United Kingdom Oxford Lieder Festival 2022 [8] – Brahms, Schumann, Schubert: Christoph Prégardien (tenor), Michael Gees (piano). St John the Evangelist Church, Oxford, 26.10.2022. (CR)
Brahms – Dein blaues Auge, Op.59 No.8; Von ewiger Liebe, Op.43 No.1, Feldeinsamkeit, Op.86 No.2; Wie rafft’ ich mich auf in der Nacht, Op.32 No.1; Auf dem Kirchhofe, Op.105 No.4
Mahler – Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
Schubert – Auf Der Bruck’, D853; Im Abendrot, D799; Rastlose Liebe, D138; Lied des gefangenen Jägers, D843; An die Türen will ich schleichen, D478c; Der Wanderer, D649; Der Wanderer an den Mond, D870; Der Einsame, D800; Der Schiffer, D536; An Schwager Kronos, D369; Der Doppelgänger, D957 No. 13; Nacht und Träume, D827
Christoph Prégardien was due to be joined by his son, Julian, for this recital, adding a familial dimension to the Oxford Lieder Festival’s theme of ‘friendship in song’ this year. As the latter was unwell, that left Prégardien père alone on the platform, with Michael Gees – still hardly a prospect to be sniffed at! The programme was thematically well devised in featuring songs by three composers, largely about love – occasionally fulfilled, but mainly aggravated, thwarted or betrayed – and some of them aptly set against a backdrop of dark, stormy weather, appropriately chosen for this late October night.
Perhaps the most conspicuous achievement in this recital, quite aside from any individual felicities in particular songs or phrases, was Prégardien’s consistently assured projection and exact diction, sustained across the whole programme so that it was connected by a deeply musical unity, despite the varied repertoire from the stylistically varied composers. A few slightly strained high notes in the first few songs hardly mattered and ceased later on in any case (as demonstrated in the ringing clarity tellingly held on ‘Sonnenschein’ in Mahler’s ‘Ging heut’ morgen über’s Feld’). Otherwise there was a dependable solidity in tone throughout, which blended especially well with the rich middle register of the Steinway piano when voice and instrument hovered around the same tessitura, not least so as to realise in sound the warm glow of evening eulogised in Schubert’s ‘Im Abendrot’. Prégardien’s precise intonation also made an arresting effect where the melody took an unexpected turn as in the flattened sevenths which occur towards the end of Brahms’s ‘Von ewiger Liebe’, or again in the middle section of Mahler’s ‘Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz’ as the vocal line plays around exquisitely with the tonal ambiguity of the piano part which shifts back and forth from major to minor.
Gees’s playing was always thoughtful, setting an apt atmosphere and pace for every song, and so making of each one, alongside Prégardien, a greatly involving drama. The Brahms songs all emerged darkly, but warmly, instilling a mood of concentrated introversion in general; and notably a spellbound stillness for ‘Feldeinsamkeit’, or an indefatigable tread like a funeral march for the singer’s survey of a graveyard for ‘Auf dem Kirchhofe’. The latter was made all the more compelling by Prégardien’s solemn delivery of its final two lines (observing how the dead are released from the world’s travails) like a chorale or as though looking ahead to the spiritual earnestness of the same composer’s Four Serious Songs.
Both performers brought a different range of colours to Mahler’s cycle, evoking something of the wider expressive possibilities of the composer’s later version for orchestra, such as the urgent opening of ‘Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht’ giving way to an ironic little waltz in the middle, or the still more pained desperation of ‘Ich’ hab ein gluhend Messer’, ending in lines from Prégardien which were as much shouted or declaimed as sung, in agonised frustration. ‘Die zwei blauen Augen’ was delivered as though a deadly solemn march.
The sequence of Schubert songs opened with a firm jolt from the piano, sweeping up both instrumental and vocal parts and driving them powerfully through Schubert’s galloping setting of verse which recounts a lover briskly riding to his beloved on a horse, with elements of ‘Erlkönig’ about the music, but without the tragedy. A similarly vigorous strain continued through the next few songs, until the first Wanderer’s vision of the moon was met with a quiet, still solemnity, rather than unduly portentous, and ‘Der Wanderer an den Mond’ had an attractively wry briskness to it. ‘Der Einsame’ captured both a sense of humour, and the thoughtfulness of the speaker as he more or less holds a conversation with himself about the pleasures of his solitary situation. ‘An Schwager Kronos’ was a stern address by Prégardien, with uncompromising support from the piano, before a devastatingly still but horrified intensity came from both for ‘Der Doppelgänger’, from Schwanengesang, surely one of the most dramatic of all Schubert’s six hundred and more songs.
Concluding the recital formally, a rapt, broad performance of ‘Nacht und Träume’ (its opening chord following on more or less instantly from ‘Der Doppelgänger’) continued the nocturnal theme, but now offering rest and catharsis, with Gees’s gently rocking accompaniment and Prégardien’s absolutely secure line. As an encore they gave a quite strenuous rendition of Schubert’s ‘An mein Herz’, D860, nervously clipped at first, but developing with implacable stride through its verses to the end. That set the seal on a remarkable recital, inciting this reviewer to a couple of glasses of wine in the nearest public house immediately afterwards to come back down to earth!
Curtis Rogers