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Striking Distance

By Jason Victor Serinus

Suffering hath no season. Perhaps that’s why, on a beautiful summer’s day just warm enough for short sleeves, the Carmel Bach Festival programmed baritone Sanford Sylvan performing, in shirt sleeves, Schubert’s chilling song cycle, Der Winterreise (Winter’s journey). It was no small challenge, on such a lovely day, to conjure Schubert’s bare, desolate, emotional landscapes. Sylvan sang with deep commitment, but the performance failed to reveal, for me, the depth of despair at the heart of the cycle’s 24 songs.

From my vantage point, I counted maybe 10 people in the Church of the Wayfarer who were conceivably younger than my 63 years. As though preparing for an older audience, the festival distributed song texts and English translations in the largest type I’ve ever seen. The opening song, “Gute Nacht” (Good night) — a fine way to greet a summer’s afternoon — took up the entire first page.

Nor, does it seem, were the preparers especially eager to attract the uninitiated. The program didn’t announce the performers’ names. Nor was there any mention that David Breitman was playing, not the “piano” cited on the Web site, but a fortepiano. Bios? The name of Schubert’s chosen poet (Wilhelm Müller)? Nein. Maybe they were available in a larger program distributed elsewhere, or on a poster miles away. Is it any wonder that so many people consider classical music the province of an older elite?

A Sonorous Chill

Sylvan gave a short, spoken introduction, citing a letter Schubert sent to a friend. “Come to my house on Tuesday, and I’ll play you my new songs, and they will frighten you,” it reads. Discussing Schubert’s anguish upon learning that he would face an early and painful death from syphilis, he again quoted the composer. “I feel myself to be the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world …. Each morning, I only recall yesterday’s grief.”

From my vantage point, 10 rows back, it was hard to tell whether Sylvan sang most of the cycle with eyes closed, or opened them just enough to retain an inward focus. What was beyond question was the strength and beauty of his voice. Low notes, when appropriate, were chilling, and high fortes filled with passion. It’s not the most complicated voice, lacking copious layers of overtones and colors, but its sonorous directness and security is often arresting.

Nor was there any question of Sylvan’s commitment. The entire cycle was memorized, and clearly enunciated without a single deviation from the written word. Sylvan sang each word and note as if it mattered. It was the kind of tour de force that brought much of the audience to its feet.

And Yet …

Reactions to Winterreise, and lieder performances in general, are as much a matter of personal taste as are intimate relationships. Before writing this review, I spent a while going through a large pile of Winterreise recordings. The oldest of the lot, by Gerhard Hüsch (1933), was so filled with churning drama and tears in the voice as to inspire marvel at the baritone’s ability to also give us one of the jolliest, most archetypal Papageno’s on record. That great genius of a soprano, Lotte Lehmann, overwhelmed me with heartfelt emotional investment, incomparable range of shading and nuance, and depth of insight. By the time of cycle’s end, Lehmann’s unexpected simplicity in “Der Leiermann” (The organ grinder) bespoke a drained, numbed human being saying a final good-bye. Singers as different as Peter Pears and Nathalie Stutzmann also touched me with their personal takes on the cycle. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, at least with Demus, offered incomparable beauty of tone, even if he did not fully draw me in.

For whatever reasons, Sylvan and Breitman’s performance failed to move me. Although Breitman did a fine job imitating agitated, barking hounds at the start of “Im Dorfe” (In the village), and his authentic instrument was far less clunky than fortepianos I’ve heard on lieder recordings with Elly Ameling and Arleen Auger, its lack of resonance and poetic nuance did not sufficiently support Sylvan’s voice. Perhaps Schubert’s favored baritone, Johann Michael Vogl, and other singers of Schubert’s time more closely tuned their voices to the sounds of the era’s instruments.

There were certainly questions of interpretation. The well-known “Der Lindenbaum” (The linden tree) was too fast, as was the final “Der Leiermann.” Both seemed to skim the emotional surface. Several songs, notably “Auf dem Flusse” (On the stream) and “Rast” (Rest), verged on melodrama.

Even as I pondered Sylvan’s numerous verbal and musical accents, noted the coldness at the start at the second verse of “Gefror’ne Tränen” (Frozen tears) and the opening citation of frost at the start of “Der greise Kopf” (The gray head), heard the anguish in the fourth verse of “Erstarrung” (Numbness), was impressed by the big open sound of the words “Mein Herz” (My heart) at the end of “Die Post” (The post), and loved the sound of his voice, I felt like an observer.

At the end of the cycle, I could not help feeling that this winter’s journey had taken me only part of the way to the heart that is home.

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Sanford Sylvan

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