San Francisco Classical Voice

Dichterliebe (“Poet's Love”) begins couched in typical 19th century Romanticism with images of falling blossoms, falling tears, and falling sighs — “Im wunderschönen Monat Mai (“In the Wonderful Month of May”) and “Aus meinen Tränen spriessen,” (“From My Tears Spring Many Blossoming Flowers”). Once the songs move into the poet's reactions to his lost love “Ich will meine Seele tauchen,” (“I Long to Sink my Soul”) and “Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome,” (“In the Rhine, Holy Stream”), a dark dread becomes apparent. It was these passages Brendel emphasized, his voice dark and vibrant.

The effect became central in “Ich grolle nicht, und wenn das Herz auch bricht, I Do Not Complain While My Heart is Breaking,” Brendel unleashing the full resonant power of his voice, and near-snarling for the lines “die Schlang, die dir am Herzen frisst” ( “I've seen the snake that bites your heart”) and “wie sehr du elend bist” (“how truly miserable you are”). The result was so intense, so dramatic, the audience responded with spontaneous applause.

The singer continued to sound out the darker meanings of “Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen” (“There Is A Fluting and Fiddling”) describing the wedding dance at which his former love now takes part, delivered with manic speed and wrenching bitterness. So too the ironic “Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen” (“A Young Man Loved A Maid” ) flung out with embittered insouciance. Brendel became increasingly animated, leaving his position beside the piano to stride the stage and pierce the audience with a startling gaze for “Allnächtlich im Traume seh ich dich”) (“All Night I See You In Dreams”). But the final song, in which the poet asks that his coffin be filled with the pain he has so long carried (“Und meinen Schmerz hinein”), was delivered in solemn monotone, bereft, and drained of emotion.

Brendel was accompanied by Donald Runnicles, music director for San Francisco Opera, who added a poignancy of his own in the attention hegave to Schumann's many moody preludes and postludes.

The remainder of the program consisted of two sets of songs by Schubert and Brahms. Brendel delivered a fierce storm of voice for Schiller's poem “Gruppe aus dem Tartarus” with its visions of hell, and in contrast, became animated with joy for “Wo gehst du hin, du Stolze?” And he romantically crooned “Ganymede,” a musical description of Jupiter choosing his latest boy to take to Olympus.

What was interesting in this approach to lieder were the number of opera characters Brendel has sung making periodic appearances. Here would come Onegin, there would peek Papageno, now Eisenstein's joviality, smile, Mandryka's romantic air, Jack Rance's demands, and at the end, Barak's lonely pleas. After much enthusiastic and prolonged applause, however, it was Figaro who bounded unleashed across the stage for an encore of the “Largo al Factotum,” Brendel vigorously animated and rapidly articulating the Italian, obviously very much at home.

The one negative notes was the small attendance of l50 in the newly refurbished theater that seats five hundred. Last month's recital by baritone Johannes Martin Kränzle (currently in San Francisco Opera's Doktor Faust) drew a mere fifty. In contrast the recent “Best of San Francisco Stand-up Comedy” sold out within hours. This had better not be a trend.