off the first half with Chopin’s Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 35, made Alkan’s Etude in G Major, Op. 35, the work performed between the two major works, superfluous, and nothing more than a vehicle to demonstrate the pianist’s dexterity.

I found Kern’s interpretation of Carnaval, well, uncomfortable. Her excessive use of rubato throughout the work seriously hampers the flow of the music. Moreover, rather than conceiving the set as a whole, I felt that she treats each of the twenty sections as individual pieces, and I missed the sense of organic unity that the work calls for. In Chiarina, her distortion of the rhythm almost completely obliterates Schumann’s passionato indication. In the final Marche des “Davidsbündler” contre les Philistins, there was a lack of a sense of inevitable drive towards the end, in spite of the pianist’s blistering virtuosity.

I was also surprised that Kern decided to play the Sphinxes section. I know that pianists as great as Rachmaninoff had included these few notes in his recording, but I really believe that Schumann intended this section as a riddle, an enigma or a puzzle for the player, and that these notes really shouldn’t be played.

Alkan’s Etude in G Major was well played, and amply demonstrated the young pianist’s considerable ability around the keyboard. Alkan had written many fine and original works, but this piece is really nothing more than a showpiece, not worthy of being in the company of Carnaval and Chopin’s Sonata.

The first moments of Chopin’s Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor began promisingly enough, with great drama, and plenty of drive. Came the second subject and Kern’s excessive rubato again destroyed the intricate structure of the first movement. In the left hand octave passage of the coda (mm 230 to 235), she slowed the tempo to such an extent that the impetus of the music was completely gone. In the scherzo, the dramatic A section came off better than the lyrical (Piu lento) B section. I got the sense that Kern was playing from climax to climax. When it came to the lyrical sections of the music, she somehow felt that she had to highlight the music to accentuate its beauty, thus robbing the music of naturalness.

After the intermission, Kern was much more in her element in a selection of three of Rachmaninoff’s Etude Tableaux, as well as a selection of nine Preludes from Op. 23, Op. 32 and Op. 3, ending with a take-no-prisoner performance of the Prelude in B-flat Major, Op. 23, No. 2. The performances here were much more idiomatic and, strangely enough, more natural and flowing.

If I had any reservations about the evening’s performance, I was obviously in the minority. The audience rewarded the pianist with an ovation, and she in turned rewarded the audience with four or five encores. Vladimir Horowitz, a master of pianistic thunder, often played more lyrical pieces in his encores.  Kern would do well to emulate this. All of her encores appeared to be more and more virtuosic. Yes, it was impressive, but I found my ears getting very tired toward the end of the evening, and I yearned to get away to some Bach and Schubert.

In spite of the high volume of Olga Kern’s playing, there was surprisingly a lack of variety in her pianistic colours. Things were either soft or loud. She obviously reveled in passages of great passion and brilliance. Perhaps, like Horowitz, she will mellow in her old age. Looking at the pianist’s face as she brought off another pianistic feat is like looking at the face of a child as he or she speeds down the lane on the new bicycle.

For now, Olga Kern remains, for me, a brilliant instrumentalist that delights in showing off her abilities at the instrument. What I kept wishing for was for her to bare her soul to us through the music that she plays.

Distinguished Recording

Among the many recordings of Chopin’s two piano concerti, there are a few favourites that I keep returning to. As a teenager, I loved (and still do) Arthur Rubinstein’s 1961 account of the first concerto with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski and the New Symphony of London. Soviet pianist Emil Gilels’s recording of the same work with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra is another that I have a soft spot for. In 2006, the Altara label released a stunning life recording of Mr. Rubinstein playing the second concerto with the Warsaw Philharmonic and Witold Rowicki. To my ears, this life performance towers above all of Mr. Rubinstein’s other distinguished recordings of this concerto – and that, I think, is saying a lot. I am pleased to say that now there is another distinguished addition to the catalogue of Chopin concerti recordings.

I had been eagerly awaiting pianist Ingrid Fliter’s recording of the Chopin concerti for LINN Records (a company more known for their audio equipment), and she certainly does not disappoint. I have always believed that there are pianists who play Chopin, and then there are artists who are Chopin players. Fliter clearly belongs to the latter (much smaller) group.

Chopin filled the scores of both concerti with numerous expressive markings. To my ears, Fliter had really carefully studied and managed to successfully realize the composer’s explicit instructions on how every detail should be played. More importantly, she did not fall into the trap of making the music sound like a series of beautiful episodes. Each movement within each concerto sounds like an organic whole.,

Fliter’s partners in the recording, conductor Jun Märkl and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra did a remarkable job of bringing out the beauty of the orchestral writing. We must thank this conductor for treating the orchestral writing, so underrated by many conductors and musicologists, with the love and devotion it deserves. In both works, Chopin writes especially lovingly and sensitively for the wind instruments, and this is evident in the playing of the members of the orchestra. The LINN engineers did a remarkable job in capturing the sound of both the orchestra and piano.

The playing by Fliter in these concerti is meltingly beautiful. In the slow movements of both works, there is palpably a feeling of hushed eloquence. I must confess that although the performance of the first concerto is outstanding, Fliter’s playing of the second concerto is spellbinding and magical in every respect, from first note to last. I feel that Fliter realizes Chopin’s instruction for the beginning of the third movement - semplice ma graziosamente - to perfection.

I am guessing that Ingrid Fliter’s association with LINN Records is a result of EMI’s (her former recording company) absorption by Warner Classics. Well, EMI’s loss is LINN’s gain, and lovers of the Chopin concerti should immediately run out and purchase this wonderful recording. I am already looking forward to the pianist’s impending recording of Chopin’s Preludes, Op. 28.