Lieder
Stephen Hough/Lucy Crowe, Anna Tilbrook, Wigmore Hall online/BBC Radio 3 review - the end of the beginningWednesday, 03 June 2020
After a devastating drought, even a light shower can feel like something of a miracle. Under normal circumstances, a 60 minute lunchtime piano recital from the Wigmore Hall would represent wholly unremarkable business as usual for BBC Radio 3. As it... Read more... |
Lise Davidsen, James Baillieu, Barbican review - opulence and the promise of greatnessTuesday, 11 February 2020
So much pressure is on for Lise Davidsen to be the next Kirsten Flagstad or Birgit Nilsson, but the question has to be asked: is this just The Voice - a big "just" when a dramatic Wagnerian soprano is at stake - or The Complete Artist? Intimations... Read more... |
Zauberland, Linbury Theatre review - an adaptation that adds much and gains nothingWednesday, 16 October 2019
Dichterliebe is a song-cycle full of gaps, silences, absences. Where is the piano at the start of “Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet” when the voice enters first and so startlingly, ungrammatically alone? Where is the voice during the long piano postlude... Read more... |
Winterreise, Gerhaher, Huber, Wigmore Hall review - wintry beautyThursday, 17 January 2019
As Wigmore Hall audiences really ought to know, silence can be golden. Especially at the close of Schubert’s Winterreise, as the uncanny drone-like fifths of the hurdy-gurdy in “Der Leiermann” fade away into – well, whatever state of mind the singer... Read more... |
Alice Coote, Christian Blackshaw, Wigmore Hall review – deep feeling and high dramaSaturday, 22 December 2018
In the recital world, so it sometimes seems, no good deed ever goes unpunished. Like Ian Bostridge (another singer who tries to reinvigorate an often rigid format), Alice Coote often has to fend off brickbats whenever she inject the drama of new... Read more... |
Gerald Finley, Julius Drake, Middle Temple Hall review - sublimity in 18 serious songsWednesday, 03 October 2018
Earth stood hard as iron in parts of this awe-inspiring recital from a true song partnership, but theirs was an autumnal odyssey, not a winter journey. For all their preoccupation with death and occasionally desolation, neither Schubert at 31, in... Read more... |
Ian Bostridge, Thomas Adès, Wigmore Hall review - haunting, brutal SchubertTuesday, 18 September 2018
Winterreise brings out the best from Ian Bostridge, and the worst. His dedication to understanding and communicating its complex and harrowing text is everywhere apparent, and this was an emotionally draining evening. But his style of delivery has... Read more... |
Lucy Crowe, Anna Tilbrook, Wigmore Hall review - the eternal and ephemeral feminineSaturday, 05 May 2018
When you have 21 women to present in song, but only a couple among the 14 poets and none to represent them out of the 15 composers idolising or giving them a voice, you need two strong defenders of their sex at the helm. Lucy Crowe and Anna Tilbrook... Read more... |
Pianist Christopher Glynn on Schubert in English: 'this new translation never walks on stilts'Saturday, 05 May 2018
The idea for a new translation of Schubert's Winterreise came from an old recording. Harry Plunket Greene was nearly 70 (and nearly voiceless) when he entered the studio in 1934 and sang "Der Leiermann," the final song of the cycle, in English (as "... Read more... |
Matthias Goerne, Seong-Jin Cho, Wigmore Hall review - slow and slower StraussWednesday, 25 April 2018
Matthias Goerne has an exceptional ability to sustain evenness and legato through a vocal line. His breath control and his tone production are things to be marvelled at. He is able to function at impossibly slow tempi, and to make an audience hold... Read more... |
Kaufmann, Damrau, Deutsch, Barbican review - bliss, if only you closed your eyesSaturday, 17 February 2018
Schubert’s winter wanderer had Wilhelm Muller to voice his despair, while Schumann’s poet-in-love had Heinrich Heine. The lovers of Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch must make do with only the words of anonymous Italian authors, albeit dressed up... Read more... |
Louise Alder, James Baillieu, Wigmore Hall review - sensual heat thaws a winter's eveningMonday, 22 January 2018
Rapture, ecstasy, ardour, and a few cheeky fumbles in the bushes – Louise Alder and James Baillieu’s Wigmore recital promised “Chants d’amour” and delivered amply, giving us love in all its bewildering, technicolour variety. From the heady eroticism... Read more... |
