United Kingdom Oxford Lieder Festival 2022 [9] – Brahms, Schumann: Dorothea Röschmann (soprano), Jeeyoung Lim (bass-baritone) Malcolm Martineau and Elenora Pertz (pianists). St John the Evangelist Church, Oxford, 27.10.2022. (CR)
Schumann – Sechs Gedichte und Requiem, Op.90; Liederkreis, Op.39
Brahms Alte Liebe, Op.72 No.1; Auf dem Kirchhofe, Op.105 No.4; Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht, Op.96 No.1; Unbewegte laue Luft, Op.57 No.8; Liebestreu, Op.3 No.1; Junge Lieder I: Meine Liebe ist grün, Op.63 No.5; Wir wandelten, wir zwei zusammen, Op.96 No.2; Nachtigall, Op.97 No.1; Von ewiger Liebe, Op.43 No.1
Coming the day after Christoph Prégardien’s appearance at the Oxford Lieder Festival (review here), Dorothea Röschmann’s recital made for an instructive comparison in broadly similar German Romantic repertoire – in fact, actually including two songs by Brahms which Prégardien had also programmed. Röschmann’s approach was marked by a much greater extroversion, rather than remaining within a more intensely focussed ambit. Vocal lines were projected with steely strength, wide open vowels, and generous vibrato often at the peaks of phrases, which often therefore defined a very definite sense of structure and drama. In the case of the famous ‘Mondnacht’ from Schumann’s Liederkreis, however, that vibrato in each repetition of the principal phrase disturbed the music’s sublime rapture through too frequent use.
That more dramatic projection perhaps worked better in the selection of Brahms songs, in evoking the excitability and rapture expressed in ‘Unbewegte laue Luft’ or ‘Meine Liebe is grün’ for example. Powerful flourishes from Malcolm Martineau on the piano at the outset of ‘Am dem Kirchhofe’ incited Röschmann to a much more vociferous account of this song which Prégardien had included the night before, as also in ‘Von ewiger Liebe’, encountered previously too.
The first Brahms song performed here, ‘Alte Liebe’, was more privately and sweetly sung, over the piano’s shifts from major to minor which Martineau made to sound resonant and purposeful, carrying over something of the deeper vein of introversion and ambiguity in the preceding cycle by Schumann, setting verses by Joseph von Eichendorff. Lively characterisation and dramatic tension were well captured in that, for instance Röschmann’s darkly coloured opening for ‘Waldesgespräch’ hinting at the speaker’s fate at the hands of Lorelei, or the mischievous wit of ‘Die Stille’. But in other songs that essential Schumannesque quality of Innigkeit tended to be missing, even if otherwise she and Martineau admirably sustained a line of urgent continuity from one song to the next to make them a fully connected cycle, rather than a sequence of unrelated settings.
In the concert’s opening segment for emerging young artists, Jeeyoung Lim gave an assured account of Schumann’s Sechs Gedichte und Requiem (but omitting for No.4, ‘Die Sennin’, for no obvious reason). Tending to project from deep down in the throat ensured a firm vocal line throughout, though with some airy transparency, giving these stories much narrative immediacy, and the concluding ‘Requiem’ an apt sense of resignation. But more nuance and variety in tone would have elucidated more enticing detail. Elenora Pertz’s playing on the piano was well placed and sympathetic, not intruding upon the incidents that were conveyed in the vocal melodies.
Curtis Rogers