Under the best circumstances, a vocal recital can take the listener on a vast journey within the confines of an intimate space. Christopher Maltman’s performance Thursday at Herbst Theatre was an arresting case in point — a remarkable traversal by an artist who inhabits the recital stage as if to the manor born.
The Bay Area hasn’t heard nearly enough of the dynamic British baritone, whose only previous San Francisco Opera appearance was as Papageno in Mozart’s Magic Flute. Thursday’s event, his third recital for San Francisco Performances (one that was originally scheduled to take place last March, but was postponed due to illness), marked a welcome return.
Along with the great Scottish pianist Malcolm Martineau, who remains one of the most brilliant recital accompanists in the world today, Maltman began the evening with selections from Venetian songs by Fauré, Schubert, Schumann, and Reynaldo Hahn. The second half focused on works by Schubert and Mahler — most notably, songs representing both composers’ responses to texts by Friedrich Ruckert.
Taken as a whole, the program offered a remarkable traversal from light to darkness and, in three well-chosen encores, back to light again.
The program offered a remarkable traversal from light to darkness and, in three well-chosen encores, back to light again.
Maltman, who boasts a plush, firm-toned, and beautifully resonant instrument, spends much of his time on the opera stage. But Thursday’s appearance suggested he has just as much to offer in recital. Singing in French, German, and Italian, he communicated, with an air of understated elegance, the essence of each text, from the intoxicating love-spells of Fauré and Hahn to the sublime leave-taking of Mahler’s Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen.
The first half, created for a program Maltman and Martineau performed in Venice a few seasons back, opened with Fauré’s Cinq Melodies de Venise, Op. 58. These settings of texts by Paul Verlaine are ineffably sensuous, and, beginning with “Mandoline,” Maltman projected richly colored, softly floated tone. In each setting that followed — “En sourdine,” “Green,” “A Clymene,” and “C’est l’extase” — the results were exquisite.
Four gondolier’s songs followed: Schumann’s “Leis ruden hier” and “Wenn durch die Piazetta” from Myrthen; Schubert’s Gondelfahrer; and Mendelssohn’s Venetianisches Gondellied. This section afforded Maltman the opportunity to demonstrate an impeccable command of German, particularly in the Schubert setting, where the baritone’s weighty sound and deft phrasing, wedded to Martineau’s gently rocking piano part, created an indelible midnight scene. Mendelssohn’s Gondellied, which sets the same text as Schumann’s Wenn durch die Piazetta — Mendelssohn’s in 6/8 time, Schumann’s in 2/4 — yielded a mesmerizing outpouring, with Martineau providing ideal accompaniment to Maltman’s ripe, golden vocalism.
It was in the Ruckert lieder that Maltman made his greatest impression.
If Hahn’s six Venezia settings gilded the lily a bit, they still offered fine evidence both of the composer’s skill at scene-painting — each song comes to life with glowing details of harbors, islands, lagoons, and the open sea — and of Maltman’s mastery of nuanced delivery. Deploying refulgent tone and pointed phrasing, he summoned the piquant beauties (and, in the case of Hahn’s L’avertimento and Che peca!, the humor) of each.
The Eyes Have It
The second half brought a decided change of focus. After a bit of reshuffling of the printed program, Maltman launched into Italian with Schubert’s Metatasio settings — the aria “L’incanto degli occhi” from the opera Attilio Regolo; the seething intensity of “Il traditor deluso” from the oratorio Gioas, re de Giuda; and the buffo song Il modo di prender moglie, in which a man muses on the merits of an advantageous marriage.
Still, it was in the Ruckert lieder that Maltman made his greatest impression. Schubert’s Du bist die Ruh conjured an utterly enveloping atmosphere, and Sei mir gegrusst was delivered with a passion more potent for its restraint. Mahler’s settings received a deeply felt, almost meditative, response from Maltman; Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen summoned the full measure of its time-stopping, otherworldly glow.
Where could Maltman and Martineau go from there? Back to Venice, of course. First came an anguished, red-blooded account of “O vecchio cor che batte,” the Doge’s aria from Verdi’s opera I due Foscari. An expansive account of Leoncavallo’s Mattinata followed, and then there was one more: Hahn’s rapturous A Chloris. With this song, Maltman came full circle, back to the radiant light of the recital’s first moments.