Cool and Bloodless

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In a recital by tenor Ian Bostridge and pianist Julius Drake devoted entirely to Schubert songs, it was, strangely, the piano that shone. Not strange, of course, that the piano was a vital part of the performance of the songs: Schubert’s accompaniments, after all, are full partners, sometimes offering comment, or warning or sympathizing with the protagonist, along the lines of a Greek chorus, or even at times revealing things the protagonist is unaware of.

And Drake is an excellent pianist. Through his use of color and drama, time and again he provided the passion, delicacy, subtlety, characterization, and all the other elements that go into making Schubert songs the marvels that they are. What was strange was that the singer seemed to see his role not as that of cointerpreter but rather as explicator of the text.

Bostridge made his preference for doing this clear by relying for effect solely on his vocal abilities — his soft singing, his dynamic range, his energetic enunciation of the text — as well as on the communication of his thorough understanding of the poems. He lacked the ability (or the desire) to give himself fully to the music of the songs, which the pianist did completely. The balance between the two performers was therefore upset. The pianist played as if he were singing the songs; the singer, however, only played the words.

Things started out well enough in this San Francisco Performances program with the exquisite Im Frühling (In spring). Bostridge’s delicate pianissimo singing and Drake’s soft piano dynamic matched perfectly. But even here it was Drake, and not Bostridge, who conveyed the sense of longing and the hint of sadness that are so much a part of the fragrance of the song.

This limitation of the singer was never more in evidence than in the performance of the powerful Totengräbers Heimweh (Gravedigger’s homesickness). The song starts muscularly; the man digs grave after grave with no rest. In a section performed affectingly by both artists in a bitter, stark unison, he begins to long for the coolness and peace of his own grave. Near the end of the song a startling transition occurs when the gravedigger foresees his death with increasing ecstasy as he looks toward “home” and the loved ones who will greet him after he dies.

The pianist managed to convey the utter unearthliness of the final passage by making the piano sound like the ghost of the instrument it had been, seemingly dying out at the very end in an amazing decrescendo, as the man appears to die before our eyes.

But Bostridge could not or would not accept the pianistic fabric laid down for him. He projected no yearning for release from life’s pain. There was no hint in his singing of the character’s quiet but intense rapture on passing from life to death. Instead, the singer’s tone was anything but otherworldly, being several shades too robust, and the magical effect that might have occurred was lost.

Poignant, Peaceful Moments

There were some lovely moments, however, to partly compensate for the disappointments. The first clashing chords (à la Hugo Wolf) of Dass sie hier gewesen (That she was here), which Drake exploited to the fullest, were a poignant joy. The same was true of the beautiful Des Fischers Liebesglück (The fisherman’s luck in love), in which both performers breathed together, taking all the time in the world to convey the peace and serenity of this gem.

There was the familiar, beloved Die Forelle (The trout), which rippled along in Drake’s excellent accompaniment and was given a crisp performance by both artists, even if the singer didn’t make the onlooker’s “blood boil” (”regem Blute”) as he watches the deceitful fisherman hook the fish.

The recital ended in a philosophical vein with Im Walde (In the forest), a complex, ruminative song that seemed, finally, to be Bostridge’s meat. He possesses a keen mind and obviously prefers communicating his reflections on the text to allowing himself to plumb the musical and emotional depths of a song.

Im Walde stirred the audience. Bostridge should have left them mulling over its complexities. Instead, he yielded to the tradition of the obligatory encore, and moreover he picked exactly the wrong one: the famous setting of Goethe’s Heidenröslein (Wild rose). This early piece of Schubert’s is not merely a lively, jaunty tale of a boy who picks a rose and is pricked by a thorn, but also a multilayered depiction of mutual pain.

It can be sung mockingly, or sweetly, or knowingly, or in several other ways, depending on the singer’s interpretation and how ably he or she can feel and communicate the deeper meanings. But once again, Bostridge failed to uncover any of the layers, not even the merriest, sweetest one. He simply threw it away.

Stephanie Friedman, mezzo-soprano, is retired from more than three decades of singing in opera and concerts in the U.S. and abroad.

Comments

Hmmm … interesting. I heard Mr. Bostridge in Portland on the 24th, singing the same program, and had quite a different experience of him, particularly in regard to the Totengrabers Heimweh (sorry for the misspelling; I don’t know how to make umlauts in this text box)… at least here, during the end repetition of ich komme, ich komm! the singer’s voice was so filled with anticipated relief and longing that it was painful to hear.

I was struck by your observation that Bostridge is a textual singer rather than a musical one; to me as a listener, that is one of the things that makes his Schubert, in particular, so memorable … the sense that he is declaiming the text, and that it simply happens to be set to music. My own feeling about many lieder singers is that they tend to get in the way of the poetry … classical singing, particularly in the tenor voice, is such an astonishingly unnatural type of art … I think that often the “artistry” impedes truthful utterance of the text. And so I find Mr. Bostridge’s approach very refreshing.

Posted by David Rochester on January 26, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I heard the program Ms Friedman reviewed, supra, and I think I have to agree with her. Mr Bostridge has a wonderful voice, ture, but it seems to me that the point of a live performance is that it gives the artist the opportunity to communicate with the audience by means other than just his voice - you want the voice only - buy the CD.

He made eye contact with the audience during just one of his numbers - otherwise, he appeared to be memorizing the pattern of the flooring planks on the stage. It was an enjoyable evening, but memorable mostly for Ms Bostridge’s lack of interest in his audience. I attend few recitals - but when the audience and the artist are playing off each other it can be wonderful. This one wasn’t

Posted by James Johnston on January 29, 2008 at 4:42 pm